Let’s Be Serious About Ted Cruz From The Start: He’s Too Extreme And Too Disliked To Win [View all]

[n2doc]

By HARRY ENTEN

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s newly minted presidential campaign is the media equivalent of a juicy rib-eye that robbers use to distract a guard dog during a heist. He’ll get a ton of media attention, and he’ll get to spread his message — which may be all that Cruz is after — but Cruz almost certainly has no shot of winning the nomination, according to every indicator that predicts success in presidential primaries.

First, Cruz doesn’t have enough support from party bigwigs. To win the Republican or Democratic nomination, you need the backing of at least some of the party apparatus. At a minimum, your fellow party members shouldn’t hate you. Otherwise, you end up getting the Newt Gingrich 2012 treatment. That is, you get pounced on the moment you’re seen as a threat to win the nomination.

If we’re ever in a world where it looks like Cruz could win the nomination, you’ll very likely see such pouncing. You can read article after article about how Cruz has isolated himself in the Senate. It got so bad that he recently had to apologize to his Republican colleagues.

And the Cruz hatred doesn’t stop at the edges of the Senate cloakroom. Influential party actors dislike him, too. I can’t remember another Republican who united Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, Jennifer Rubin and Thomas Sowell in opposition.

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http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/lets-be-serious-about-ted-cruz-from-the-start-hes-too-extreme-and-too-disliked-to-win/