TO: Interested Parties
FROM: Brad Woodhouse, President of Correct The Record
DATE: February 1, 2016
SUBJECT: Over-Cruzed and Trumped Up
It’s now official: the GOP is the Party of Extremes. For months, we’ve watched Republican presidential candidates drift further to the right than we ever thought possible. This brand of right wing extremism has propelled Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the biggest fear mongers of them all, to strong finishes in Iowa as most of those in the so-called establishment lane fled the state long ago. Today’s Republican Party is anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women, anti-LGBT, anti-voting rights—these are the pillars of today’s Grand OLD Party, and Trump and Cruz sit atop it all. While some in the media are hyperventilating about Marco Rubio’s third place finish in the Hawkeye State, the Cruz-Trump combo received more than 50 percent of the vote, throw in Ben Carson and the outsider, anti-establishment forces garnered more than 60 percent of the vote. And, in all of the Rubio talk not one pundit can name the first state he is likely to win.
As for Cruz and Trump, the editors at The New York Times recently wrote, “Those two, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, are equally objectionable for different reasons”—uninformed rabble rousing and untethered ambition, to be precise. They also can’t stand one another. But in the grand scramble for votes, these two politicians share a penchant for offensive rhetoric. And they just took the first of many steps towards one of them likely winning the Republican nomination.
This dual performance should come as no surprise. After all, Trump and Cruz have together held a RealClearPolitics polling average topping 50 percent for over six weeks. Think about that: for most of December and January, a discriminatory reality TV host and a chronic liar who shut down the government have collectively upended the Republican establishment and inspired nine imitators. Rally after rally, Trump doubled down on his extremist rhetoric and aggressive proposals. Cruz repeatedly pandered to extremists with his push for carpet bombs and glowing sand.
Trump and Cruz dominated in Iowa and are expected to perform similarly in New Hampshire. Polling shows these two frontrunners have a combined 44.7 percent average of the vote among Republican primary voters. They are also dominant in South Carolina where they average 55.7 percentage points.
Where does the blame lie for the Party of Trump-Cruz? With the Republicans of course. The Republican Party brought this on itself. It took a strident and uncompromising tone with the President; fanned the flames of a Tea Party movement shaped by hateful, even racist, imagery and rhetoric; and ignored Americans’ evolving views on everything from LGBT rights and immigration reform to climate change.
The Republican Party marginalized itself by region and race and pushed an agenda defined by what can’t be done as opposed to what can, with anger and resentment rather than hope and possibility. This same party—the one that purged its moderate voices, that is unyielding, uncompromising, angry, and extreme—has no right to cry about the rise of these candidates; they should celebrate it. You reap what you sow.