March 9, 2016

Ted Cruz Hits Miami with One Cruel Goal

It’s not to win.

<a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/cornstalker/24109780571/in/photolist-CJuVMV-CGfEao-CpFiwQ-CRNid8-CGfKxh-CpFeKb-hfno5o-CJuEdZ-BUpqoz-CPuhYQ-CPuh55-BUpA7T-CRN2XD-CJuAiz-CGfVJu-CPuWf3-CGg3yG-CRNJx6-CpG33S-CGg1Ch-CPuKSE-qacmJh-CPuHzo-CPuvu1-CGfF6w-hfnoMA-nG7paW-CRN9nc-myp9DR-rwcMTs-hfnpsJ-gb3cqB-ryoZz5-qJCWSH-rD8QCw-qBswDA-poxWK6-BUqdjT-CGgkFh-CPuUWb-CRNUW2-BUinTs-dRij4c-CZgGA4-pSnsXt-qBFXhM-qwjNHq-rf8jWM-zW1Nga-zV64AF">Matt Johnson</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Ted Cruz isn’t waiting until next week for the demise of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. The morning after finishing second to GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump in three states (Mississippi, Michigan, and Hawaii) and winning a fourth (Idaho), Cruz kicked off the next stretch of the campaign with a rally in Rubio’s backyard—Miami—and he did not come in peace.

As many political observers have noted, the Texas senator’s pivot toward the Sunshine State is apparently motivated by one impulse: to finish off Rubio. Florida is a winner-take-all state, and Cruz is not seen as a strong bet to beat Trump there. Under conventional calculations, there would not be much reason for Cruz to spend time and resources in the state. But Cruz apparently has another goal in mind: to take away votes from Rubio and crush the Florida senator’s last-ditch hopes to win his home state and remain a player in the presidential race.

At the rally, Cruz let his opening act handle most of the knife-work. “Floridians are abandoning Marco Rubio,” declared Miami-Dade GOP vice chair Manny Roman, a Cuban American who was censured by his local party committee last year for breaking ranks and endorsing Cruz. He rattled off the results of Tuesday’s elections and said, “I’m calling on Marco Rubio, especially after last night, to suspend his campaign and endorse Ted Cruz.” The crowd roared with delight.

Then it was Cruz’s turn. He boasted of his victory in Idaho, and he told the gathering—which included Rubio’s base voters (conservative, Hispanic Miami-Dade County Republicans)—that the man whom they had elected senator six years ago was toast. “There are only two candidates this race that have any plausible path of getting to 1,237 [delegates],” Cruz proclaimed. It was a “clear two-man race,” he noted, making his now-familiar case that it’s time for the party to unify between the one candidate left who can beat Trump. That is, himself: “It’s easy to talk about the party coming together, but talk without action, words without action, are empty.”

Cruz announced the presence of a special guest: a former Republican presidential candidate with business experience and a long record of talking about foreign policy. No, it wasn’t Mitt Romney, but onetime Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. Before dropping out of the race, Fiorina once observed that Cruz was someone who “says whatever he needs to say to get elected.” But that has since been forgotten. She was greeted warmly by the Cruz supporters. Talking about last week’s Virginia primary, Fiorina said, “I saw my own name on the ballot—it was kind of a thrill. But then I checked the box for Ted Cruz.”

Miami-Dade Republicans were likely not waiting for Fiorina to endorse a candidate before deciding how to vote. But with Rubio desperately seeking a miracle win in Florida, Cruz, who lags in third in the polls here, seems determined to make certain Rubio loses—even if that means Trump bags all the state’s delegates.

To use a historical analogy, Rubio is Mufasa, desperately clinging to the edge of a cliff to escape the unexpected stampede of wildebeests. And Cruz flew all the way down to Florida…to push him off.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate