Discussion: Cruz's 2016 Strategy Explicitly Focuses On White Voters

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Discussion for article #245631

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can I make my ethnicity Californio if it means I won’t have that dead eye ‘focus’ from the Trickie Dick clone?

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Always pleasant to watch Cruz jump off a cliff with both feet.

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a strategy that defies

B-b-but does that mean Huckabee’s Huckachachos are disbanding?

drug mules

For white people…
http://static.buyma.com/imgdata/item/160201/0019607294/210_1.jpg

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At the same time, Cruz’s team is banking on a sharp decline in black and Hispanic support for the 2016 Democratic nominee,

Plus, of course, serious voter suppression.

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We saw conservatives and evangelicals and libertarians and Reagan Democrats all coming together…

Probably not a bad approach to the G.O.P. primaries, but in the general election, I suspect those “Reagan Democrats” are going to prove to be largely imaginary. I can’t imagine Cruz having much appeal for them. And with only the wingnuts and Jeebus-praisers, you don’t carry the Nation.

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The problem with this strategy is if he wins on the backs of white voters, then he’s going to govern as if only white voters exist.

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I can’t believe this whites-only strategy is actually being discussed openly by the aides of a major party candidate for President.

Have we teleported back in time to 1960’s Rhodesia?

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Republicans keep telling themselves there are hundreds of thousands of fire spitting conservatives out there just dying to vote THIS TIME after not bothering last time. There may be some but there have never been enough conservonuts to win a national election. Cruz is one in a long line of losers who took this view. Please proceed, Senator.

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Please,may all the above views that Cruz’s White strategy will not work be proved right. Just reading that article made my stomach hurt.

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Why not? What voters of color are going to stand him?

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The Texas senator’s general election strategy depends almost wholly upon maximizing turnout among millions of conservative white voters — mostly evangelical Christians and the white working class.

SQUIRREL!!!

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Details at 11:00

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I don’t know. I’m very, very white, and Cruz appeals to me less than a bag of horse manure.

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Go for it, you cynical pandering racist bastards. All you’ll do is motivate blacks, women, Latinos/as, the young, the LGBT, and the Angry White Progressives to come out and beat you fucks like a gong.

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Oh hey! Look everyone the unskewed polling is back. Welcome back unskewed polling!

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Ya think?

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“Cruz’s team won’t ignore minority voters altogether. The campaign has an African-American outreach director,”

Herman Cain.

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This makes perfect sense in terms of getting the GOP nomination.

It’s not simply that non-white Republicans don’t represent enough votes to bother with. It’s also that perceptions about race (especially the diminution of white privilege [1]) are the driving concern among Republican voters.

For the last two presidential elections, the Republican nominees have been, overwhelmingly, the beneficiaries of racism. If it weren’t for support from people who voted for them primarily because they were the white guys, McCain and Romney would have received much fewer votes than they did.
This pattern hasn’t been acknowledged much by either side [2], but it’s shaped the Republican Party over the last 8 years. It’s why there’s a disconnect between the “old” GOP leadership and their Tea Party rank-and-file.

Note, however, that McCain and Romney both lost their elections by wide margins. President Obama won because most Americans are not driven by racism to the same degree as most Republicans are.

[1] Including loss of the surprisingly precious wherewithal to remain oblivious to how racism affects non-white Americans–or as Republicans put it: “Obama is sooooo divisive!”
[2] For a lot of reasons, one of which being that racism as a motivator is so pervasive among the Rs that it’s practically background noise. Trying to talk to the Right about racism is like trying to explain water to a fish.

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Seriously, is anyone surprised?

Secondly, there never was such a thing as a Reagan Democrat. There were only people looking for an excuse to vote with a dog-whistling Republican who (I speculate) hadn’t voted, or voted for a Democrat since 1972, if even then.

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[“I’m an outlier,” said longtime Cruz aide Jason Johnson, the chief architect of the Cruz playbook.]

That’s an understatement.

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