Can Cruz Conquer Trump?

Matt Purple

Politics, United States

The Texas senator aims to be both a compromise candidate and a conservative.

In an essay at Politico, Jack Shafer calls our attention to the rowdiest brokered convention in American history. When the Democrats arrived at Madison Square Garden in 1924, they were riven between North and South, pro- and anti-Ku Klux Klan, Wets and Drys on Prohibition, all of which manifested itself into two frontrunners, William McAdoo and Al Smith, who were wholly unacceptable to the other’s supporters. It took 103 ballots to settle on a compromise candidate, lawyer John W. Davis, who was promptly steamrolled in the general election by President Calvin Coolidge.

Today, there’s another attorney hoping to preside over a shotgun marriage in a wild election year: Senator Ted Cruz. He’s not aiming for a brokered convention, of course, and he’d presumably like to avoid getting crushed by Hillary Clinton. But Cruz is seeking to present himself as an acceptable compromise to two seemingly incompatible factions—the populists and establishment of the GOP, who support Donald Trump and Marco Rubio respectively—while bringing along his own base of Tea Party conservatives.