Choose Wisely Where to Campaign, Sen. Cruz March 10, 2016

There is an old saying of “choose your hill to die on”.  The meaning behind the saying is that nobody has unlimited resources/energy.  Therefore, one must pick one’s proverbial battles judiciously if that person has any hope of succeeding in his/her endeavor.

The overall message of the Tuesday, March 8 Republican primaries is that they are anything but settled.  As Michael Barone points out, a Donald Trump delegate majority is anything but inevitable.  The key to ensuring the prevention of Trump ruining the party is, at this immediate point, to vote tactically, not strategically.  Ohio and Florida are both winner-take-all primaries.  With four candidates remaining in the race, that means a win on plurality instead of majority is a foregone conclusion.

Both the aforementioned states off lots of delegates.  The ideal tactical votes right now is for Ohio GOP voters to give the delegates to Gov. John Kasich.  Likewise, the ideal tactical vote in Florida is for Senator Marco Rubio to win.  Both of these candidates are the most viable alternatives to Trump in these respective states.

Enter Cruz, who seems to have no concept of these important tactics.  He has been going after Rubio in Florida and going after Kasich in Ohio.  This is madness.  Undermining both of these candidates in these respective states can only help Trump.  Extra votes to Cruz in both of these states are unlikely to be detracted from The Donald, but are very likely to hurt the respective viable alternatives to Trump.

Cruz has thus become a very frustrating candidate to follow.  His energy is admirable, but he has proven to not have an eye for these important tactics, and that could be potentially hazardous to us all.  For if Trump wins the GOP nomination, the party faithful are essentially doomed to a Bataan Death March of a political campaign, slowly and agonizingly dragging into early November.  Moreover, those of us who care about the Constitutional limits on governmental scope and power shall be particularly scorned, as neither nominee of the two major parties will, in this scenario, have any respect for America’s founding document.

The irony in all of this is that Cruz bills himself as a Constitutional standard-bearer.  Yet his lack of tactical sense in this crucial primary could very well undermine his most cherished selling point by not understanding which states he can credibly win and which states he ought to let other anti-Trump nominees win to make sure The Donald does not gain further strength.

Be wise, Senator Cruz:  leave Florida to Rubio and Ohio to Kasich, and by all means, concentrate your energy in the other states still in play.  Otherwise, you might ruin things for all us, in some way for a generation to come.  Should the unthinkable come to pass, how then will you be of any benefit to those of us who share your ideology?  Sharing our values is all well and good, but if you lack the discipline to effectively advance these values, you become a liability and thus an unaware tool for those who are hostile to that which the Constitution stands.