Sen. Lindsey O. Graham couldn’t remember the last time he spoke to Ted Cruz. “It’s been a while,” Graham (R-S.C.) said last week.
Same for Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a first-term senator facing a difficult reelection in the fall. And Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), whose last talk with the fiery GOP presidential candidate from Texas came a “few months ago.”
“We just chatted in general,” Hatch, the Republican elder statesman on Capitol Hill, recalled last week. Cruz has not won the endorsement of a single U.S. senator, something he has worn as a badge of honor as he rails against the “Washington cartel” of bipartisan disappointment.
Now, coming off several critical victories over Donald Trump, Cruz is dropping hints that he may be seeking support from the very colleagues he has repeatedly infuriated during his first three years in the Senate. By late last week, Cruz had spoken to Graham about the presidential race, following a suggestion by the senator from South Carolina that conservatives may have to rally around Cruz to stop Trump from storming to the GOP nomination.
The recent wins have established Cruz as the clear second choice to Trump, eclipsing the establishment favorite, Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), and setting up the possibility of a long battle throughout the spring for the ideological soul of the Republican Party.
To defeat Trump, however, Cruz must decide whether his best path is sticking to his current stand against everything and anyone in Washington, or if success will require some rapprochement with the Republican establishment, both inside and outside Washington. He may need their votes as well as their money.
But who could even negotiate such a peace?
For now, Graham is the only one talking about it openly, something that seemed implausible just six weeks ago. That’s when Graham, shortly after ending his own presidential bid, likened Trump or Cruz as the nominee to certain death for Republicans. “Like being shot or poisoned,” he said at a Capitol news conference.
Cruz earned the enmity of his Republican colleagues within weeks of joining the Senate in early 2013. He and other junior senators earned the nickname “wacko birds” from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) when they filibustered the nomination of John Brennan as CIA director over the agency’s use of drones. Some Republicans dubbed Cruz’s plan to shut down the government in an effort to end funding for the Affordable Care Act the “dumbest idea” ever, and another called Cruz a “bully.”
He seemingly burned his last bridge to fellow Republicans last June, as his campaign struggled for early attention, when he delivered a series of floor speeches accusing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) of lying to GOP senators about his handling of trade legislation.
That tune changed, however slightly, after Rubio’s disappointing showing in the Super Tuesday states left Cruz clearly in second place, with the best chance of overtaking the bombastic Trump.
In some circles, Republicans are choosing the arsenic over the firing squad.
“I don’t think Trump is a Republican. I don’t think he’s a reliable conservative. Ted Cruz and I have a lot of differences, but I do believe he’s a conservative, I do believe he’s a Republican,” Graham told reporters last week. “Marco would be my preferred choice. I think he’s far more electable, but, you know, we’re going to play the hand we’re dealt here.”
No endorsement has been forthcoming, and Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Graham expanded on the theme to say there is “some hope with Ted, no hope with the Donald” with regard to Republicans winning the White House.
That has been an open question among Republicans for months. Some have suggested that Trump’s outreach to white working-class voters has expanded the GOP electorate, making him more viable in a general election and helping down-ballot Republicans among voters not otherwise inclined to support them.
Others view Trump’s racially tinged remarks as brutal fodder for Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee. They view Cruz — Princeton undergraduate, Harvard Law, argued before the Supreme Court — as someone less prone to make mistakes.
One Republican consulting firm, with no connection to any candidate, recently tested several remaining hopefuls for the nomination for its private-sector clients and provided the results to The Washington Post.
In head-to-head matchups against Clinton, Rubio fared the best, leading her 45 percent to 44 percent; Cruz trailed Clinton narrowly, 45 percent to 42 percent.
Trump fared the worst, trailing 46 percent to 36 percent. The firm also found Trump’s overall standing with the electorate to be toxic: 28 percent of voters viewed him favorably, 65 percent unfavorable.
Some colleagues think such polls, along with six victories in early primaries, demonstrate that Cruz should stick with an approach that has taken him from obscurity to national fame in four years.
“He’s come a long way the way he is, and I don’t think changing his personality is a requisite. I think he’s got a tough, strong personality. A lot of people think that would be good for the presidency,” Hatch, a Rubio supporter, said of Cruz.
Johnson, who is staying neutral, pointed out that voters have discounted most of Rubio’s endorsements from prominent Republicans. “Are you kind of noticing that comments by senators and congressmen and governors and endorsements aren’t really having an effect? I mean, who am I? So the voters are going to decide, and in the end, we will accept their verdict,” he said.
But others think Cruz cannot overcome Trump on his own. After Tuesday’s races, which included Idaho as fertile ground for the senator from Texas, the races shift to mostly large Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic states that aren’t naturally suited for the evangelical Christian’s archconservatism.
Workers in those states have been hit hard by globalization, making them targets for Trump’s nativist populism.
Cruz has called on others to drop out so he can go one on one against Trump. “If you want to beat Donald Trump, we have to stand united as one,” he told supporters after his win in Kansas on Saturday.
Graham says that, once Rubio and Ohio Gov. John Kasich get to contest their home states in next Tuesday’s set of primaries, a grand negotiation must take place to consolidate forces against Trump. Years ago, party elders such as McConnell or Hatch might have brokered that peace.
These days, no one is quite sure it can be done.
“Cruz and Rubio eventually need to combine forces,” Graham said. “I don’t know how they do it, but it would be good for the party if they could.”
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