Cruz finds warm reception in Iowa

Margaret Carlson: 

Sen. Ted Cruz was in Iowa last weekend to hunt pheasant, and activists. He found both.

He didn’t fire into anyone’s face (Dick Cheney), wear freshly pressed camouflage (John Kerry) or boast of shooting varmints (Mitt Romney). He had his own shotgun flown in by United Airlines as checked baggage and tramped through brush as if that’s how he spent all his weekends. Cruz even managed a little “Duck Dynasty” humor (“Someone make a pillow,” he shouted as a bird tumbled out the sky, or “just turn them straight into McNuggets”).

Iowa is a shallow place, at least politically. Candidates put themselves through various rites of passage to prove they’re sufficiently conservative for the state’s Republican base. The one who fakes it best wins. The straw poll and caucuses sometimes make a presidential candidate. More often they are a killing field for ambition. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, with her air-conditioned tent, country music star Randy Travis and hot-fudge sundaes won the straw poll in 2011. That dried up money and enthusiasm for former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who had a better chance of becoming president than the eventual nominee. Thanks, Hawkeyes.

If Iowa could put together a candidate from spare parts, the result would be Cruz, a rabid conservative who loathes elites and cares so little about the Republican establishment that he dragged the party down to new lows with the government shutdown.
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Carlson is reflecting conventional wisdom about the GOP, but I think she is wrong.  The disappointment with the GOP is with those who failed to back Cruz and the ones who wanted to stop Obamacare.  Those who thought Cruz was wrong really offered no viable alternative other than a passive aggressive approach that was doomed to failure.

While I liked Pawlenty, he did not run a very effective campaign and that is the reason he lost.  Bachmann ran strong early but was not able to sustain her momentum.

The reception Cruz has received from the GOP base since the fight against Obamacare suggest that he is more popular than the GOP establishment at this point.  Those in the establishment who want to win in 2014 need to reconsider their anger directed toward Cruz and the others who fought to defund Obamacare.  Those who fought it are looking prescient at this point.