A Hail Carly Pass

Sen. Ted Cruz announced his selection of Carly Fiorina as his prospective running mate and VP choice, an act of desperation that signifies the Cruz campaign my be on its last legs.

Cruz’s announcement on Thursday came just days before the crucial Indiana primary next Tuesday, which could be his last chance to stop Trump. It also comes after the Texas senator’s dismal showing in the New York and “Acela” primaries. He came in last place in five of the past six primaries, and failed to break 15 percent of the vote in half of them.

“If I am nominated to be president of the United States … I will run on a ticket with my vice presidential nominee, Carly Fiorina,” Cruz said at a rally Wednesday, before praising her as “brilliant and capable.” But despite Cruz’s words of praise, his announcement is more of a last-minute Hail Mary to secure the Indiana victory he desperately needs in order to be seen as a viable alternative to Trump heading into the convention in July.

The last presidential candidate to choose his running mate before the national convention — and before his actual selection — was Ronald Reagan in 1976. President Ford had dominated the recent primaries and Reagan was by that time facing certain defeat.

In a desperate attempt to kickstart his floundering campaign, Reagan announced the selection of moderate Sen. Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania. Cruz has likened himself to Reagan before, and now it seems he’s taking a page from the Gipper’s playbook. Unfortunately, it’s not a particularly good one.

[lz_table title=”Cruz’s Awful April” source=”Associated Press”]
|New York,14.5%
|Connecticut,11.7%
|Delaware,15.9%
|Maryland,18.9%
|Pennsylvania,21.6%
|Rhode Island,10.4%
[/lz_table]

Comparisons to McCain/Palin in 2008 are inevitable. “#McCain retread,” tweeted Trump confidante Roger Stone. Faced with the prospect of running against the first black man in American history to be nominated by a major party, the McCain campaign chose Sarah Palin in a transparent act of tokenism which, also thanks to Palin’s conservative credentials, also fired up the GOP base.

Similar thinking may have gone into Cruz’s Carly decision. Assuming the eventual Democratic nominee is Hillary Clinton — and that Cruz somehow manages to get the GOP nomination — a female running mate could be of benefit to Cruz. Likewise, echoing Reagan’s reasoning, Fiorina’s relative political moderation could reassure other GOP moderates uneasy over Cruz’s doctrinaire conservatism.

Many, however, are skeptical that picking Fiorina will do Cruz any good at all. “‘I was going to support Trump but then Cruz picked Carly Fiorina as his VP’ — something that no one has ever thought or said,” tweeted Judd Legum, an editor at the liberal website ThinkProgress.

Trump, in apparent anticipation of Cruz’s announcement, voiced his own doubts about the helpfulness of picking Carly on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Wednesday.

“We had so many candidates ahead of us on that stage but [Carly] had the one good debate. She went up, then she dropped like a rock and never resonated with the people. So, I mean, Carly is not going to do the trick,” Trump said.