The Candidate Waiting to Strike

While frontrunner Donald Trump has clashed repeatedly, and often pointedly, with much of the GOP field — most notably Sen. Rand Paul, former Gov. Jeb Bush and former Gov. Rick Perry — he has enjoyed cover, and even praise, from a contender many see as most hard hit by the business mogul’s success.

“I like Donald Trump,” Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said in a June 30 interview on Fox News. “I think he’s terrific, I think he’s brash, I think he speaks the truth.”

Eclipsed by Trump for the time being, Cruz nevertheless is betting that playing nice in Trump’s shadow is going to pay off. Displaying amity and even affection for the GOP frontrunner is earning Cruz major points as the conservative senator prepares a novel long-term strategy to win the nomination.

By remaining a friend to Trump — and indeed, to others in the GOP race — Cruz is not offending any one candidate’s constituencies while preparing to capitalize on the inevitable collapses and shifts to come.

“It seems the favorite sport of the Washington media is to encourage some Republicans to attack other Republicans,” Cruz said. “I ain’t going to do it. I’m not interested in Republican-on-Republican violence.”

Cruz has defended the real estate mogul and refused to get down in the mud with the rest of the GOP field on several occasions.

“It seems the favorite sport of the Washington media is to encourage some Republicans to attack other Republicans,” Cruz said in an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd in early July. “I ain’t going to do it. I’m not interested in Republican-on-Republican violence.”

Cruz is taking the alliance even farther. Trump will join Cruz for a joint rally on Sept. 9 to oppose President Obama’s nuclear deal with the Iranian regime.

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According to an Aug. 3 Monmouth University national survey of GOP primary voters, Cruz earns much higher net favorability points than either Trump or Bush, the current frontrunners. Cruz clocks in at a whopping 38 percent net favorability, while Bush lags at 22 percent; Trump comes in even lower at 17 percent. With little fanfare, Cruz has amassed the second largest war chest of any contender in the GOP race. As of the latest public campaign finance filings, Cruz had stockpiled over $52 million for his bid. That’s over $10 million more than Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, and nearly double the amount pulled together by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

With some of the highest net favorability of any candidate in the field and more cash available to deploy than any candidate not named Bush, Sen. Cruz needs only the right time to strike. And a block of southern states have prepped the stage for his assault.

Led by Georgia’s Secretary of State Brian Kemp, seven Dixie states appear to have successfully maneuvered to hold primaries much earlier than in the past, and all together — on March 1.

Cruz has been furiously laying track to capture the support and enthusiasm of these evangelical voters, in order to capitalize when he does spring his campaign’s offensive.

The evangelical-heavy and ardently conservative states of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia will control as many as 471 delegates, nearly 20 percent of the RNC total, in what has been unofficially dubbed the “SEC Primary.”

Alabama, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Tennessee constitute four of the top five states with the highest percentage populations of evangelicals, according to a demographic study from the Pew Research Center.

Cruz has been furiously laying track to capture the support and enthusiasm of these evangelical voters, in order to capitalize when he does spring his campaign’s offensive.

Related: Ted Cruz Rouses Evangelicals

“Were it not for the transformative love of Jesus Christ, I would have been raised by a single mom, without my father in the house. God’s blessing has been on America,” Cruz said in his first campaign ad, following an announcement speech filled with religious messaging at Liberty University in Virginia.

“You wonder why we have a federal government that comes after our free-speech rights, that comes after our religious liberty, that comes after life, that comes after marriage, that comes after our values?” Cruz railed at an Aug. 21 campaign rally in Iowa. “It is because 54 million evangelical Christians stayed home (in 2012). Well, I’m here to tell you, we will stay home no longer.”

While Cruz has built an affinity with evangelical voters and amassed high favorability ratings, he has largely remained out of the frontrunner conversation.

But this would not be the first time Cruz has been underestimated by the establishment and the punditry. The Cruz 2012 GOP primary upset victory for the U.S. Senate over the sitting Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst was described by the Washington Post at the time as “the biggest upset of 2012 … a true grassroots victory against very long odds.”

Cruz may currently sit somewhere in the middle of the pack — at six percent in the Monmouth poll — but the Texas firebrand has the armaments and strategy needed to possibly win the GOP mantle in 2016.