Broader Point on Cruz and midterm: I take nothing for granted about November. Worry abt various shortfalls. But there’s now a reasonable amount of public opinion/election data making a real collapse of GOP support and a rout possible. Especially polling over the last few weeks.
2/ That cld of course change or you cld end up with just a bad cycle for GOP which leads to House going Dem but only narrowly. But big wave elections have certain reliable characteristics. One is that a number of seemingly safe or reasonably safe candidates get beaten.
3/ Often those are ones that didn’t have deep support beyond the partisan complexion of the electorate. Lots of people don’t like Ted Cruz. Lots of them are Republicans. What makes him a solid favorite is that he’s a Republican in a Republican state.
4/ A big wave could definitely overtake Cruz because big waves, especially in midterms, significantly change the shape of the electorate through differential enthusiasm. So yeah, Ted can lose. My best guess is that the debate gambit is aimed at locking down that kind of ...
5/ deep support by polarizing the race around a series of stark ideological issues - abortion, immigration, religious liberty, whatever. He can’t do that through attachment to himself as a person because Teds a raging cock and everybody hates him. So this may be th pope reason.
5b/ autocorrect “may be the reason.”
