Ted Cruz’s Howitzer

Ted Cruz’s Howitzer

By Andy Kroll at the New Republic

https://newrepublic.com/article/127717/ted-cruzs-howitzer

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Smash cut to the start of 2016. Cruz is soaring. He leads the Republican presidential field in Iowa heading into the opening contest, and appears poised for a dogfight to the end with Donald Trump for the nomination. He’s risen by running a vintage Jeff Roe campaign: obsessively disciplined, well-funded, laser-focused on the base. Cruz has played up his ideological purity and sought to coalesce Republican base voters behind his candidacy. “Jeff has a simple philosophy,” said Brad Lager, a former Missouri lawmaker and good friend of Roe’s. “He believes that in order for someone to become president in this country, it’s not about motivating the middle. It’s about motivating your base.”

The Cruz campaign’s success so far confirms what many people who’ve watched Roe’s ascent have been saying for years. “I’ve believed for some time that Jeff Roe is a Karl Rove-level political talent,” said Gregg Keller, a former executive director of the American Conservative Union. “I’ve done four or five presidential campaigns. I’ve run campaigns in virtually every state in the country. And I have not come across an operative of my generation who I believe is more talented than Jeff Roe.”

The canny strategy and smooth, on-message operation of the Cruz campaign have gotten plenty of attention. But the man behind it has not. He prefers it that way. Out on the trail, Roe generally sticks close to the Cruz campaign bus rather than follow his candidate into small-town coffee shops and local libraries. When he does venture off the bus, though, you can’t miss him. The guy’s big, all gut and jowls, resembling a political cartoonist’s idea of a fat cat, but dressed in jeans and an oversized “Cruz 2016” fleece. He has a thin goatee, a gelled flick of hair, and thick hands often wrapped around an empty soda bottle for catching the spit juice from his beloved Red Man Golden Blend chewing tobacco.

What we’ve yet to see in this campaign is Roe’s other trademark attribute: the brass-knuckled approach to winning that’s made him many enemies. From his earliest days running state and local campaigns, he’s taken a scorched-earth approach to politics. Roe and his tactics have been blamed for damaging opponents’ lives and reputations, and even for contributing to a gubernatorial candidate’s suicide. (Roe doesn’t exactly hide from this reputation: His web site features headlines describing him as “ruthless” and a “leading practitioner of hard-ball politics.”)



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