2016 Feb 3^rd

Today we have additional evidence about why Senator Cruz is so heartily disliked by most who know him. Some of this emerges from his Iowa campaign shenanigans. It began with a letter to prospective voters; in red letters at the top of an official looking piece of mail was printed “Voting Violation.” That would get your attention. Here is the “explanation” the voter received:  

“You are receiving this election notice because of low expected voter turnout in your area. Your individual voting history as well as your neighbors’ are public record. Their scores are published below, and many of them will see your score as well. CAUCUS ON MONDAY TO IMPROVE YOUR SCORE and please encourage your neighbors to caucus as well. A follow-up notice may be issued following Monday’s caucuses.”

The idea was to use social pressure to get out the vote. Whether or not you voted and whether or not your neighbors voted is a matter of public record in Iowa; how you voted is not public anywhere in this country…yet. Telling people that their neighbors, Joe Smith and Mary Jones voted, and that they should vote too, does persuade people to vote; that’s been demonstrated and that’s not illegal. But Cruz pushed the limits and got this unhappy response from Paul Pate the Iowa Secretary of State:

“The Cruz campaign misrepresents the role of my office, and worse, misrepresents Iowa election law. Accusing citizens of Iowa of a “voting violation” based on Iowa Caucus participation, or lack thereof, is false representation of an official act. There is no such thing as an election violation related to frequency of voting. Any insinuation or statement to the contrary is wrong and I believe it is not in keeping in the spirit of the Iowa Caucuses.”

Cruz was not apologetic; he declared that because it was not illegal he would continue to use every means he could to win the election.

And then he topped himself; as I said yesterday his campaign declared that one of his principle competitors for the Evangelical vote, Dr. Ben Carson, had dropped out of the race. Last night I watched a brief bit of the O’Reilly performance on Fox. Bill was interviewing Dr. Carson on this very subject. In point of fact Bill was trying very hard to put words into Carson’s mouth; the words were “It’s all CNN’s fault.” Carson was having none of that nonsense. O’Reilly naturally wanted to blame the lie that Carson was dropping out on anyone except one of those fine conservative candidates who would never stoop to such dirty tricks. CNN was a convenient target but it didn’t work.

So what about the culpability of CNN? The CNN piece that O’Reilly was talking about said nothing about Carson quitting the race; it said that after Iowa he would be going to Florida for a few days. This bit of innocuous travel planning was morphed by Cruz into Carson’s withdrawal and arguably into a Cruz win.