Why Did Carly Fiorina Endorse Ted Cruz?
Her backing for the Texas senator looks like another sign of Republicans coalescing around the lesser of two candidates they don’t love.
Carlo Allegri / Reuters David A. Graham | 12:18 PM ET | 2016 Election
It’s not just the Republican establishment that’s starting to coalesce around Ted Cruz. It’s the putative outsiders, too.
On Wednesday, former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina endorsed Cruz. “Ted Cruz is a fearless fighter for our constitutional rights,” she said in a statement. “Unlike the status-quo political class in D.C., Ted Cruz didn’t cower when he got to Washington—he stood unequivocally for the American people.”
Fiorina allying with Cruz makes some superficial sense—one outsider endorsing another. But it probably makes the most sense to see Fiorina’s endorsement of Cruz as a statement of disgust with Donald Trump, and a realization that the only candidate with any serious chance of stopping him is the Texas senator.
Throughout her presidential run, Fiorina positioned herself as an outsider—a corporate executive rather than a party creature. That wasn’t exactly true. She had run for Senate as a Republican in 2010 and been an adviser to John McCain in 2008, and as McKay Coppins notes, party insiders encouraged her to run, thinking that it would benefit the party to have a woman and business leader in the race.
Running as an outsider was shrewd in a year when Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz were all doing the same, but it wasn’t enough, and she dropped out in early February.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/carly-fiorina-ted-cruz/472968/
Her backing for the Texas senator looks like another sign of Republicans coalescing around the lesser of two candidates they don’t love.
Carlo Allegri / Reuters David A. Graham | 12:18 PM ET | 2016 Election
It’s not just the Republican establishment that’s starting to coalesce around Ted Cruz. It’s the putative outsiders, too.
On Wednesday, former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina endorsed Cruz. “Ted Cruz is a fearless fighter for our constitutional rights,” she said in a statement. “Unlike the status-quo political class in D.C., Ted Cruz didn’t cower when he got to Washington—he stood unequivocally for the American people.”
Fiorina allying with Cruz makes some superficial sense—one outsider endorsing another. But it probably makes the most sense to see Fiorina’s endorsement of Cruz as a statement of disgust with Donald Trump, and a realization that the only candidate with any serious chance of stopping him is the Texas senator.
Throughout her presidential run, Fiorina positioned herself as an outsider—a corporate executive rather than a party creature. That wasn’t exactly true. She had run for Senate as a Republican in 2010 and been an adviser to John McCain in 2008, and as McKay Coppins notes, party insiders encouraged her to run, thinking that it would benefit the party to have a woman and business leader in the race.
Running as an outsider was shrewd in a year when Donald Trump, Ben Carson, and Ted Cruz were all doing the same, but it wasn’t enough, and she dropped out in early February.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/03/carly-fiorina-ted-cruz/472968/
