Let play some politics! In my previous Contributors piece, I suggested that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is walloping former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) in the pre-Democratic primary to determine which of the most liberal candidates would pose the ultimate challenge to Hillary Clinton. At this point on the Democratic side, it is possible that Sanders so dominates the most liberal lane in the highway that O’Malley is ultimately forced to drop out and former Virginia Democratic Sen. Jim Webb throws up his hands and decides not to run.
{mosads}The same phenomenon could occur on the Republican side. There are three lanes in the GOP presidential sweepstakes highway. The first lane is the race for GOP front-runner. The second lane — which now includes Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — consists of candidates who lag behind the front-runners but have a shot to rise to the higher tier. I would call the third lane the “bye-bye” lane: Candidates who are going nowhere and doomed to drop out, such as Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.
In this battle of the second lane of the Republican process, my bet is that The Donald drives the nail into the political coffin of Cruz, knocking Cruz down to the third lane and at which point Cruz drops out while he has money remaining in his political bank to use for whatever purpose he chooses.
Trump and Cruz are battling for the same turf: the emotive conservative turf. The last time Cruz received major national attention was when he signed up for ObamaCare! Trump has received more visibility in the last three days than Cruz has in the last three months. Trump is great copy, a political impresario and showman with enough money to self-finance a campaign, and I suspect he is destined to dominate Cruz and push him down to the bottom tier. To get any attention compared to Trump, Cruz will have to move even further to the far right, which is no way to win a presidential campaign; to get more attention than Cruz, Trump will just have to be Trump.
At the moment, Bernie Sanders is looking overwhelmingly like the candidate for the most liberal lane on the Democratic side, while with a few Trump elbows to Cruz’s neck, the world may witness the birth of a new talk radio host if the junior senator from Texas chooses to get out of the race, rather than spending his last remaining campaign fund dollars on a race he is destined to lose.
Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Texas) and former Rep. Bill Alexander (D-Ark.), who was then chief deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics. Contact him at brentbbi@webtv.net.