LAS VEGAS — Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are locked in a furious fight to be the last man standing against Donald Trump in the rapidly narrowing race for the Republican presidential nomination.
As the contest moves beyond the first three heavily courted states and into a sprawling national campaign, the two freshman Cuban-American senators know that in order to earn a final showdown with Trump, they must first dispose of each other.
Separated by just over 1,000 votes in South Carolina, Cruz and Rubio are again competing for a second-place finish in Nevada, which caucuses Tuesday and could provide another razor-thin result. Polls here show Trump wielding a double-digit advantage, but Cruz and Rubio are separated by only a few percentage points to be the runner-up.
Rubio’s campaign has increasingly charged Cruz’s team with running a deceptive, dirty campaign, and that lingering accusation came to a head Monday when Cruz fired his top communications aide for publishing a falsified video that depicted Rubio as saying there weren’t “many answers” in the Bible.
Rick Tyler, Cruz’s communications director, apologized on Facebook for posting an inaccurate story that misquoted Rubio’s remark to a Cruz staffer in a hotel lobby. Subtitles in the video show Rubio saying, “Got a good book there, not many answers in it.” Rubio’s team released the unaltered version showing Rubio saying, “Got a good book there, all the answers are in there.”
The incident was an unseemly distraction for Cruz on the eve of caucusing here, as he has struggled to fend off the impression that his team is employing underhanded tactics to take down its opponents.
Inside a YMCA gymnasium in northern Las Vegas on Monday afternoon, Cruz never mentioned Rubio by name, but noted that he’s the only remaining candidate in the race “who led the fight against amnesty,” a glancing reference to his rival’s role in bipartisan immigration legislation.
Before Cruz took the stage, conservative talk show host Glenn Beck labeled Rubio as “the status quo.”
Instead, Cruz singled out Trump, noting his disagreement with the billionaire New Yorker on land ownership. Eighty-five percent of Nevada is owned by the federal government.
“Mr. Trump has publicly said he thinks the federal government should continue to control that land, to own that land. I trust the people of Nevada more than the bureaucrats in Washington,” he said.
But the closeness of the contest certainly weighed on Cruz as he implored his supporters to motivate others to caucus for him. In 2012, just 32,894 Republicans participated in the Nevada caucuses, which were carried easily by Mitt Romney.
“Historically, not that many people come out. That means every one of you has a voice, where you are speaking for hundreds, if not thousands, if not millions of courageous conservatives across this country when you come out tomorrow night,” he said. “You’ve got 30 hours to find nine other people to come out. If you have done that, you will have voted 10 times.”
Rubio’s team spent Monday unfurling a flurry of elected Republicans who endorsed the Florida senator, including Sens. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Jeff Flake of Arizona and Orrin Hatch of Utah, as well as former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson.
The rolling day-long unveilings were meant to deliver the emphatic message that, with Jeb Bush’s departure from the race Saturday, Rubio had become the overwhelming choice of mainstream Republicans.
“Marco Rubio is the only candidate in the race capable of uniting our party and reaching independent voters we need to win the White House,” said Hatch in a statement released by the campaign.
But in a nod to the importance of the cluster of delegate-rich Southern and Midwestern states preparing to vote in March, Rubio won’t even be in Nevada on Tuesday night. Instead, as the results begin to roll in he’ll be campaigning in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which votes March 8.
The Cruz campaign put out a memo late Monday declaring, “Marco Rubio cannot beat Donald Trump,” citing that the Florida senator is unlikely to win a single state until his home state votes on March 15.
“He’ll hope for resurrection in Florida,” Cruz chief strategist Jason Johnson wrote. “That’s an even less plausible path to victory than Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s ‘wait for Florida’ strategy in 2008.”
Cruz’s chances are also staked in next month’s balloting, particularly in the March 1 so-called “SEC” primary, when 11 states, mostly in the South, will hold contests.
Some in the party see Cruz’s third place finish — far behind Trump — in evangelical heavy South Carolina, as an indication that his perceived strength is the Southern states has been exaggerated.
“The good news? Ted Cruz is not going to be the GOP nominee,” GOP consultant Alex Castellanos wrote on his website Monday. “The candidate riding the white horse of moral purity has splattered it with mud. Cruz’s roughshod campaign against Ben Carson has gained him a reputation as a cheater. Donald Trump’s brutal pounding has taken its toll. Watching Cruz’s election night speech in South Carolina, even he was having trouble generating enthusiasm about his prospects.”
But it’s not clear that either senator’s supporters would break against Trump if their favorite candidate fizzled.
Don and Lyndi Saunders, who attended Cruz’s Las Vegas rally Monday, settled on Cruz over Trump because they trust the Texan’s track record of taking conservative stands and bucking the establishment. But when pressed for their second choice, both chose Trump.
“I’m not big on Rubio because of the immigration and the Gang of Eight,” Lyndi says.
“He’s too easily swayed,” adds Don, Lyndi’s husband.
The whirlwind of Washington endorsements for Rubio were, in this case, a poison pill.
“Rubio’s a little more establishment,” says Don, shaking his head with disappointment.
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Cruz, Rubio In Fight for Survival Against Trump originally appeared on usnews.com
