Trump vs Cruz for the Republican Primary Nomination?

Cruz rakes it in, via the Washington Post:

But, as amazing as Bush’s haul was, it’s Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s fundraising totals that stood out to me as the most important money number from the June reports filed with the Federal Election Commission.

Cruz raised… $51 million… put him second behind Bush in total fundraising over the first six months of the year — ahead of the likes of Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Scott Walker…

Cruz has already raised more money than either Santorum or Huckabee did for their entire campaigns. Sure, you, savvy reader, will undoubtedly note: But Jeb’s fundraising is beyond anything any candidate did in either 2008 or 2012. And you’d be right. But — and this is really important — Cruz doesn’t need to match Jeb dollar for dollar. No one in the race will do that. What Cruz has to do is have enough money to fight back if/when Rubio, Walker, Jeb or all of them at once come after him. And, the early returns suggest he will be.

Now to the second point. Remember that Cruz’s support is unlike any other candidates’ support in the race — outside of, potentially, Rand Paul. The Cruz people are ardently for him. They don’t really need to be persuaded to stay with him — and it’s hard to see attacks from other candidates peeling them away. The key for Cruz if he is to be a serious contender for the nomination is to grow beyond that base of loyal backers into parts of the party that aren’t totally on board with him yet.”

Two points in return. This assumes Jeb/Walker/Rubio will go after Cruz, and Cruz will have to spend that money on defense. Presently, I think they will have their tiny little hands full with Trump, and will blow all their meager cash in a futile battle with a Titan who can claim he owns a Gucci store somewhere that is worth three times Jeb’s total haul.

While that is going on, Cruz’s base isn’t going anywhere. He will almost certainly remain the highly ideologically Conservative voter’s first choice.

As Trump crushes Bush and Rubio, he will lap up the “moderate” Republicans who usually go with people they think are not too “mean and conservative,” or who just choose the person they think is most likely to win. Those are the idiots who normally vote for Romney or McCain.

In the end, we may end up with the popular and conservative candidates being Trump and Cruz respectively. The funny thing is, even as people challenge Trump’s conservative credentials, Trump’s strategy seems to be to offer a straight up deal. He promises to champion Christians, Border security, guns, pro-life, and all the Conservative red meat, if Republicans will vote for him, and let him save the country from economic and political failure. I suspect if elected, he would honor that deal, since offering it got him elected, and breaking wouldn’t help a re-election bid, if he wants that. That’s a better deal than we got with George W. Bush, who singlehandedly destroyed the conservative movement and handed the nation to Obama.

That means for the first time I can recall, instead of the primary election coming down to the RINO and the conservative, we may have two conservative options, one of which must win, and neither of which seems to be hostile toward the other.

That will be interesting to watch.