WASHINGTON — You could see in the span of 20 minutes Wednesday afternoon why Donald Trump is soaring in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination and why Ted Cruz is struggling.
Cruz invited Trump to join him at a Capitol Hill rally against the Iran nuclear deal, an unusual joint appearance for two rivals in which Cruz gambled he could bask in Trump’s glow. But it was more like an eclipse.
Cruz, the Harvard- and Princeton-educated debater, subjected listeners to a 13-minute speech packed with elegant turns of phrase that sailed right over the heads of his listeners.
“I agree with Prime Minister Netanyahu that a nuclear Iran poses an existential threat to the nation of Israel,” the junior senator from Texas told the gathering, organized by the Tea Party Patriots. “And let me be clear: When he says ‘existential,’ he doesn’t mean a bunch of Frenchmen in black berets chain-smoking.”
There were a few isolated laughs on the vast West Lawn of the Capitol; this wasn’t a Camus crowd.
Then came the bombastic billionaire. Trump’s brief speech, if it can be called that, had no form and contained all the subtlety of a weapon of mass destruction. “We are led by very, very stupid people,” Trump proclaimed. “Very, very stupid people.”
The crowd roared.
This reaction, by a few thousand tea party loyalists braving the 90-degree heat, explains a lot about the relative position of the two men. Cruz appeals to the conservative mind, while Trump appeals to the conservative gut. And, at least at this stage in GOP primary campaign, the gut is winning.
On some level, it must kill Cruz to play understudy to the cartoonish tycoon.
But Cruz is a brilliant opportunist, and his courtship of Trump makes sense. If Trump falters in his bid for the nomination, Cruz will be well-positioned to secure Trump’s endorsement, and his supporters. (Trump, for his part, gets some conservative validation by associating with Cruz.)
And so Cruz decided to play the humble warm-up act — inviting Trump to attend the event Wednesday and preceding him onstage. When Trump and his entourage walked onto the lawn, a spontaneous cheer rose from the crowd and heads turned away from the stage. Cruz, who entered with rather less fanfare (the speaker who preceded him begged for money from Trump but referred to Cruz only as “a senator”) made sure in his remarks to “thank my friend, Donald Trump, for joining us,” before embracing Trump and sharing some private words on the stage.
Trump wasted no time letting everybody know he came at Cruz’s request. “I was called by Sen. Cruz a few days ago and he said, ‘You think we can get a really good crowd?’”
The crowd wasn’t extraordinary (the few thousand weren’t nearly enough to fill the lawn), but the characters onstage were: Sarah Palin (who had words about a unicorn and a kaleidoscope), “Duck Dynasty’s” Phil Robertson (who spoke of Jesus coming to Earth as “Jewish flesh”) and radio personalities Glenn Beck and Mark Levin. Among the signs in the crowd was one saying “Obama/Hillary/Kerry, fulfilling Hitler’s Dreams” and another proclaiming “Our enemy in Iran is making a deal with our enemy in the White House.”
Both candidates delighted the crowd with inflammatory denunciations of the Iran nuclear deal, but Trump’s raw anger bested Cruz’s cerebral argument. Cruz ranged from Khamenei to Soleimani and from Hamas to the Huttis. He cited four Americans detained in Iran by name. He drew silence lamenting the absence of “Scoop Jackson Democrats.” He taught the crowd about the dangers of an electromagnetic pulse. And he outlined a legislative strategy — holding up the deal over a technical dispute involving “side agreements” — that generated only mild reaction.
Trump mostly offered invective: The deal was “incompetently negotiated,” our enemies “rip us off, they take our money, they make us look like fools,” and the United States “can’t beat ISIS. Give me a break! We can’t beat anybody.” And bravado: Trump said he could “guarantee” that the four Americans would be returned if he’s elected, “before I ever take office,” and he promised “we will have so much winning if I get elected that you may get bored with winning.”
Trump, besieged by supporters and photographers, finally extricated himself from the crush and made his way up the Capitol steps.
At the top, he paused to look back at the crowd from about the place he would stand if taking the presidential oath of office.
Dana Milbank is a columnist for The Washington Post whose work appears regularly Mondays and Fridays. Email him at danamilbank@washpost.com.
