Maybe Erick Erickson thinks he’s lost control of the troops he helped marshal in the “Defund Obamacare” campaign. But the Grand Marshal, Ted Cruz, is doing quite well, at least among Republicans.
A new national survey from PPP asks respondents whether they’d prefer to have John Boehner or Ted Cruz as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Among self-identified GOPers, Cruz edges out the Orange Man by a 40-37 margin. Since a decent number of Tea Folk prefer to self-identify as indies, perhaps the better measurement of the GOP rank-and-file is 2012 Romney voters. They prefer Speaker Cruz to Speaker Boehner by a 44-32 margin.
This probably isn’t surprising in view of a late-September PPP survey showing Cruz leaping to the front of the pack in 2016 presidential soundings among Republicans, and being vastly more popular among GOPers than Boehner or Mitch McConnell.
It’s worth remembering next time you read one of those blind-quote-laden accounts of how much Cruz is hated among congressional Republicans. So was Joe McCarthy, but he was wildly popular on the Right until he finally overreached by accusing a Republican administration of commie-coddling.
