LISTEN TO WMAL’S OWN MARK LEVIN DISCUSS WEDNESDAY’S 1 PM RALLY ON THE WEST LAWN OF THE U.S. CAPITOL:
(WASHINGTON) — (CNN) Ted Cruz made a candid admission here when he was asked why he invited Donald Trump — a presidential competitor and the GOP’s 2016 front-runner — to join him at a Capitol Hill rally protesting the Iran nuclear deal.
“The reason’s not complicated,” Cruz told reporters outside a recent tea party rally. “Number one: I like Donald. He’s a friend of mine. But when Donald arrives at an event, he brings an army of TV reporters. He brings an army of cameras that show up. And Donald’s being there — he very graciously accepted — means the mainstream media will cover the event.”
Cruz has faced questions for months about what his critics see as a baldly political move to embrace Trump’s controversial candidacy. And his answer last week laid bare the at-times transactional relationship between the two presidential contenders that will be on display again Wednesday when Trump and Cruz join forces on the steps of the Capitol to blast President Barack Obama’s Iran accord.
The event gives Trump a chance to redeem himself after stumbling over a series of foreign policy questions while Cruz wrangles the media attention that only the billionaire businessman can attract. As the pair ride the outsider energy that is dominating the GOP primary battle, the rally is as much about their unusual alliance as it is about scuttling the Iran nuclear deal, which appears to be increasingly safe from Republican efforts to sink it on the Hill.
“I don’t anticipate that rally will have any impact on the ultimate vote in either the House or the Senate,” Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told CNN Tuesday moments after declaring her opposition to the Iran deal.
The deal’s fate may be sealed, but Republican strategist Ron Bonjean said the rally remains a prime opportunity for Trump and Cruz to cash in on what will remain a top foreign policy issue through 2016, just one week before the second Republican presidential debate, sponsored by CNN.
“It’s not going to change what’s going on in Washington right now, but they’re scoring political points,” Bonjean said.
The event will cull speakers from a who’s-who roster of conservative icons: Talk radio hosts Mark Levin and Glenn Beck; former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin; and Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson. But as Cruz himself recognized, the rally took on new explosiveness when Trump told an audience two weeks ago that he would lend his star power to the event.
It will be a rare moment in presidential politics: two high-profile candidates competing for their party’s nomination appearing alongside each other — not at one of the many cattle-calls organized by independent groups but at a rival’s invitation.
Trump may have earned a spot thanks to his special relationship with Cruz, but other candidates aren’t getting that airtime.
Trump’s announcement two weeks ago that he would attend was news to Tea Party Patriots head Jenny Beth Martin, who is organizing the rally. Martin explained that she eventually invited all other GOP presidential candidates on Friday — well after organizers unveiled the duo as headliners.
The Cruz-Trump bromance was hatched in the opening days after Trump’s controversial launch speech when the senator was one of the few in his party to refuse criticizing the businessman. It’s one of the more surprising subplots of a summer dominated by who Trump was sparring with on any given week.
The alliance makes for good politics, and Cruz is hoping to inherit Trump’s supporters should the bombastic businessman fall, aides have said. Trump is hoping for the same.
Cruz, patiently playing nice with Trump, has maintained his standing in polls, while the candidates most aggressively countering the businessman — such as former Texas Gov. Rick Perry — have floundered.
His Iran play comes ahead of a congressional season where the freshman senator is set to play a lead role in the fight to defund Planned Parenthood, even at the risk of shutting down the government at the end of the month — which GOP leadership wants to avoid. Cruz, of course, was a key figure in forcing a government shutdown in 2013 over Obamacare.
For Trump, the benefits are less obvious. He doesn’t need Cruz to draw media attention or a crowd. Yet the rally will play to his strengths as a fierce critic of Obama’s foreign policy and a tough negotiator who would cut deals to restore U.S. status in the world, said Roger Stone, a former Trump political adviser.
As for how long Trump and Cruz can maintain what appears to be a nonaggression pact, Stone said it’s too early to tell.
“We don’t know if Cruz will ever get any traction,” Stone said. “You don’t know that Cruz will ever threaten Trump.”
But there are signs that relationship may be fraying. Trump, for instance, suggested last month that he may have to attack Cruz if he begins to move up in the polls.
When asked how he distinguishes himself from Trump, Cruz points to his record as a conservative fighter that other candidates — “campaign conservatives” — can’t match. And there are policy differences between the Texan and the New Yorker, none more relevant this week than their different approaches to Iran.
Cruz pledges he will shred the “catastrophic” Iran deal on the first day of his presidency. Trump, whose White House pitch rests on his ability to secure good deals, only pledges to “police” the deal strenuously rather than discard it — touting his record of flipping “bad contracts” in real estate.
“When I am elected president, I will renegotiate with Iran — right after I enable the immediate release of our American prisoners and ask Congress to impose new sanctions that stop Iran from having the ability to sponsor terrorism around the world,” Trump wrote in a USA Today op-ed published Tuesday night.
Those two viewpoints have divided the GOP field, with some Republicans promising to abandon it immediately and others arguing that move is not diplomatically feasible.
It’s unclear if that split will rear its head on Wednesday, but even one of the event’s organizers made it clear Trump’s position didn’t jive well with his own.
“I was disappointed frankly by Donald Trump’s comments,” said Morton Klein, the head of the Zionist Organization of America, which is sponsoring the rally, who wants to see the agreement abrogated on the first day.
But Klein insisted that the candidates would be able to keep what they’d do in 2017 out of Wednesday’s speeches — and instead focus on what they’ll do this week.
“We still have some hope — it’s small — that we’ll change some people’s minds,” he said.
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