Despite admitting on Sunday’s Meet the Press that she wasn’t a token expert on Republican politics, MSNBC national correspondent Joy Reid attempted to impart some wisdom to the GOP by ruling that Ted Cruz wouldn’t be successful as the party’s presidential nominee since “he’s spent his entire Senate career essentially blowing up his home team's court.”
After moderator Chuck Todd put up polls of hypothetical GOP match-ups between Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump, Todd observed that it showed him that the “[e]stablishment can’t win” in any scenario.
Reid agreed by first commenting that even though she’s not “the Republican at the table,” there seems to not “enough strength” for the establishment to prevail over the conservative lane of the party.
The former MSNBC host and now correspondent went onto explain that a Cruz nomination wouldn’t work since he’s devoted his entire career in the Senate by not working with the party elite and establishment:
[I]t doesn’t seem that there’s doesn't seem to be much of a lane there. The energy in the party is for the outsider candidates, and I think for the establishment, Cruz is almost as bad a scenario because he’s spent his entire Senate career essentially blowing up his home team's court.
One criticism worth raising is that Reid neglected to realize is that railing against the GOP elite and Washington D.C. has more or less been the entire gist of Cruz’s time in the Senate and on the campaign trail. By doing so, Cruz is hedging on conservatives rallying around his cause of rejecting the so-called business as usual mantra and nominating of moderates over the past two decades.
The relevant portion of the transcript from NBC’s Meet the Press on January 17 can be found below.
NBC’s Meet the Press
January 17, 2016
11:08 a.m. EasternCHUCK TODD: Let me put the numbers up, the three-way race that those Trump/Cruz/Rubio, then the two-way pairings as you were talking about. Here’s what you need to know: Cruz versus Trump, Cruz wins. Trump versus Rubio, Trump wins. What does that tell you to me? Establishment can't win.
JOY-ANN REID: That's right. I don't think there's enough strength — I mean, not being the Republican at the table. I think you’re more knowledgeable [TO HUGH HEWITT], but it doesn’t seem that there’s doesn't seem to be much of a lane there. The energy in the party is for the outsider candidates, and I think for the establishment, Cruz is almost as bad a scenario because he’s spent his entire Senate career essentially blowing up his home team's court.
