The short version? Ted Cruz is going to spend this week more or less retracing Gov. Scott Walker’s electoral path, geographically speaking; and he’s going to at the same time talk a lot about jobs and trade and blue-collar workers. It’s an interesting one-two punch combo of Ted Cruz’s, not least because it more or less utterly ignores John Kasich (who is kind of appearing as an afterthought in this state).

The retracing of Walker’s walk in the southeast part of the state makes sense: as the Chicago Tribune implicitly noted, that’s where the Republican votes are. That’s also the place where Governor Walker ran up his margins to win the state outright, and a lot of people are wondering whether Walker plans to endorse Cruz or not. Well, more accurately: a lot of people expect that Walker will probably endorse Cruz; they just want to know when. And that’s still a decent endorsement to have.

As to blue-collar workers: well, people who don’t have jobs and would like them are going to react well to the idea of getting their jobs back. What Ted Cruz is going to do here is to try to show those voters that a candidate can be for those voters without being, say, a vicious idiot who thinks that everybody else is just as much of a moral leper.  Come, I will conceal nothing from you: I’m more of a free trader than the people still running for President.  But at least I can trust Ted Cruz not to destroy America’s trade position – and, yes, I’m aware that this is a mildly low bar to clear.  It’s been that kind of election cycle.

Moe Lane

PS: Ted Cruz will be concentrating on Wisconsin today and tomorrow; it looks like a couple of New York events were canceled or postponed in order to make sure that he could stump with Carly Fiorina.  More evidence that he’s taking this state seriously.