Opinion: Losing steam, Ted Cruz doubles down on rigid conservatism with Fiorina pick

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has to stop the emerging Donald Trump juggernaut if he’s going to have any hope of winning the Republican presidential nomination at a brokered convention this summer. That means he absolutely, positively has to prevent Trump from scoring the kind of victory in California that he’s been racking up in mid-Atlantic states lately.

Perhaps that’s why Cruz announced Wednesday that former Hewlett-Packard CEO and White House wannabe Carly Fiorina would be his running mate. California Republicans might remember Fiorina as the candidate they chose in 2010 to challenge Democrat Barbara Boxer. It was the tea party’s breakout year, and Fiorina’s outsider campaign crushed those of former Rep. Tom Campbell and state Assemblyman Chuck DeVore.

It’s still a good time to be an outsider candidate, so Fiorina may indeed help Cruz in California — except she’s dogged by accusations that she failed at HP, which gave her the boot in 2005. That invites some unwelcome comparisons to Cruz’s chief opponent, a billionaire real-estate developer who’s made hay out of his image as a wildly successful businessman.

What’s most revealing about the pick, though, is that Cruz isn’t trying to balance the ticket in the way candidates typically do. He didn’t pick a running mate who would appeal to elements of the electorate (or even of the GOP) that he hasn’t done well with. Instead, he picked a female version of Ted Cruz — someone who condemns the political establishment as corrupt, who belittles the idea of finding a political middle ground and who argues that the path to victory for the GOP is to pick more conservative candidates.

Yes, Fiorina does bring an extra X chromosome to the ticket, and that’s significant even if it has been done before. But given Fiorina’s stance on reproductive rights (she’s strongly pro-life) and how closely her views hew to Cruz’s, it’s hard to see how she’ll help him in November.

After all, that’s usually the calculus when picking a vice presidential nominee. It’s one reason presidential candidates often pick running mates who hail from the swing states or have experience that the candidates lack (see, e.g., Joe Biden’s immersion in foreign policy, Paul Ryan’s conservative policy chops, Dick Cheney’s years of work in the federal government).

Then again, Cruz has long blamed the GOP’s inability to win the White House in the past two elections on Republican candidates who haven’t gotten conservatives excited enough to go to the polls. So from his point of view, it’s more important to have a running mate who appeals to the right wing than to the middle, regardless of the growing number of independent voters.

Cruz announced his new running mate in Indiana, which is holding a key primary Tuesday. By doubling down on his anti-establishment conservatism, he’s hoping to ramp up his appeal with the disaffected voters who’ve been flocking to Trump. That strategy may backfire in November, but with Trump’s nomination seeming more inevitable by the day, Cruz doesn’t have time now to worry about the long term.

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