Mainstream GOP candidates are staying away, but the Brash Brothers will come out swinging.
On Wednesday afternoon, the circus is coming to the Capitol.
Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin, several of Congress’s most outspoken conservatives, and a number of other conservative activists will descend on the West Lawn of the Capitol to rally against President Obama’s Iran deal.
It will be the first time that Trump and Cruz, as presidential hopefuls, will appear on the same stage as allies, rather than as competitors in a debate, and their interaction will be informative. Over the past several months, the two have been engaged in a buddy routine. They have been noticeably solicitous and complimentary of one“ another, with Cruz declining to follow other Republican presidential hopefuls in attacking and ridiculing Trump. Cruz, by all accounts, is looking to pick off voters currently supporting Trump, either when the business mogul drops out of the race or when voters become disaffected with him.
But Cruz and Trump are not entirely on the same page on all the issues surrounding the Iran deal, and Trump’s presence at the rally has drawn jeers from other campaigns, which question his credibility and seriousness on foreign-policy issues.
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Still, from the perspective of event organizers and participants, Trump brings a crucial component to the event: attention.
“As Cruz has said, Donald Trump draws a lot of media attention, so his attendance was a positive win-win for the rally,” says a Cruz aide. It is a statement echoed by Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the Tea Party Patriots, the group that organized the rally. She notes in a phone call with National Review that Trump’s presence ensures that more voters will hear about the Iran deal and the opposition to it.
#share#Though the Republican presidential field is united in opposition to the deal, Cruz and Trump are on different pages as to how they would unravel it if they were to become president. Cruz has said he would “rip up” the Iran deal on Day 1. Trump, on the other hand, has called that promise a pipe dream.
“Politically, and certainly for the nomination, I would love to tell you I’m gonna rip up this contract, I’m gonna be the toughest guy in the world, and I’m just ripping it up. But you know what? Life doesn’t work that way,” Trump said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe last week.
An adviser for another campaign was more blunt in describing the rally, saying, ‘It’s kind of a clown show.’
Instead, he promised to take what he called a “disastrous deal” and “make that agreement so tough and if they break it they would have hell to pay.”
The Cruz aide dismissed the disagreement, saying “candidates are free to hold different policy positions.”
Trump was maligned last week for his seeming confusion in the face of foreign-policy questions on the Hugh Hewitt show. The presidential hopeful shot back that it was a series of “gotcha questions” from a “third-rate radio announcer” (who happens to be a moderator at the CNN debate next week).
Opposing campaigns say the episode added to the sense that Trump is an unserious candidate, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
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Jeb Bush, in the latest salvo in his back-and-forth jabs with the business mogul, put up an Instagram video Tuesday of Trump saying on CNN he thought “Hillary [Clinton] would do a good job” in negotiating with Iran.
An adviser for another campaign was more blunt in describing the rally, saying, “It’s kind of a clown show.”
Only one other GOP presidential hopeful will appear at the rally: longshot contender Jim Gilmore, the former governor of Virginia. Martin says she invited all the campaigns at the end of last week, but no one else was able to attend.
#related#The rally is unlikely to sway any opinion, with most members of Congress having already announced their positions. The necessary number of Democratic Senators have lined up behind the deal to prevent opponents in congress from derailing it. Yet Martin says “there’s still the opportunity, because votes haven’t been cast yet and there’s still time for the Democratic senators who say they’re in favor of this deal to do the right thing.” Martin says she invited Democrats who came out against the Iran deal, but none agreed to attend.
The event is obviously political. Though Martin says all the speakers have indicated they will train their fire on the deal itself, and the Cruz aide says the rally’s goal is to draw attention to the problems of the Iran deal, it seems likely that conversation could veer to Cruz’s political pursuits outside the halls of Congress.
What’s more, since becoming a candidate, Trump has rarely given a speech without attacking one of his competitors, regardless of the topic. Spokeswoman Hope Hicks declined to speculate on what he might say at the rally, noting that no one could speak for Trump but himself.