David Frum thinks this is how Ted Cruz could win the White House

Interesting theory on how Texas Sen. Ted Cruz could actually win the 2016 presidential election, brought to us by former Bush official David Frum (via The Daily Beast):

With the flaming wreck of Marco Rubio’s presidential hopes as a warning beacon, moderate favorite Governor Christie tried to triangulate the immigration issue. Ted Cruz determinedly took a position of all-out opposition.  In an interview on Univision, he chatted in Spanish with host Jorge Ramos, then turned to English to deliver a stark message: “This is America. We obey the law. People who can’t deal with that don’t belong here.”

The government shutdown and debt ceiling fight of 2013 may have looked disastrous from a national political perspective. But the dustups nonetheless earned Cruz the best fundraising list on the Republican side. While Rand Paul hesitated whether to play an “inside” game of reassuring Republican donors or an “outside” game of insurgency, Cruz’s fundraising allowed him to bypass the choice altogether, shoulder aside Rand Paul as the conservative favorite, and proceed straight to the main event: the battle against Gov. Chris Christie. ...

Ted Cruz, however, could offer the vice presidency to Chris Christie—and the Democrats’ post-2014 leftward veer frightened Republican donors enough that they pressed Christie to accept. Unlike Romney in 2012, Cruz’s conservative allegiance could not be questioned, freeing him to write the vaguest platform and conduct the most issue-free campaign of any Republican since George H.W. Bush in 1988. Cruz delivered half his convention speech in Spanish and used the other half to rededicate the party to “the compassion of conservatism,” a subtle variant of an old phrase that delighted convention delegates.