The Washington Free Beacon's Elizabeth Harrington appeared on Fox News Wednesday to discuss the Republican presidential race and how Donald Trump and Ted Cruz must fight for the nomination.
Host Jon Scott asked Harrington about Donald Trump's campaign strategy and his difficulty in picking up delegates.
"Right, and it will be interesting to see if Trump will be the Reagan of '76 or the Reagan of '80, who actually got the nomination in 1980. What we're seeing here is Ted Cruz, his strategy, which is basically the only strategy he has at this point, because he can't get to the 1,237 outright, is to use the arcane system in a lot of these states to peel off delegates which is well within the rules, but I think it's going to backfire a little bit, because if it's right or not, people feel disenfranchised; voters feel disenfranchised," Harrington said.
"They think their votes don't matter when you see a state that Trump won, and then because Cruz is more effective at using the rules to his advantage, he's peeling off delegates. So you're seeing that on the Democratic side with superdelegates and you're seeing it on the Republican side here. And I think that feeds into the narrative it's going to only embolden Trump's supporters, and it's making Cruz come off as less likeable than he already is."
Scott later referred to an article by Marc A. Thiessen in the Washington Post about how Trump's campaign has been unconventional so far.
If Trump can’t compete, he has no one to blame but himself. Back in February, after losing Iowa to Cruz, Trump admitted he "never realized" the importance of building a field organization. But instead of going out and building that field organization, he has done the opposite. Politico reports that "Since March, [Trump] has been laying off field staff en masse around the country." Trump brags about how rich he is, but he has run his campaign on the cheap, relying on provocative tweets and his massive advantage in free media to win primaries.
Harrington said that this both helps and hurts his campaign, as he gets free media, but also lacks a ground game. Harrington went on to say Trump's only path to the nomination would be by winning on the first ballot.