Tonight, against the predictions of almost all the recent polling, Sen. Ted Cruz won the Iowa Republican primary. The finish was: Cruz 28%, Trump 24%. and Rubio 23%. No one else even reached 10%. In my opinion, the Republican nominee is all but certain to be one of those three.
The question for this blog is whether Sen. Cruz's victory has any significance for the major criminal law issues facing our country. I think the answer is "yes."
For one thing, the death penalty has no better friend than Cruz, as the NYT (somewhat glumly) reported. But this is likely of no great moment; the death penalty continues to enjoy broad public support, and with ISIS slicing heads off on videotape, this is unlikely to change no matter who the Republicans nominate.
The more interesting and subtle question is the impact of the Cruz victory on the sentencing reform bill now in the Senate. I think that bill took a major hit tonight.
As I noted in my last post, Cruz was one of the prize "gets" for proponents of sentencing reform in the last Congress. Now, however, he is one of its most articulate critics (along with Jeff Sessions and Tom Cotton). The fact that he changed sides will have little significance with the electorate as a whole (crime, when low, is seldom a big issue), but may loom large with his Senate Republican colleagues.
Cruz is known as an extremely adept and smart politician. His win tonight against the favored billionaire businessman highlights the fact that he has an acute feel for the Republican pulse. Senators may not like him -- press reports say he's unpopular with his colleagues -- but they respect winning, and are more than a little interested in what goes into a winning formula.
Over the last year, Cruz has spent a huge amount of time beating the hustings and doing retail politics. That he switched sides on sentencing reform sends a message: He has a good idea what Republican voters want. Apparently, they don't want softer sentencing for drug dealers (not that this is a surprise, since the public at large also opposes the central idea of sentencing "reform" by a 2-1 margin). Republican senators up for re-election this year, and those in swing states, are going to take notice, I promise.
There is one other aspect to this as well. Note the location of tonight's contest: Iowa. Who is Iowa's senior senator? Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the leading sponsor of the SRCA. Do you think Sen. Grassley might take note that the big winner in his state voted against the bill in Committee? And that the candidates who finished second and third have said not one word in its behalf?
I do.
P.S. Sen. Grassley has done much outstanding work over the years in criminal law issues and judicial selection. That he is, in my view, now on the wrong side of the sentencing reform debate, both in terms of political reality and societal well-being, does not detract from my overall respect for him.
So what’s got into John Cornyn?
I wish I knew.