Cruzin’ Through New Hampshire

When the bus at last pulls up near the front window of Zeb’s Country Store, a charming kitsch and candy shop in this ski-resort town, there’s a mixture of excitement and relief among the voters and reporters waiting inside. That dissipates when the next person to walk in isn’t Cruz but one of his chief advocates here, former senator Bob Smith. “Who’s that?” a few voters murmur. But Smith, who left the Senate in 2003, is donning a pullover with the words “Senator Bob Smith” embroidered on the left breast, which helps clear things up.

Finally, Cruz bounds off the bus. Wearing a blue tattersall shirt with jeans, he looks thinner and younger than in his usual ill-fitting dark suit. After a photo with the store’s staff behind the counter, he takes his position at the bottom of a staircase, facing outward toward the crowd and array of TV cameras.

Cruz opens with a joke—one that’s been floating around online for years—about an old man at the front gate of the White House in the days after the end of Barack Obama’s term. The man asks a Marine every day if Obama is there, and the Marine, increasingly frustrated, keeps telling the man Obama is no longer president. When the Marine finally points out the man’s been asking the same question and getting the same answer—”Barack Obama is no longer president”—the man smiles and says, “I just like hearing you say it.”

This gets a big laugh and a round of applause. Cruz has gotten better at showing his lighter side. It no doubt helps that he repeats the same jokes, with nearly the same cadences, at every stop. Another favorite is his truism that the only difference between federal regulators and locusts is you can’t use pesticide on the regulators. In Cruz’s telling, a West Texas farmer once shot back, “Wanna bet?”

But Cruz isn’t the only funnyman in the room. Near the back, TV’s Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, the vulgar cigar-chomping hand puppet, perches himself on the shoulder of a voter. The creator, hand, and voice behind Triumph is comedian Robert Smigel, who tells me he and his crew are making an online special about the campaign. It’s not clear how well it’s going. After trying in vain to get Cruz’s attention, Smigel is reduced to pushing through a scrum toward the exit, just like the rest of us.

“Ted!” Smigel-as-Triumph shouts, as Cruz ignores him. “Ted!”

Freedom, N.H.

You just knew he’d make a comment about it. “This town officially wins the contest for the best-named city in the country,” says Cruz.

Freedom is half an hour south of North Conway. The only political sign to be seen on the road to Freedom reads, in bold white letters: TRUMP. In his speech at the Freedom Country Store, Cruz makes an oblique reference to the leading candidate, as he calls for a fence along the southern border with Mexico. “I’ve got someone in mind to build it,” he says.

Cruz hasn’t just improved the delivery of his laugh lines. He’s becoming more skilled at answering questions that might deviate from his preferred script. One mother here brings up the divisive partisanship in Washington during the Obama years. What would Cruz do, she wanted to know, to “heal us as a nation?”

Cruz looks down as she speaks and shakes his head. Obama, he laments, “could have been a unifying president.”

“Remember when he spoke at the 2004 Democratic convention, he said we’re not red states or blue states, we are the United States of America,” Cruz says, and the woman nods. “That sentiment an awful lot of us agree with. But sadly, when he got elected that sentiment disappeared. And we’ve had seven years of a president that it seems almost every day seeks to tear us apart and divide us, whether it’s turning us against each other on racial lines, on ethnic lines, on socioeconomic lines, on gender lines, on religious lines, and that is wrong. We need a president who, number one, appeals to our shared values.”

A shot at Obama, yes, but also a subtle rebuke of Trump. Despised by his Senate colleagues for his divisive reputation, Cruz remarkably is now positioning himself as a reasonable and principled uniter.

After a few questions and failed attempts by Triumph to get the candidate’s attention, Cruz’s personal aide Bruce Redden taps the senator on his right leg, just above his knee. Cruz announces he’ll take one more question. In the middle of a lengthy answer about the national debt, Redden taps Cruz’s left leg, this time below his knee, to indicate it’s time to wrap it up. He ends by asking the crowd to “pray,” a request better suited to Iowa evangelicals than the more secular crowd here.

“Pray that you commit today each and every day between now and Election Day to lift this country up in prayer,” Cruz says. “Just say, Father God, please, continue this awakening that is sweeping this country. Pull us back from the abyss.” Some of the voters look a little skeptical.

Sanbornville, N.H.

By now, Cruz is at least 45 minutes behind schedule. The tiny restaurant where he’s speaking is so packed no one can get in the front door. Standing outside in the freezing cold are two college-aged volunteers for Marco Rubio’s campaign, handing out pocket calculators and some literature calling Cruz a “political calculator.” I’ve seen better campaign stunts.

Bob Smith has arrived long before Cruz, and it’s his role to keep the waiting crowd entertained. After running through more than enough half-amusing anecdotes and testaments to Cruz’s greatness, an awkward silence falls over the restaurant. Suddenly, Smith blurts out that he can do a pretty good Bill Clinton impression.

“I did not have sexual relations with that woman,” he says in Bubba’s drawl. He wasn’t joking: It’s pretty good, and it has the room laughing. Smith is clearly enjoying the new burst of energy he’s created.

“I can do Strom Thurmond, too!” Smith says. Oh boy. Even the press, who have heard Cruz’s stump speech countless times, are relieved when the candidate shows up to deliver it again.

In his characteristic bombast, Cruz lists the five things he’ll achieve on his first day in office: rescind Obama’s executive orders, instruct the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute Planned Parenthood, inform every branch of the federal government to stop persecution of religious liberty, rip the Iranian nuclear deal “to shreds,” and move the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

“And that’s Day One,” Cruz says. “There are 365 days in a year. Four years in a presidential term. Four years in a second term.” By the end of his two terms, Cruz adds, members of the media will be “checking themselves into therapy.” I’m wondering where Triumph is.

Center Barnstead, N.H.

Another small New Hampshire town, another little shop full of voters. Cruz’s entourage has grown as we’ve driven south, with national reporters like Fox News’s alliterative duo, Bret Baier and Carl Cameron, joining up. Cruz is finishing a radio interview on his bus, and Smith has started with the Clinton impression again. That’s my cue to head outside, where the 19-degree temperature and biting wind are more bearable.

On the street, a rumor has taken hold: Cruz will take a few questions from the press outside the shop. The media horde moves, amoeba-like, to surround the bus doors, where it waits. And waits. And waits. The press blob is starting to shake from the cold. A staffer inside the bus snaps a photo of the shivering media outside. The Cruz campaign will enjoy that one.

Finally Cruz steps out to get bombarded with questions. Terry Branstad, the governor of Iowa, had said he wants Cruz to lose the caucuses because of his opposition to ethanol subsidies. “Like The Empire Strikes Back, the establishment will strike back because they don’t want an end to the cronyism and the gravy train from Washington,” Cruz says. Is he saying Iowa corn farmers are crony capitalists? “I’m saying Iowa corn farmers are wonderful Americans,” Cruz responds.

What about the rumors, soon to be confirmed by the New York Times, that Sarah Palin would be endorsing Donald Trump? “I love Sarah Palin. Sarah Palin is fantastic. Without her friendship and support, I wouldn’t be in the Senate,” Cruz says. “Regardless of what Sarah decides to do in 2016, I will always remain a big fan of Sarah Palin.”

The mini-press conference over, Cruz heads inside.

Rye, N.H.

The Rubio volunteers are back, with reinforcements. They’re holding up signs and still handing out calculators. Former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown is walking toward them with a police officer, asking the cop to get the protesters to leave. It’s a residential street. “This is private property,” Brown says. The kids scuttle off.

This is Brown’s tenth and final “No B.S. Barbecue,” a recurring event this political season where he hosts a candidate to take questions and enjoy beers and hot dogs with the locals. Tonight’s is being held in the barn of Brown’s neighbor, and despite the cold, the place is hopping.

Brown and his wife Gail Huff, a veteran news broadcaster, have fortunately taken over from Bob Smith as the opening act. The couple have a familiar rapport between themselves and with the audience. When one local asks which cabinet position Brown would like in a Cruz administration, he deadpans, “How about ambassador to Aruba?” Huff gives an exaggerated nod of approval.

But after an hour, even the Brown-Huff routine is wearing thin. Cruz’s bus is on the way, Brown says, asking the restless audience to watch a campaign video. It’s a slickly produced ad of sorts, showing Cruz shaking hands and speaking passionately while dramatic music plays. Still, people are finishing up their beers and looking toward the door.

At long last, the man of the hour arrives more than an hour late. Brown is quick with his introduction, and as the applause dies down, Cruz thanks his hosts. “Scott, let me say thank you in particular for getting everybody liquored up before I got here,” he says. “My jokes are much funnier after three or four beers.”

I’m stone-cold sober, so that’s hard for me to verify. But there may be something to the theory, as Cruz launches into one of the oldest ones in the book. “You can learn a lot about a word from its history. If you look at the roots of the word politics, there are two parts: poli, meaning many, and ticks, meaning blood-sucking parasites,” Cruz says, a smile spreading across his face as the crowd bursts into laughter.

Michael Warren is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.