Two of Ted Cruz's top backers say that it's time for him to stop going after Marco Rubio — and that he should turn his attention to taking on Donald Trump instead. 

“I think he should forget about Rubio completely and focus on Trump,” said Bob Vander Plaats, one of Cruz’s national co-chairs. “Rubio is just taking from Cruz. And so the more you give attention to Rubio, the more it dilutes your message. I would give a clear, consistent, conservative message that draws the distinction between the judgment and temperament of Donald Trump versus the judgment and temperament of Ted Cruz.”

Added Steve Deace, another influential Iowa-based backer of Cruz, “Last week, Trump debated the Pope and Islam, and we debated Rubio on videos, narratives and Photoshop. Nobody cares about that stuff.”

Cruz has spent weeks trying to prevent Marco Rubio from overtaking him in the polls, tearing into him over everything from immigration reform to running robocalls, as he has also tussled with Trump. But those efforts turned messy last week, as Rubio — along with Trump and Ben Carson — repeatedly described Cruz as a “liar,” a message reinforced with a slew of negative advertising that accused Cruz of engaging in “dirty tricks.” 

Cruz swung back at both Trump and Rubio at every turn and has tried to reset in the days since. But his unfavorable rating ticked up in South Carolina and he came in a narrow third place, slightly behind Rubio and double digits behind Trump, in a state his team had seen as winnable. 

Then came a video, circulated Sunday by now-former communications director Rick Tyler, that mischaracterized comments Rubio made about the Bible.

By Monday afternoon, Tyler was out, amid concerns within the Cruz campaign that the issue would metastasize and would detract from Cruz’s campaign slogan, “TrusTED,” a play on his first name and central to his message that he is a trustworthy conservative champion. Cruz's team was already on the defensive after campaign representatives circulated a report implying that Carson was exiting the race just before the Iowa caucuses, a move that turned into a lasting and damaging issue on the trail.

“There’s going to be no question, with Ted, you’re going to get exactly what he said [he would deliver],” said a Cruz source of Tyler’s ouster. “Protecting that brand is critical. Anything that calls any of that into question really creates problems. That’s why we’ve got to be so careful.”

Taken together, that pile of Rubio-related distractions has some of Cruz’s top supporters hoping he will get back to contrasting with only one candidate at a time: And many conservatives think that for both Cruz and Rubio, the first priority should be taking on Trump.
“I don’t think you can fight a two-front war,” Vander Plaats said. “That’s not a smart strategy anywhere. And I think what it’s doing is, it’s elevating Rubio.”

He went on to stress Cruz, not Rubio, has already proven he can beat Trump — Cruz bested the real estate mogul in Iowa while Rubio has yet to win a state — and said Cruz has a clearer path to the nomination.

Erick Erickson, an unaligned influential conservative radio host based in Georgia who has ties to both the Cruz and the Rubio camps, said it was “counterproductive” for Cruz to be attacking both the candidate above him, Trump, and the one who nationally still polls below him, Rubio.

“He needs to be relentlessly positive and on message for the next week, focus in that direction, and to the extent he has to respond, it needs to be to Trump, not Rubio,” he said. “It’s counterproductive to respond to Rubio because, in most of the polling, it’s Trump ahead of him, not Rubio. If he’s going to have it coming from all sides, he needs to focus his energies just on Trump.”

The view that Trump needs to be the primary target of the other top-tier candidates is one that’s gaining traction with others in the conservative movement: Curt Anderson, a longtime GOP strategist who had been backing former candidate Bobby Jindal, published a piece in National Review on Tuesday urging unity against Trump — though his solution was for Cruz to step aside for Rubio, something that isn’t going to happen.

Certainly, there is a recognition from people close to the Cruz campaign that it would be easier for the senator if he didn’t have to worry about both Trump and Rubio simultaneously. That, however, is easier said than done, said one knowledgeable source. 

“Yes, it’s important to not take our eye off the ball and to beat Trump, but Rubio’s in the same position,” said this person, who is close to the campaign. “Rubio has to fight us and Trump, we have to fight Trump and Rubio. We’re both in the same place. How do we do it? Here is the problem with going after Trump: There is nothing out there that seems to move his voters. When he said he could shoot somebody in Times Square and his numbers wouldn’t move, I’m starting to believe that’s true.”

This source said that while Cruz’s unfavorable ratings moved up in South Carolina, so did those of the other candidates, as the campaign entered an increasingly nasty phase, but argued the Rubio and Trump campaigns’ accusations of “dirty tricks” didn’t cause dramatic, race-deciding movement. The bigger problem was how much of the vote Trump ended up commanding — and, until the field winnows dramatically, the source continued, it’s hard to see that advantage going away whether Cruz and Rubio tone down the attacks on each other or not.

“What else can we do? He is bad on conservative issues across the board, yet his votes don’t freaking move,” the source said of Trump, going on to add, “The best way forward is a unified effort. But as long as the field remains really big, Trump is going to take a third of the spread everywhere else, because no amount of attacks is going to move his third of the vote.”

Meantime, Cruz and Rubio are battling over other conservative segments of the vote, and neither side showed signs of relenting much during the final hours before the Nevada caucuses.

"Marco Rubio is the moderate candidate in a battle for conservatives and you can't beat Donald Trump from the left," Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said. "We need a candidate, like Ted, who will stand and fight on the right of Donald on immigration, nationalism and foreign policy. Ted is the only candidate who can, and has, beaten Donald and has shown he is able to coalesce conservatives."

Rubio backers, meantime, released an email urging that voters send in evidence of “dirty tricks,” particularly from the Cruz campaign, to Rubio’s “Nevada truth squad.”