IT'S ABOUT PURITY, NOT THE PRESIDENCY:

The National Review reports:

To hell with the independents. That's not usually the animating principle of a presidential campaign, but for Ted Cruz's, it just might be.

His strategists aren't planning to make a big play for so-called independent voters in the general election if Cruz wins the Republican nomination. Several of the senator's top advisers said that Cruz sees a path to victory that relies instead on increasing conservative turnout, trying to attract votes from groups that have tended to favor Democrats (Jews, Hispanics and millennials), and, in the words of one Cruz strategist, "not getting killed with independents."

Either Cruz is not as smart as some people say, or he has decided to give up on being a serious national Republican in favor of becoming the next Sarah Palin. I'm with Henry Olsen -- and others who can do math -- who is quoted as saying this is a "fantasy." ("The Republican base, he says, simply isn't large enough to win an election nationally, and the Republican nominee must 'energize establishment Republicans and people who don't call themselves conservatives.' ")

In 2012 and 2008, Republicans were 32 percent of the general electorate. In George Bush's reelection in 2004, that number got as high as 37 percent. In 1980, Cruz's hero Ronald Reagan won with only 28 percent of the electorate identifying as Republicans because he got 56 percent of independents -- Cruz doesn't want any of them, I guess -- and 27 percent of Democrats. Cruz, or any Republican, has zero chance of becoming president without votes of non-Republicans. Cruz's hero shouldn't be Reagan but Barry Goldwater.

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