Ted Cruz was the big winner in the government shutdown/debt ceiling debacle. By posing as the nation's foremost opponent of Obamacare, to the point of suicidal mission, he has managed to separate himself from the pack by finding a way to be seen as the most conservative out of a slew of very conservative potential candidates. This is quite extraordinary, and an exceptional display of political skill on the part of Cruz.
He was never very serious about his scheme to "defund Obamacare." His alleged "strategy" was a chimera from the start and reminiscent of this classic cartoon which once appeared in the New Yorker. The scheme is quite elaborate, but it depends on a miracle at the critical juncture.
Cruz's strategy to "defund Obamacare" was based on putting pressure on the Senate Democrats to do it. The GOP House would be stalwart. The Senate Republicans would be stalwart also, he supposed, but that would not be a majority. In order to get a majority in the Senate, Senate Democrats would have to cave.
That's when the miracle would happen. Cruz supposed that, because Obamacare was so massively unpopular, that public opinion would storm over the Senate Democrats and cause them to flip.
There are several flaws in that alleged "strategy," the most notable being that Obamacare is not that unpopular. True, the polls are roughly 60-40 against Obamacare, but about one-fourth to one-third of the people who say they oppose it do so because they wanted single payer all along. They fault Obamacare for not being liberal enough.
Put another way, support for Obamacare, or a more liberal alternative, is about 60-40, which is a considerable majority, and which further means there is no massive groundswell of opposition that could shake the Senate Democrats.
Ted Cruz knew all this, of course. He went ahead anyway because the surest route to the heart of the GOP base is ideological fidelity combined with crusader-like zeal. It worked like a charm. One recent poll showed that Cruz was now the choice of 74% of tea party Republicans. That's the base.
His strategy never stood a chance, but that doesn't matter too much to Cruz since he accomplished so much by pursuing it. In one swoop, he has assured himself of adequate financing for the 2016 campaign of which he is now the frontrunner.