DORCHESTER, S.C.—For months, Ted Cruz has laughed off Donald Trump’s barbs, berated reporters who mentioned him and gone to near-comic lengths to publicly express enthusiasm for the real estate mogul’s rival candidacy.

Cruz isn’t laughing anymore.


As Trump closes the gap with Cruz in Iowa while at every turn taunting him over his Canadian birthplace and sometimes questioning his faith, the Texas senator this week kicked off a new and much more aggressive phase in his relationship with the national poll-leader. It’s a move that many in Cruz’s orbit are cheering.

“It’s just the time,” said Pastor Mike Gonzalez, who is spearheading Cruz’s evangelical outreach here in South Carolina. “He has a plan, his plan is now going into the actual voting, to throw this thing in overdrive and show there are clear distinctions. There’s one candidate that is the conservative in this race, and that’s Ted Cruz, not Donald Trump.”

Cruz was in South Carolina for a debate-eve rally on Wednesday night preparing for the contest in which he'll share the stage with Trump — and where the two are anticipated to square off.

The tipping point came Tuesday, when after exactly one week of dismissing Trump’s questions about his eligibility to run for president, sometimes with jokes, sometimes by insisting that his position as a natural-born citizen was a settled legal matter, Cruz finally engaged more directly.

“You can only allow someone to take shots at you for so long,” said a Cruz source not authorized to speak on the record. “The level of silliness just kept escalating and Sen. Cruz just decided it was time to respond.”

Cruz told reporters following a rally in Hudson, N.H. that the source of Trump’s attacks was a “liberal left-wing judicial activist Harvard Law professor” and Clinton backer (also a former professor of Cruz's), and implied that Trump was receiving ammunition from such Democrats because they see him as easier to beat in a general election.

Cruz's highlighting of the professor's political inclinations, said Bob Vander Plaats, a national Cruz co-chair and influential Iowa conservative, appears designed to signal to Trump, "'If you want to keep walking down this trail, I'll walk down it, but I'm going to keep exposing the reason why you want to walk down the trail.' "

From there, the hits kept coming. He accused Trump of embodying “New York values” — a dog whistle to conservatives implying that he is a liberal out-of-touch with middle America — he obliquely questioned Trump's natural security credentials, and he made clear at a New Hampshire rally Tuesday evening that he expects to win, and that Trump will return to the hotel business.

“We believe people understand what Cruz’s guiding philosophies are, and it’s fair to compare and contrast with other candidates so voters can make a judgment about what their guiding philosophies are, not only what they say but what the record is and who they are,” said a Cruz adviser.

Cruz’s backers and super PAC allies see Trump’s past, in which he had more liberal tendencies and was friendly with the Clintons, as particularly rich material for contrast-drawing.

It's a view that appears to be embraced by Mark Levin, an influential conservative talk show host who tweeted a link Wednesday to an article posted at ConservativeReview.com urging a "cold-eyed look at Trump's record." He has previously defended Cruz against Trump's questioning of his citizenship, and may signal the beginning of a conservative talk show circling of the wagons around Cruz.

“There is so much material on Donald Trump, so much material on [his] liberal side, the money given to liberal organizations and candidates … you can go down the list," enthused Gonzalez. “Now Cruz can begin to point out some of those distinctions and say, ‘Listen, if you want that kind of president, he’s your guy, but if you want a conservative, principled one, I’m your guy.’ We’re going to see a little bit of shift in transmission.”

One possible shift came earlier this week, when a professor at Iowa's Simpson College, Kedron Bardwell, reported receiving a lengthy message-testing call that laid out a long list of possible attacks on Trump, including some that used language similar to that deployed by Cruz on Tuesday (calling Trump a “New York liberal,” for instance, according to a transcript first reported by RealClearPolitics and reviewed by POLITICO).

Trump seized on the story.

“Just found out that @tedcruz is spending a fortune on Iowa push polls negative to me,” he tweeted. “Not nice, but OK! New polls are great.”

Cruz spokesman Rick Tyler, asked directly whether the campaign was behind this particular message-testing effort, had no comment other than to note that “Iowans must be getting a million calls about a million things,” and that the campaign “does lots in the field, we talk to Iowa voters all the time.”

The conflagration between Cruz and Trump has been building for months. The Cruz campaign has long been aware that they could be Trump’s next target, and have had responses ready since at least the lead-up to the last debate in December, when signs emerged that Trump was ready to pounce. At the time, Trump suggested, days before the contest, that Cruz was a “maniac” unable to work with his Senate allies and get anything done. Ultimately, Trump laid off, to the relief of the campaign, which was not looking for a direct confrontation with the high-polling Trump.

Cruz has held off on engaging Trump for so long because he is leery of turning off the huge crowds Trump draws. The Des Moines Register/Bloomberg poll out Wednesday morning highlighted the risks for Cruz in being drawn into a protracted fight with Trump: Cruz currently is the second choice of 23 percent of Iowa voters, meaning that if Trump’s numbers drop, he will be a big beneficiary. A tussle with Trump, who has a record this cycle of embarrassing other candidates who have challenged him, could bring Cruz’s numbers down, complicating his ability to be the second choice of Trump voters down the road.

But Cruz’s backers insist that he is in a strong enough position—with the potential to offset Trump losses with the support of Carson and Huckabee voters, for instance—that it may not matter.

“There’s a conventional wisdom that you’ve got to be careful if you attack Trump,” said Jeff King, who is heading Iowa efforts for Keep the Promise I, a pro-Cruz super PAC. “I don’t necessarily agree with that. Some have said it’s hurt other candidates, and you can make that argument with Perry, Walker, Jindal, but those candidates weren’t in the position Sen. Cruz is in in Iowa. He’s got a really good campaign, he’s got money, he’s got ground game, he’s got an entire machine.”

King, the son of Rep. Steve King, an influential Cruz backer in Iowa, went on to add of Cruz’s newly vigorous engagement: “People are kind of ready for that.”

He said the super PACs backing Cruz have been following the candidate’s lead on everything, including steering clear of Trump, but wasn’t prepared to say that Cruz’s comments were a green light to start hitting him. They will be watching Thursday’s debate closely for more of those signs, he said.

There’s certainly an interest in Cruz’s efforts to push back on Trump among donors, said Toby Neugebauer, who heads an affiliated pro-Cruz super PAC and said he received around 150 emails from donors and friends on the subject.

He went on to praise Cruz’s handling of Trump this week, saying it was more effective than the pushback other candidates have served up.

“This guy is engaging, and is not a wimp and is a forceful person, but is not acting like, ‘you hurt my feelings, how dare you, you’re a jerk,’ ” Neugebauer said.

At another point in the conversation, he nodded to Cruz’s background as a Harvard-trained lawyer who clerked at the Supreme Court and served as the solicitor general of Texas.

“Ted is used to making arguments in front of the smartest people on the planet,” Neugebauer said. With a bring-it-on edge to his voice, he continued, “And he wins every time."