Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz not only leads in Iowa, but also in California:

A new Field Poll in California finds Ted Cruz has surged ahead of his GOP presidential rivals with 25%, followed by Donald Trump at 23%, Marco Rubio at 13%, Ben Carson at 9%, Rand Paul at 6%, and Jeb Bush at 4%.

And that isn’t the only good news in this poll for Cruz. It also shows that he’s now twice as likely to be GOP voters’ second choice. This means that he will continue to surge if (or when) some of his rivals get out of the race, which they’ll undoubtedly do once they lose (big-time) in Iowa.

Cruz’s surge comes despite relentless attacks from his rivals for the Republican nomination and establishment-friendly columnists like the Washington Post‘s Jennifer Rubin.

And that proves that 2016 will be different from other years. Until this election season, negative attacks from establishmentarians against real conservatives were always successful, which is how moderates like John McCain and Mitt Romney ended up being the Republican nominee. Not anymore. The establishment tried to take out Donald Trump, which only resulted in him rising in the polls. Now they’re going after Cruz, and the results are the same. He’s stronger than ever before and actually seems to be relishing the attacks.

Regardless, the assault on Cruz will almost certainly continue: the establishment doesn’t have another card to play. Attempts to burnish their own appeal aren’t working because conservatives have completely had it with them. And so the only option left is to discredit and smear conservatives like Cruz, hoping that it’ll damage him so much that they can (almost literally) steal the elections.

It won’t work, but what else can they do? They’ll rather burn the world down than let a principled conservative win the nomination.

If I were Cruz I’d politely ask the establishment and his rivals to continue playing dirty: it’ll only result in him “cruzin” to the nomination because the base rightfully interprets the attacks as a sign that he’s the real conservative deal.