Underscoring deep divisions at the Republican National Convention, US Senator Ted Cruz of Texas was loudly booed after he declined to endorse the party’s presidential nominee Donald Trump and urged people to vote according to their conscience. When I asked one man how he felt, he began, “Well, I’m a Republican”, then went on to say, “It makes my skin crawl when you have attack politics like that, I must admit”.
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In beginning his remarks today, he said, “I recognize there are some folks here and elsewhere at the convention who are not happy with me”.
Claim: Donald Trump’s tweet congratulating his wife Melania on her speech at the Republican Convention was identical to the message Barack Obama sent Michelle in 2012.
A day after being booed off the stage for encouraging thousands of GOP activists and bigwigs to “vote your conscience” – as opposed to “vote for Donald Trump” – Cruz told the Texas delegation his prior promise to support the GOP nominee was not irrevocable.
Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who Trump selected last week to be his running mate, accepted the nomination for vice president during a speech where he spoke on his switch from becoming a Catholic Democrat to an evangelical Republican during the years of former president Ronald Reagan. I’m just surprised he didn’t endorse.
Unless Cruz gets a personality transplant, he will also never get enough people to vote their conscious for him to win a Republican nomination, let alone the presidency.
Susan Hutchison, chair of the Washington delegation, said she confronted Cruz after his speech and called him a “traitor to the party”.
“I’m a Christian, a conservative and a Republican, in that order”, Pence said, to applause from the convention floor. The night’s theme is “Make America One Again,” a nod to the Republican unity that’s thus far eluded Trump and his campaign.
It was an awkward night for Ted Cruz.
Maria Farias, vice chairwoman of the Bexar County GOP, said she did not buy Cruz’s reluctance to back Trump because he attacked the Cruz family. Republicans, Democrats and Independents who help build North Atlantic Treaty Organisation into the most successful military alliance in history would all come to the same conclusion: “Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit and fundamentally ill-prepared to be our Commander in Chief”, he said.
“He signed the pledge – all of the candidates did”, said John Antoniello of Staten Island, who said he was irritated Cruz did not endorse Trump.
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Rex Elsass, central OH political consultant who has aided Gov. John Kasich’s campaigns, ran Pence’s successful 2012 effort.
