The theme of the day is Make America One Again.
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Make no mistake: Cruz knew exactly what he was doing. On Wednesday, that conflict spilled out into the Quicken Loans Arena courtesy of the Texas senator-and Trump knew it was coming. Some delegates, apparently, were expecting this to culminate in an endorsement of Trump’s bid for the presidency.
“Ted Cruz said you can vote your conscience for anyone who will uphold the Constitution”, Gingrich said. Trump supporters in the arena interpreted those lines as a direct snub of their candidate. Donald Trump’s youngest daughter emphasized in a speech what he means to her as a parent, calling him an “encourager” and said that his example motivates her to be better.
It was the latest display of opposition to Trump’s candidacy at a convention that has featured many of them. “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”.
“I’m not looking for an entrance, George”.
“I did not cause the screens to go blank while Mr. Cruz was speaking, as some people are thinking”, Manafort said.
Trump also endorsed a National Enquirer article that claimed Cruz’s dad was friends with John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. The calculation is evidently that Cruz thinks Trump will lose, Hillary will serve a scandal plagued one term, and seek reelection as a wounded 73 year old whom the country has finally decided it is sick of.
If you are a Ted Cruz loyalist already, what happened at Day 3 of the Republican National Convention in Cleveland probably did not surprise you.
As for Trump, the nominee’s response to Cruz’s snub was characteristically flippant. He would not knock Trump, he told his home state delegates, but he was not going to forget Trump’s personal attacks on his wife and father during the bitter GOP primary battle.
It’s true that during the primary Cruz did sign a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee. And although Trump is hardly in a position to insist that the pledge was inviolate, we shouldn’t hold Cruz to Trump’s debased standard. Normally one would wait until the next morning to step on the aftermath of the speeches, though, and with this convention, a Thursday announcement could possibly step on a bad evening for Trump. Truth is, it is hard to see him eventually endorsing Trump at some point before November. In the wake of the Cruz fiasco last night, that has become abundantly and painfully clear. In some cases, their criticisms can be dismissed as ideologically or personally motivated.
Cruz has to walk a very precarious path now.
Less than a year ago, Trump and Cruz-then rivals for their party’s presidential nomination-campaigned together in Washington D.C., jointly attacking President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. As it stands, he’s out on a limb, almost alone.
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And then – and this is very, very important to Cruz’s massive gamble – that the politicians who stood with Trump will be tainted by their association with Trump heading into 2020.
