But some in the IL delegation were taken aback by the booing and the general negativity surrounding Cruz’s speech.
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The conservative senator from Texas refused to say whether he would vote for Trump, who had maligned Cruz’s wife for her physical appearance and had suggested that his father was linked to late President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. “That is the standard we should expect from everybody”. If you want to watch the event without also being subjected to constant analysis and commercial interruptions, you can live stream the GOP convention on its official Republican YouTube channel below.
The Republican National Convention being held in Cleveland, Ohio, this week was supposed to be the moment that Republicans of all stripes – those who voted for him in the primaries and those who didn’t – united behind Donald Trump.
Who knows. Maybe Ted Cruz did, too.
“To those listening, please, don’t stay home in November”, Cruz said. “The standard that I apply is, which candidate do I trust to defend the Constitution?” said Cruz.
“The next Republican nominee needs to be able to make that case against Hillary [Clinton]”. Cruz’s wife, facing taunts and threats from convention-goers that only proved the senator’s point, had to be taken from the hall by security.
This was the obviously sensible political response for Trump supporters.
Except it was more than a rebuke.
On Tuesday night, 22-year-old Tiffany Trump spoke about holding onto her old report cards because her father had written “sweet notes” on them. Stick with me, he was saying.
“I’m with you, and I will fight for you, and I will win for you”, he declared.
Once again, Trump explained, “The answer has to be “yes” or I would not have done it…I don’t play to lose”, though, once again, he qualified that answer to say he had not thought he would so easily crush the very large GOP field of hopefuls.
“Wow, Ted Cruz got booed off the stage, didn’t honor the pledge!” the former reality TV star, 70, tweeted.
“I have seen him fight for his family, I have seen him fight for his employees, I have seen him fight for his company, and I am seeing him fight for our country”.
As the last speaker in a four-day marathon of events in Cleveland, Trump has his biggest chance yet to try to end the bickering among various factions of the Republican Party and foster a spirit of unity.
This is the favorite and most risky message of demagogues across all space and time.
In an interview with the New York Times, Trump made it crystal clear: He is risky – to America, and to its allies. He insisted it was the true conservative’s job to hold tight to his or her convictions. “Many have witnessed this violence personally, some have even been its victims”.
And yet Rubio touted Trump in a video address at the RNC Wednesday night, where the crowd broke out into – referring to jailing presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. He was arguing that the Republican Party can not survive a Trump presidency.
“The issues and election outcome are more important than him”, he said.
But speaking Thursday morning to the Texas delegation, Cruz said of the pledge: “The day that was abrogated was the day this became personal”.
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“This man is a pathological liar”.
