They didn’t want something handsome at the Republican National Convention; they wanted something angry. Ted Cruz remained defiant about not endorsing Donald Trump, insisting he is not a “servile puppy dog” who would back anyone who personally attacks his family.
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Monroe County GOP Chairman Bill Reilich predicted Trump’s campaign would send volunteers from other states to NY – the reverse of most recent presidential campaigns.
Who would have thought a year ago that the man who would emerge from the 2016 Republican National Convention looking best would be Ted Cruz.
“I understand it was a tough campaign, a personal campaign, but there is a greater good here, from my perspective, and that would be a Republican winning the White House and making those appointments to the Supreme Court”, he said. Trump told the Federal Election Commission he has more than US$10 billion. Your word, in politics, has to be your bond. “He’s politically dead”, said B.J. Van Gundy, a longtime GOP activist in Georgia. “For Cruz to bring that message into #RNC hall was a colossal error”. Yes, the Ted Cruz who shut down the government in 2013 to make a lousy point.
After an opening loss to Cruz in Iowa, Trump gained a head of steam that made him unstoppable, besting rivals in early states New Hampshire and SC, snatching seven of 12 contests on March 1, and dominating in the last seven states.
In the middle of an interview with Planned Parenthood, I realized Mike Huckabee’s daughter and Trump spokesperson, Sarah Huckabee, was sitting next to us.
“Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it”, said Trump to a raucous crowd inside Quicken Loans Arena.
The fight for America has been joined, and the battleground will be blue collar voters, a massive voting bloc that Hillary Clinton wishes would just go away. “It’s about the United States of America”.
The sense of passionate conflict among Texans Thursday was a microcosm of the friction on the convention floor Wednesday night.
Trump himself got into the act with a tweet saying that Cruz had broken his pledge to support the nominee (a pledge that Trump himself had said he wouldn’t honor), that Cruz had been booed, that he had seen the text of the speech and allowed it to proceed, and that it was no big deal.
Nor is Cruz a “liar” for not supporting Trump, as many have charged.
The next few months will determine if Obama’s policies will be cemented and expanded through both legislative and judicial appointments, or if America’s legacy of individual freedom will be protected and restored.
Reaction to Cruz was swift.
Trump speaks directly to these voters, who have found that the Democrat Party that many of them once felt represented them, has completely abandoned them.
“Sen. Cruz, a strict constitutionalist, chose not to accept the strict terms of the pledge that he signed”, Manafort told reporters. “So as far as the contract was concerned, he was the one in violation, not anybody else”.
That said, the momentum has been growing as the days have progressed, and Trump’s speech may draw out the most passionate response.
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It was said Cruz was priming himself to do what Reagan did in 1976 when he lost the nomination, but was invited up on stage by nominee, incumbent Gerald Ford, and gave to thunderous applause a short speech, conceding to, and complimenting the victor, Ford. “If you love our country and love your children as much as I know you do, stand, and speak, and vote your conscience and vote for candidates up, and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution”. There was Melania Trump’s plagiarism and the lying about it; the suppression of dissent by delegates; the vitriolic rhetoric and audience chants of “lock her up” that made delegates look like a mob; and the audience booing a senator off the stage for calling on people to “vote your conscience”.
