Ted Cruz was as cold blooded as the Zodiac Killer taking the stage tonight. After another awkward nod to Lebron, he addressed the nominee only once. “I congratulate Donald Trump on winning the nomination last night.”
Over the course of the speech, he gave a pretty generic paean to common decency. Notably, he called out GOP support of the Civil Rights Act and was the only speaker this convention to mention the South Carolina church bombing. Then, with the crowd getting anxious he was talking about black people and not endorsing Trump, he dropped this bomb.
We deserve leaders who stand for principle. Unite us all behind shared values. Cast aside anger for love. That is the standard we should expect, from everybody.
And to those listening, please, don’t stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.
For those less familiar with political phraseology, a “conscience vote” is one with weighty moral implications, usually ones of war and peace, where party leadership gives you a pass to vote how you feel (the last few were on Libya, Syria, and Iran sanctions). Cruz’s message, whatever damage control Newt tried to do after the fact, was loud and clear. A vote for Trump is a vote against true conservatism and and a threat to our freedom.
I don’t know any other politicians with the balls to give a speech to their own party faithful knowing they’ll get booed on national television. Ted Cruz is from another planet.
Conventions are supposed to be infomercials, right? Well this was some Real World/Road Rules Challenge-level drama.
Trump’s Campaign — What in God’s good name were they thinking letting him go onstage? Trump said it himself, Lyin’ Ted! You trust, of all politician, this man to pass up a moment to portray himself as the lone noble crusader?
Cruz is a loose cannon and hadn’t yet paid obeisance to Trump. Just make him record a video like Rubio.
I, for one, called it!
Cruz has proven he has no fear in burning the GOP. He singlehandedly shut down the government, campaigned against sitting colleagues, and has called his own party’s majority leaders liars. Trump also insulted his wife’s looks, prompting Cruz to call him a coward, a pathological liar, narcissistic, and disgraceful. Trump calls folks names for sport, but Trump cracked something in Cruz that brought out a new level of vitriol in him. Even had Trump won, Cruz would have been the one candidate likely to take a run against him from the right in a 2020 primary.
What was the potential upside to giving him this time slot? In what universe was a man as proud as Cruz going to say nice things about Donald Trump? Cruz’s resistance was fading in his supporters’ minds, and he wouldn’t have had any major platform to address the nation. Of all the non-Trump-saying-awful-shit campaign gaffes, this one was the most preventable and the most damaging.
UPDATE: Trump and Manafort totally knew exactly what Cruz was going to say! Absolutely incredible. This wasn’t “Trump being Trump” this was a totally predictable and easily avoidable blunder. If this is how he runs his campaign god help us if he starts to run our country.
Does it matter to the election?
Yeah. I think it depresses turnout a percentage point or two. He gave “decent folk,” evangelicals, and hard right conservatives a leader that many of them have voted for cover to stay home this November. The psychology of being able to say “I’m taking the Cruz line” will be much easier particularly when so many other leading GOP politicians have fallen behind Trump.
Cruz’s future?
There’s no way this doesn’t work out well. If Trump loses and America comes to its senses, he’ll be the only Republican with a shred of dignity. If Trump wins, after four years he runs America into the ground, and Cruz can challenge in the primary. He’ll be the only Republican with a national presence who can say I told you so.
He has waffled and played the angles on immigration among other issues, earning a reputation for weaselly politicking. But he comes out of Cleveland proving he has more integrity than any other GOP leader save Mitt Romney.
This moment is great for now, but listening to Cruz brag about how he was the only Republican to stand up for freedom for the next forty years is going to be so painful.
Lastly, a Sonnet
I applied to cover the convention as ‘Special Press’ and sadly my application was rejected. To convince them to let me in, I wrote the RNC press people a sonnet.
Cleveland, the Donald, and Special Press
Donald…compare him to a summer’s day?
He is more brazen and less temperate:
Rough polls do shake the darling buds of May,
And Barack’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of the Times shines,
But rarely is his gold complexion dimm’d;
And every pol from poll sometime declines,
By chance, or voters’ changing course, untrimm’d;
But in Cleveland our summer shall not fade,
Not with good Special Press to write and blog.
So long free press can write or cameras see…
This giveth vigor to democracy.
They never emailed me back! Man I wish I could’ve been there for this.