Cruz: No-go on Trump is about family, principle
Senator tries to explain failure to endorse to tense Texas delegation.
CLEVELAND — Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz was back Thursday on the big stage, in a packed room with a huge crush of national reporters, answering questions from Texas delegates in an atmosphere crackling with tension and consequence about why he still couldn’t bring himself to endorse Donald Trump for president.
It was Cruz’s failure to say he would vote for Trump in his prime-time convention speech Wednesday, or to make party unity a centerpiece of his message, that brought the house down upon him, his speech ultimately swallowed in a cascade of boos and jeers.
Cruz, who had largely disappeared from public view after dropping out of the presidential race with a crushing defeat in Indiana on May 3, was all of a sudden sharing the headlines with Trump on the convention’s last day.
It was vintage Cruz, who cloaked his refusal to commit to Trump in his placing principles over party.
either stand for shared principles or we’re not worth anything,” Cruz told the Texas dele-
gation, most of whom were pledged to him in both heart and head, but would also dearly love to leave Cleve- land feeling like they could pledge their troth to their party’s nominee in the hopes of actually winning the White House in 2016.
One delegate after another pressed Cruz on why he couldn’t see his way to helping the party pull itself together.
“Are you going to vote for Trump?” he was asked.
“I can tell you I am not going to vote for Hillary,” he replied.
Cruz has built his career — from his 2012 Senate elec- tion to his second-place fin- ish in the 2016 presidential race — on the strength of the enemies he made, most especially in his own party.
If Trump loses, or proves to be a disaster as president, Cruz will be remembered as the courageous voice who said, “no,” while other erst- while 2016 rivals — like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — took their turns pledging allegiance to the party’s nominee.
“I am not going to throw rocks at Donald,” Cruz told his fellow Texans, noting that the line that set off the spasm of negative reaction on the floor of the Quicken Loans Arena was one that, on the face of it, seemed inoffensive and unassailable: “Don’t stay home in November. Stand and speak and vote your conscience.”
But in the supercharged politics of the moment, “con- science” had become the ral- lying cry and escape hatch for those, mostly Cruz supporters, who find Trump for policy or personal reasons, beyond the pale.
“What does it say when you say, ‘Vote your conscience,’ and rabid supporters of our nominee say,‘ What a horrible thing to say?’” Cruz asked his fellow Texans.
Defends wife, father
Cruz said he had been asked by Trump to speak at the convention because the Trump campaign evidently felt he could drive up turnout even without explicitly extending an endorsement, which he had never prom- ised and which, he said, he personally told Trump three days ago that he would not be bestowing in his convention speech.
Cruz said when Trump originally asked him to give the speech a few weeks ago, he felt obligated to accept the offer, and described his speech, with its focus on “freedom” — as an ideological and policy blueprint for a Trump campaign determined to draw the votes of doubting conservatives.
“My speech last night was an outline to Donald Trump and his campaign — this is how you can win,” he said.
Trump was unimpressed, tweeting Wednesday night, “Wow. Ted Cruz got booed off the stage, didn’t honor the pledge! I saw his speech two hours early but let him speak anyway. No big deal!”
The pledge that Trump said Cruz did not honor was one that all the Republican candidates had agreed to — originally designed to keep Trump in the party fold if he lost — to support whoever won the nomination.
“I’ll tell you the day that pledge was abrogated. The day that was abrogated was the day this got personal,” Cruz said, referring to per- sonal attacks inspired by Trump on Cruz’s wife, Heidi, and his father, Rafael, a Cruz delegate from Texas.
“I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father,” he said.
When a member of the delegation prodded Cruz that he needed to rise above the personal attacks because “that’s politics,” an agitated Cruz shot back that “this is not about politics.”
“Right and wrong matter,” he said.
‘Always ... the victim’
But, after Cruz had left, Jeff Roe, Cruz’s campaign man- ager, was asked whether an apology from Trump for the personal attacks might make a difference in enabling Cruz to eventually endorse Trump.
“No,” he said. “That’s playground stuff.”
But, Roe said, Cruz still hopes to reach a comfort level with Trump on policy matters that will enable him to make an endorsement before it’s all over.
If so, it would be out of character for Cruz, whose natural inclination favors party disunity.
“We’re proud of our sena- tor standing tall,” said Maggie Wright, a Republican activist from Burleson, who was at the breakfast event where Cruz spoke and said the dele- gates who booed Cruz in the Quicken Loans Arena “were acting like Democrats.”
Republican voters who chose Trump over Cruz, she said, “chose evil over good.”
For the early months of the presidential race, Cruz sought to portray himself as an allied outsider with Trump.
Now that Trump is the nominee, he is playing him as the ultimate insider.
“Amazing how he always manages to make himself the victim,” said Carl Tepper, an at-large Trump delegate from Lubbock, where he is the county chairman. “He’s done it in the Sen- ate and now he’s doing it in the party. He has a char- acter flaw that enables him to divide almost everything he touches.”
Scacco said in the short term, Cruz matters because his story line has contributed to the narrative that Trump is fracturing the Republican Party and the convention may have failed to unify the party ahead of the Democrats nominating Hillary Clinton next week in Philadelphia.
But Tom Mechler, Texas Republican Party Chairman, told the state’s delegates after Cruz left Thursday:
“I have news for you. There never has been a perfect presidential candidate. Donald Trump is not per- fect. If you are looking for perfection, he was crucified 2,000 years ago.
“I am voting my con- science,” Mechler said. “I am voting for Donald Trump.”