Ken Herman:
How refusal led to a broken convention,
Oh, so this CLEVELAND — is what it looks like.
I’ve long wondered what would happen if a primary candidate who, in the heat of battle, blasted a foe as a sniveling idiot and, post-primary, opted to eschew the political-world correct thing of endorsing the ex-foe. And what would happen if the non-endorsement
happened on the biggest stage of all? Now we know. What
happens is what once was thought might turn into a brokered convention became a broken convention.
Thanks, Ted Cruz. Now we know what this looks like, and — save perhaps for those of us enamored of political drama — it’s not pretty, not pretty at all.
Cruz never called Donald Trump a sniveling idiot, but he did go with “pathological liar” and “serial philanderer” during a primary season for the ages. Those are pretty good. Those Cruz words, of course, came after earlier praise of Trump when Cruz, and all earthlings not named Trump, thought the New York businessman was a passing political fad, an amateur candidate du jour headed for inevitable implosion. Instead of implosion, the Trump candidacy became an explosion that took out 16 GOP rivals, with Cruz as the final foe standing until he white flagged in early May. One by one, Trump’s other primary foes became his general election friends. WWCD, people wondered as convention time rolled around. What would Cruz do?
True to form, he answered it big, opting against political orthodoxy in a Wednesday night convention speech by not
endorsing Trump, a move that turned the cheers that greeted him into boos that lingered after he left.
Cruz doesn’t do political orthodoxy. Some folks love him for that. Some don’t.
Some saw Wednesday night as the supreme moment of Cruz courage. Some saw political suicide by a self-serving politician with his eyes on the White House, a guy whose 2020 vision might best be served by a Trump November disaster that allows Cruz to somehow emerge as the GOP’s next best hope. At the Texas delegation Thursday breakfast, Cruz talked a lot about political principle, how it’s important to have candidates who stand up for the Constitution. But, in a challenging answer to a challenging question from the audi-
ence, an agitated Cruz — who said he’s not decided if he’ll vote for Trump — said he “abrogated” his pledge to endorse whoever won the nomination because of Trump’s attacks on Cruz’s wife Heidi and father Rafael.
“I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and who attack my father,” he said, drawing cheers. “And that
pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi that I’m going to nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and
say ‘Thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father.’ ”
So this is what it looks like when a guy who said bad things about a foe during the primary refuses to ask us to ignore those words after the primary.
There are two ways to do this, one involving a path of lesser resistance. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the third-place finisher behind Trump and Cruz, did it that way by not showing up at the convention in his home state, an odd outcome.
Cruz has made a political career out of trodding the path of most resistance. He feasts on resistance and, in his mind, benefits from the attention attendant to it.
Now he’s gone and done it bigger time than he’s done in the past.
And thanks to him we now know what it looks like when a losing primary candidate opts not to
endorse the winner. I like how it looks and I give Cruz credit for doing it. Oh, it might turn out to
be political suicide, but I find it refreshing. Trump long taunted Cruz as Lyin’ Ted. Wednesday night, in the arena, instead of buyin’ Ted the delegates were fryin’ Ted.
A lesser man might have left as Sighin’ Ted. Now is he Politically Dyin’ Ted?
I hear you. I’ll stop now.