All would not have been well. Cruz is just very desperate because you must win early. They had spent $$$$$ on internal polling and knew he could only win in limited places. Iowa was the place. Carson is not to blame for anything. Remember the ‘shaming letters?’
There’s lots of stuff that could have unravelled his campaign. Someone should have followed up with the fraud in Maine. There is no way that he won that election without fraudulent assistance.
I’m really shocked his campaign went so far. The length is only attributed to the millions of dollars vested into him by the handful of donors. He exited on May 3 with close to 10 million dollars, btw. He did not quit due to a lack of money to continue the campaign. BOOM from DJT.
‘I’m really shocked his campaign went so far.’
Everything else you posted was excellent—great analysis. I quibble with the above, however. As soon as Cruz selected Jeff Roe to run his campaign, no further shocks should have been forthcoming. Cruz told us everything we needed to know at that moment; what followed was entirely predictable.
Roe has a very broad and well known reputation: win at any cost. Any cost to include lies, smears, dirty tricks, cheating, you name it. That is who Roe is; that is how he runs campaigns.
Nobody hires Roe to run a clean, ethical campaign. That would have been like hiring Bill Clinton, in his heyday, to run a coed-only college. Unless by ‘run the college’ one means, ‘treat it like a harem,’ Bill would have been the wrong person for the job.
Likewise Roe. A candidate hires Roe to haul his butt across the finish line in first place, no matter how dirty the campaign must be that gets him there. Cruz tried, for PR purposes, to portray himself otherwise, but actions speak louder than words. As soon as Cruz put Roe in charge, the cheating was history.