Cruz really blew it on the Ney York insult. Youth and inexperience.
I don’t think it will hurt him much in the long run. However, I would agree with you that Cruz lost that exchange - he needed to spend more time carefully defining the new York liberal values that he was criticizing (ie, abortion, gun control, bloomburg, and de blasio, and etc) as it was he let Trump make it look like he was attacking the victims of 911.
As soon as that came out of Cruz’s mouth I knew he was in trouble there. He was talking about how liberals are running the City but he must be careful. He gave Trump a yuge opening. Anyway WF Buckley was from Connecticut. Cruz was smart enough not to rebut that point LOL.