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Ted Cruz couldn't beat Donald Trump "fair and square". All he could do was jump on the GOPe character assassination bandwagon

See, this is where I believe you are just wearing the Trump blinders. Come on man, Trump has run the most nasty, distateful campaign in modern times. He has made a complete mockery of the GOP primary. His entire strategy has been to insult, belittle, tear down, smear, trash, etc, every other candidate in the race. He has taken Reagan's 11th commandment and turned it on its head. Instead of running on his own policies and avoiding attacking other Republicans, his entire campaign is based around attacking other Republicans. How on earth do you think he could ever unify the party after what he has done? And that doesn't even get to the general election problems he has having alienating pretty much every demographic except maybe white males.

Look, if Trump were a real conservative leading a movement that could stand the test of time I would be willing to get behind his candidacy even if I knew it would not win this time around. But Trump isn't a movement, he's not even a conservative. This is a one off for him and his policies, to the extent you can really define them, is populist protectionist with some nationalism mixed in. I'm sorry, but though I agree with some things Trump says, I mostly see him as an opportunist pretending to be a conservative to get what he wants at this moment in time.

Cruz is imperfect, no doubt. My biggest fear with him is that I don't really think he is terribly likable. But at least Cruz IS an ideological conservative and against that bag of bones Hillary, I think he can win. Trump I think would simply be blown out in a landslide and it would be a pointless loss since Trump represents nothing lasting.

The day Trump entered this race I knew it wouldn't end well. This man has divided the right of center in a way I've not seen in my lifetime. People that really like Trump, perhaps including yourself, seem to do so on a gut level. They don't care all that much about his policies because they support the man. The problem is, an ideological conservative like myself and millions of others just don't operate that way. We see Trump as more of a clownish figure who knows almost nothing about the Constitution, American history and the mistakes and missteps to be avoided, ideological conservatism with the goal of shrinking and devolving government back to the states, and on and on and on. Someone else I think said it on this thread or another. The chasm between the two sides here (Trump or Cruz) is so vast that arguing about it is almost pointless now. Trump supporters I think just like the guy on a gut level, Cruz supporters feel they are making the more logical choice. There doesn't seem to be a way to reconcile this.

Lastly, I will vote for Trump if he is the nominee. I hope he isn't because I don't like him and believe he will lose badly to Hillary, but I will suspend my dislike of the man long enough to cast a Trump vote if it comes to that. I hope you Trump people can do the same if Cruz is the nominee, but I've seen an awful lot of Trump supporters say they won't.

Come on man, Trump has run the most nasty, [distasteful campaigns] in modern times.

You're the one with the blinders, because Cruz and the GOPe out-nastied and out-distastefulled Donald Trump a long time ago.

I've never seen a more relentless and diabolically slanted campaign of character assassination in my life, fully aided and abetted by the Left and Mass Media.

Ted Cruz played the race card, for God's sake, knowing full well that Donald Trump isn't in the least bit racist or bigoted.

And, nowadays, the Cruz campaign can't string together 2 sentences without attacking the catch-all boogeyman Donald Trump.

Donald Trump is crass, blunt, and juvenile at times, but the shameless, vile, amoral behavior which the GOPe/Mass Media and now Ted Cruz have exhibited makes Trump look like a nun.

Donald Trump is candid and relatively honest, sometimes brutally so. He doesn't speak like a lawyer when answering questions, and that's a good thing.

Ted Cruz is the one who has totally inverted his supposed anti-Establishment principles, and he parrots every single GOPe attack against Trump. He's like the Mini-GOPe, saying "me, too" to every meme they try to promulgate.

In doing so, Ted Cruz has likely helped destroy two candidacies, not just one...

I congratulate you for a reply that it as courageous as it is insightful.

You have the courage in the face of a swarm of Trump supporters to turn the search light of truth onto their delusions. I don't think there have been more than one or two replies in this thread which dared to tell the truth. For example, "Trump has run the most nasty, distasteful campaign in modern times." You make it clear that it is Trump, not Cruz, who has turned this affair into a shambles because Trump's "entire strategy has been to insult, belittle, tear down, smear, trash, etc, every other candidate in the race."

To dare without wisdom is merely brash but you coupled insights with courage and produced a praiseworthy analysis. Having identified the culprit in this affair you then succinctly characterized him as a "populist protectionist with some nationalism mixed in" thus exactly defining the political reality of the candidate. He is anything but a conservative and you tell us what the fact he is, "an opportunist pretending to be a conservative to get what he wants at this moment in time."

Many of us have said from the first day Trump entered the race that he was not a conservative, that he was incoherent and inconsistent in his policies, that his biography was deplorable, revealing a repugnant character unworthy of the highest office in the world. Every day his every utterance in this campaign has only confirmed our initial understanding of the man.

Having properly identified Trump as the man who has soiled the process, having accurately identified him as an unprincipled opportunist, you make the incisive value judgment:

if Trump were a real conservative leading a movement that could stand the test of time I would be willing to get behind his candidacy even if I knew it would not win this time around. But Trump isn't a movement, he's not even a conservative. This is a one off for him and his policies

All of this misplaced faith in Donald Trump is in the service of an unworthy cause. In fact, as you point out, there is no cause apart from the cause of Donald Trump himself. This is not Goldwater in 1964 courageously defining conservatism to young Republicans like me, this is a rogue off the reservation who is simply on the make. Trump is founding no new political philosophy, no movement, nothing worthy of the destruction he is bringing down on all of us.

There is no movement to be founded by Donald Trump because the entire campaign is a sham and the cynical application of reality television to the stump. It is shameless at its core because it is utterly selfish.

So there is no movement and there can be no victory with Trump, a reality which you point out and which the data relentlessly drives home to any observer with an open mind. Trump is the most hated potential presidential candidate in living memory, he has no hope whatsoever of making up the deficiencies among voters of color, women, or suburbanites with white males whom you properly identify as the realm of his support. With his stratospheric negatives, Trump will need about 80% of white males to win.

To quote you once again, Trump's debacle "would be a pointless loss since Trump represents nothing lasting." That is because Trump supporters on a gut level, as you point out, support the man and not a coherent set of conservative policies. When will we conservatives finally learn our lesson and properly vet candidates according to conservative bona fides? We are whoring after a contrived reality television image with no integrity. We will get not a conservative but a narcissist. This is so unnecessary when we have a bona fide conservative in Ted Cruz.

Trump supporters spend a lot of time castigating the GOPe, and there is much to decry, but they ought to ask themselves what sort of message are they sending to freshly elected conservative Representatives and Senators who see how fickle the conservative base is when it comes to supporting a man who stood on the floor of the Senate all night with a urine bag tied to his leg fighting for that conservative base. These newly elected representatives and senators will conclude, and rightly so, that there is no upside in fighting the good fight against the establishment in Washington because the base will desert them to go whoring after a mountebank who shows them a little leg.

I congratulate you on your insightful and courageous reply.