I reply that if Ted Cruz goes into the convention with as few as two thirds of the delegates but emerges, like Abraham Lincoln did, with the nomination it demonstrates how much Donald Trump is viscerally detested by nonestablishment grassroot conservatives in the Republican Party and it is an indictment of the kind of campaign that Donald Trump has conducted. Absolute nonsense. Rather, the factual case would be that the GOPe, allied with the Establishment/Left/Media, and the unprincipled Cruz campaign, just barely, was able to blunt Donald Trump's march to the nomination with an unprecedented campaign of character assassination as relentless as it was immoral and slanted. Abraham Lincoln didn't have to contend with anything approaching the 24/7/365 vendetta of slander that has been directed at him.
It's amazing that he's standing at all after such suicidal behavior on the part of the party elites. That will be the only reason for Donald Trump coming up short.
And you'd just like to pretend that didn't even exist. You'd like to think that the demonization was all just part of e legitimate process. For shame.
Also, you utterly failed to explain how the party wouldn't be irreparably splintered. The reason for that is that there is no scenario in which Cruz gets the nomination that doesn't guarantee that fact.
So, in essence, you are rooting for the party to be splintered. This is the type of realization that has caused Cruz's tumble in the polls post-Wisconsin, along with the Colorado fiasco in which Donald Trump turned lemons into lemonade. If Colorado didn't cause Cruz to fade in the polls after Wisconsin, then what, may I ask, did?
As to your notes regarding the swing states, again you're in denial of reality. It should be clear to any objective observer that Ted Cruz is an incredibly weak candidate in such states.
So, so summarize, you cheer for a scenario in which Ted Cruz swipes the nomination from Donald Trump, splinters the party, destroys voter enthusiasm, and goes on to lose in a landslide in November.
Fortunately, I think you will find that the GOPe and the GOP delegate are not as bent on suicide as you suppose. That's why your scnenario (Cruz splintering the party) won't even come to pass.
The far more likely outcome would be to go "off the board" after appropriate shenanigans with the rules, and install a true insider (as opposed to the dupe Ted Cruz) in the place of both the first and second place candidates.
Basically you favor utter chaos, combined with the whimsical belief that (magically, mind you) Ted Cruz, whom the voters have soundly rejected, will somehow unify a party whose elite have done everything in thir power to thwart their own frontrunner.
In this scenario, splintering the party is the best possible outcome. Indeed it's very destruction as a force in national politics is the more likely outcome.
All this is supposed to be for the best of the country and the party.
You speak of Donald Trump's narcissism. I submit to you that Donald Trump, if the situation were reversed, would not attempt such mayhem, and thus, I submit tha tTed Cruz's ego and narcissism make Donald Trump's pale in comparison, with Cruz willing to risk everything on a gambit that, even if successful, will guarantee a Hillary victory November.
Ted Cruz is putting his ambition ahead of both the needs of the party and the country, and he will be remembered for that, should his suicidal efforts succeed.
Fortunately, at this point, it appears that Donald Trump, against all odds, will emerge victorious. He is the only person with a real chance to unite the party, because he will have been tempered by the incredible fire he has had to walk through.
To reiterate, however, you failed to explain how Ted Cruz could possibly unite the party, and your assertion about Trump being "viscerally detested" remains an illegitimate substitute for what the American People have actually witnessed over the last few months: an all out effort by an entrenched, corrupt establishment, to destroy the only man who will shake the DC Uniparty cartel to its very core, without which nothing in Washington will ever begin to change for the better.
Ted Cruz has exhibited his selfishness and lack of character repeatedly throughout his campaign, and you imagine that somehow, with extremely narrow demographic support, horrible performance in swing states, and a huge deficit in both delegates and popular vote, is somehow the candidate to unite the party.
It is to laugh, if it weren't so serious.
Inasmuch as you are not on the ground here in America, I believe that you're completely misjudging the situation, and Donald Trump securing the necessary delegates before the convention, or during it, will bear me out my assertion.
So you're in the "chaos, splintering, and President Hillary guaranteed" column, Got it...
It is a banality to say that the Republican establishment opposes Trump. I don't know why it is necessary to say that the Republican establishment also opposes Cruz and with better reason. But that banality requires some sense of proportion, the failure of Donald Trump to secure grassroots conservative activist support is almost entirely unrelated to the opposition to Trump by the establishment. These people are not cutting deals with K St., they are not intimate with Mitch McConnell, these are ideologically committed conservatives who for the most part make their living outside of politics and they see in Ted Cruz a real conservative and they see something repugnant in Donald Trump.
To argue that Donald Trump is actually a victim of a campaign of victimization is sheer projection. I have been an adamant opponent of Donald Trump because of his character failings and I know damn well that I'm not a member of the Republican establishment. Donald trumps failings are real, his opponents need not invent anything to victimize him, they need only review his biography. I have catalogued over and over for readers generally and for you in particular the myriad disqualifying incidents and character traits of Donald Trump. Donald Trump has not been demonized, he has been exposed.
There is no reason to believe that the party will be splintered just because Cruz gets the nomination. If the party is so splintered it is because Trump partisans decline to unite with the party nominee. Somehow this is accepted as legitimate behavior. To turn your face away from the fact that the nomination of Donald Trump is likely to splitter the party is to indulge in willful blindness. Those who will not support Donald Trump will do so because they are offended by the man and he has only himself to blame, not the Republican establishment, not the conservative grassroots, but his own big mouth. By way of one example among many, it's is not just feminists, not just Democrat women, not just single women, but staunch conservative women who are utterly offended by Donald Trump. 75% of women when nothing to do with the man and that is not the fault of the Republican establishment, it is certainly not the fault of Ted Cruz, the fault is not in the stars but in Donald Trump himself.
I reject entirely your supposition:
So, to summarize, you cheer for a scenario in which Ted Cruz swipes the nomination from Donald Trump, splinters the party, destroys voter enthusiasm, and goes on to lose in a landslide in November.
Another supposition for which there is utterly no evidence but, indeed, real evidence to the contrary is your projection that trump's narcissism "would not attempt such mayhem." The facts to the contrary are that Donald Trump has more than once threatened to bolt the party, perhaps run as a third-party candidate but in any event throw a spanner into the works and prevent the election of a Republican candidate. It is Trump who has made these threats not Cruz. There is no warrant for any suggestion that the opposite of these facts will obtain.
I reject emphatically your assertion that "Ted Cruz has exhibited his selfishness and lack of character repeatedly throughout his campaign." Every allegation from those beginning in Iowa to those in Colorado are false, unfounded, and propaganda actions of the Trump. The attacks against Ted Cruz have falsely accused him of adultery, scurrilous lay a maligned his religious faith, and insinuated that his father is guilty of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Nothing approaches that degree of malicious lying against an opponent can be credibly associated with Cruz.
I will be in America next week where I will be no better off to judge the situation than I am from here in Germany. I have access to the same sources of information that you do. If you live in Texas you are hardly talking to people who are in Massachusetts. You get your information from the same sources I do and I'm in no worse position geographically to form these opinions. I trust unlike other Trump supporters you are not insinuating some lack of patriotism.
I still await hearing from you whether you will support Cruz if he is nominated?
