Again, you fail to appreciate the righteous anger of the voters against lying politicians and their big money donors.
Cruz is young. He can try again after he’s wizened up a bit, proved himself to be a leader and has a few accomplishments under his belt. Reagan didn’t make it the first time either.
Any freshman Senator running for President is definitely a longshot bid. I’ve been with Cruz at least since the Obamacare filibuster and when I met him at a speech two years ago, told him he’d be my candidate if he decided to run for President, but I never thought he’d have an easy path to the nomination. No doubt he would learn from a failed campaign and be a better candidate next time.
This splitting of the conservative base between Trump and Cruz is an ugly situation for the conservative anti-establishment movement. The party has always had the Rockefeller/Goldwater split but this is exposing the much less talked about split among conservatives which could be described as the “Mark Levin/Michael Savage” split. Those two have hated each other for years and Ted Cruz and Donald Trump seem to line up ideologically and stylistically with those two.
About the donors, this speech by Cruz calling them out is still one of my favorites.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/ted-cruz-republican-donors-actively-despise-our-base-214203
Ted Cruz: “Republican donors actively despise our base, actively despise the men and women who showed up and voted you and me into office.”