It ain't over till its over, Jim.
If Trump succeeds in getting 1237 ahead of the convention (and I mean really gets 1237 solid delegates, not counting those who are by definition "swing" delegates who can change even on the first ballot), then the nomination is rightfully Trump's and Cruz should step aside.
If not, then Trump is no more mathematically capable of being selected than is Cruz and one or the other has got to pull delegates commitments together in the home stretch. That's how this selection process has gone since the primary process as we know it today was instituted.
Cruz (97%) is the most conservative running. He is not a traitor to the grassroots any more than Lincoln was who outlasted former Governor of New York and U.S. Senator William H. Seward on the 3rd round. He's doggedly committed to the conservative message and Trump is doggedly committed to ... what? Himself? His "image" as he has said just today?
The media have made him the high profile personality that he is today, and a lot of folks are overwhelmed by the TV face the media have promoted all these years. He's edgy, controversial, brash, arrogant, - just like the media themselves - and better than that he's great for ratings.
His name recognition is 100%, but his support is surface and fickle -- like it is with most TV personalities.
Cruz? Not so much. He's the opposite of a media darling. He's "hated" in Washington, so they say, yet the GOPe at the end of this primary are wandering aimlessly. Tables are turned - Cruz has the GOPe - the same guys that fanaticized about killing him on the floor of Senate (i.e.., Graham) eating out of his hand now, not the other way around.
Cruz wins primaries with grassroots selected Tea Party delegates without ingratiating himself to the GOPe; they are forced to have to cozy up to Cruz the way we have held our collective noses to support McCain and Romney ourselves.
This time the shoe's on the other foot. Let's revel in that fact. Cruz is not GOPe and the GOPe knows they simply have nowhere else to go.
And all the less-than-organized Trump team does is whine, because Cruz knows how the game is played and Trump is still trying to catch on. Why do you suppose he hired GOPe insider Paul Manafort anyway? Trumpsters aren't complaining about Manafort's GOPe insider creds are they?
Where we're concerned, what Trump says isn't always conservative, even as his stated Trump Tower "tranny" bathroom acceptance pander yesterday seems to imply - all the while he strokes our side with his stated support for the NC bathroom law -- it's a throw away line, not a conviction -- hoping that makes it all better.
We are given the choice to hear what we want to hear as conservatives and the politically correct get to hear what they want to hear. And he'll call anyone a liar for calling him out on his inconsistency.
He's promoting an image. He says so. He's a canvas that conservatives and politically-left alike can project on to him anything they want him to be without a basis beyond words and positions he's adopted over the last 9 months. Sound like any other candidates we know that have run and become President recently?
Conservatives are placing their faith in Trump based largely upon slogans only. But he's a chameleon. He's excused bad past positions he's held, as expedient business decisions - but must one lose their character in the name of promoting their "business?" It gives business owners a bad name -- as though we all act so opportunistically to ingratiate ourselves to power. THAT is the embodiment of NY Values and exactly what Cruz was decrying at his own expense.
Trump wants it both ways. Cruz wants it the conservative way. And that's the difference between the two.
Funny thing is Lincoln was inaugurated in March, 1861 and those Southern State delegates that chose him were on the other side of the war before Lincoln's first year was out.
Who betrayed whom in the end?
FReegards!
