Agreed. I acknowledge that Cruz has followers, however, look at the states he won and how he won them. As bad as it sounds, his “strong states” are not the critical ones it takes to flip an election. Additionally, winning 5 states where 3 didn’t even have a vote and declaring that a landslide is not a strong position. About the only two states I can think of that he won strong and without the benefit of a caucus or delegate wrangling is Utah, Wisconsin and Oklahoma. In the states critical to an electoral college victory, he didn’t even win a county, never mind the state. He is not a strong candidate at all. He is only where he is because he rode in Trump’s draft for so long and his campaign staff ran a good campaign early. It is just that Ted is a weak candidate, notwithstanding his strong principles/positions. And as far as him doing well vis a vie Trump, Trump has never run for office before. Cruz has been in politics or around politics his entire adult life. He should have done better against a novice, blowhard who is self-funding his campaign. Cruz lost control when he made it personal against Trump...he got taken off his game/message and never recovered. Not it’s just a scorched earth, “I’m not going to let Trump win outright”, campaign. That makes him look petulant, and even more weak. It will affect him for the rest of his intended political career. He will not be able to shake the “Lyin’ Ted” moniker. He would be much better served at this point to bow out gracefully and try hard to rework his image.
Sorry but I had to stop reading after that point.
This election was a war. Donald Trump had a strategy which was to utilize the Media as his propaganda arm (even though they hated him) and to engage in a strategic bombing approach. In other words he did not engage in putting ground troops in place and instead just did a top down election strategy focusing on rallies and sending his message through the media and making fun of his opponents. Frankly it was a very effective strategy and apparently for all intents and purposes it was a winning strategy.
Cruz did not have the access to the media that Trump had so he had to run a ground game. He put his troops on the ground in strategic locations and where he put them they were effective. He did not "steal" delegates or "cheat". He knew he could not compete with Trump in the air war so he tried to challenge him in the ground war. Frankly everywhere that he did use his ground troops, they were effective because Trump never mobilized his ground troops to fight in the trenches that Cruz did.
Cruz ran a very effective ground war and it is to his credit that he gave Donald Trump a run for the money. But as we learned in WWII, whoever owns the skies owns the war.
Cruz got off message when he started going after Donald Trump. He would have been more effective if he had never even mentioned his name and stayed on message about social and fiscal conservatism. Frankly he lost me when he voted for TPA, but that was just the beginning of his fall. Overall he ran a poor campaign and when he started taking on Donald Trump on a personal level rather than keeping on message as to why we should have voted for him rather than voting against Trump.
The war is over. Last night was the Hiroshima bomb. Next Tuesday (if Cruz stays in) will be the Nagasaki bomb.
Frankly I would hope that Cruz and Trump could bury the hatchet before that, but then they are both too committed to destroying each other to go there. It is going to take another nuclear bomb to end this war. Hopefully it will lead to a lasting peace. But if Freepers are not willing to bury the hatchet and seek peace at this time, then I don't think we can expect the general electorate to do so.
So I would propose that everyone on this forum stop using terms like Cruzers or Lying Ted or Trumpsters or whatever the perjorative of the day is and start working together from this point to hold Donald Trump's feet to the fire and defeat the Hildabeast next November. Trump is not going to be able to do it without the support of Cruz's ground troops. If anyone thinks he can, then they are deceiving themselves. Hillary is going to launch total war, on the air and on the ground. Trump has the air war pretty much in hand, but he is going to need the kind of ground troops that kept Cruz in this race until now.
/rant.