The beginning of the end for Ted Cruz

[WestVirginiaRebel]

The Hill:

Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas) has run a brilliant campaign, and if it were not for Donald Trump, he'd probably be on the verge of wrapping up the Republican nomination by now. The Texas firebrand knew long before others that the party's primary schedule and delegate allocation rules played to his advantage, not to an establishment candidate like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush. From his arrival in the Senate, Cruz has bent the political space-time continuum around himself by demonstrating GOP leaders' inability to govern effectively or deliver on their promises to conservatives.

 

But he has made a fatal mistake. After excoriating the GOP establishment in the Senate and on the campaign trail, Cruz has now made common cause with the party in a desperate attempt to stop Trump. Wisconsin marked the turning point. Initially, he was coy about accepting the party's support. He did not court it, but Wisconsin was crucial to slowing Trump's momentum. And it worked. The Texan took 36 of the state's 42 delegates and appeared to have dealt a setback to the New York real estate mogul. But by cooperating with the party in Wisconsin, Cruz crucially altered the narrative of the campaign. The core of his electoral value proposition has been fierce opposition to the party's leaders. Once he tacitly accepted the party's embrace, he began to morph from a conservative stalwart to an opportunist.

 

The end of the beginning came in mid-March when establishmentarian Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) endorsed Cruz. The beginning of the end came with Cruz's victory in Wisconsin on April 5, when the media portrayed it as a product of an unholy alliance between Cruz and the establishment. This narrative fed directly into discussions of scenarios in which Cruz would conduct raids on Trump's delegates. In turn, the party would make changes in the convention rules and use Trojan-horse delegates to hand the nomination to Cruz, or a white-knight candidate such as Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.). Cruz appeared too-clever-by-half, or worse, a patsy being played by the establishment to, first, turn away Trump, then deny the nomination to Cruz.

 

A kiss by the GOP establishment in 2016 has been the kiss of death. This has been the most consistent pattern of the campaign. Yet, as strategic as Cruz has been in his run, he seems to have missed this cautionary lesson. Or perhaps he believed he was immune, or he felt the opportunity slipping away and acted in desperation.

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Ted Cruz collapses?