Cruz not backing down despite backlash over Trump
Sen. Ted Cruz’s controversial speech to the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night was vintage Cruz — a calculated, high-risk gamble that could either wound his political career or give him a platform for a 2020 or 2024 White House run.
The junior senator from Texas stood by his speech and his decision not to endorse Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, a move that produced boos and alienated many conventioneers, including some members of the Texas delegation, who both cheered him and challenged him at a breakfast Thursday. Cruz responded: “I’m going to defend your right even to insult me.”
Some Texas backers were sticking with him, but even some of Cruz’s most ardent supporters seemed perplexed by his remarks. At the very least, he appears to have splintered his own base. Most delegates either professed their outrage for his refusal to support Trump or pivoted to party devotion.
“If anyone thinks I was eager to come to this convention and give a speech … supporting a great many of the policies, positions laid out by Donald Trump … despite the fact that neither he nor his campaign has ever taken back a word they said about my family, I promise you I was not eager to do this,” Cruz said Thursday morning. He also declined to say he would vote for Trump.
“What does it say when you stand up and say ‘Vote your conscience’ and rabid supporters of our nominee begin screaming ‘What a horrible thing to say?’ If we can’t make the case to the American people that voting for our party’s nominee is consistent with voting your conscience; is consistent with defending freedom and being faithful to the Constitution, then we are not going to win and we do not deserve to win.”
Cruz supporters and foes agree that his speech was a risky move that could either make him look prescient about Trump or make him more of a political outsider in Washington than he already is.
If Trump loses the general election in November, or proves to be a failure as president, Cruz’s speech and second-place finish in the 2016 GOP primaries, sets him up as the leading Republican candidate in 2020 among conservative and evangelical voters, according to several political observers.
“If Donald Trump loses, he [Cruz] will be a visionary who held his ground,” said Roger Beckett, executive director of the Ashbrook Center at Ohio’s Ashland University, which offers American history and politics educational programs to teachers and others. “If Donald Trump wins, he’ll be a bigger outsider in Washington, D.C.”
But Cruz wasn’t speaking to Washington on Wednesday night. Looking directly into the camera and the national television audience, Cruz was appealing to conservative and evangelical voters, many of whom supported his presidential run.
“The speech left the conventioneers disappointed,” Beckett said. “I’m not sure it left the same impression outside the convention. The target was the TV audience.”
Cruz still takes umbrage for Trump’s campaign retweeting an unflattering photo of his wife, Heidi. Trump compared Heidi Cruz to his wife, ex-model Melania Trump, and wrote “The images are worth a thousand words.”
Later, Trump said Cruz’s Cuban-born father, Rafael Cruz, was with Lee Harvey Oswald, President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, prior to the slaying in November 1963.
Cruz said Thursday morning: “I’m not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father,” and said the pledge that he and other Republican presidential candidates made to back the party’s eventual nominee is meaningless.
“That pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi that I’m gonna nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say, ‘Thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father,’ ” Cruz said.
Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, blasted Cruz for backing out of the pledge.
“Everybody knew about the pledges. They knew what they meant,” Manafort told reporters at a news conference Thursday. “[They knew] what obligation it put on them and how they interpreted their obligation.”
He mocked Cruz, saying he is a “strict constitutionalist [who] chose not to accept the strict terms of the pledge that he signed. As far as the contract was concerned, he was in violation, not anybody else.”
Cruz’s actions also left a bitter aftertaste for many convention attendees and other Republicans. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani called Cruz “a disloyal Republican.”
“ … If we don’t beat Hillary Clinton, I don’t think Ted Cruz can play the game ‘I’m going to run four years from now’ after being a disloyal Republican,” Giuliani said on “Breitbart News Daily” and SiriusXM.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, in a statement, diplomatically said: “There were some mixed feelings and some hurt feelings in the Texas delegation today.”
“I was Cruz’s Texas chair,” Patrick said. “But I have been very clear. I support Donald Trump because we must defeat Hillary Clinton in November.”
Said Robin Hayes, North Carolina’s GOP chairman, “It was one of the most selfish things politically I’ve ever seen.”
Cruz’s speech has split some convention delegations. When Hayes asked fellow delegate Ted Hicks what he thought of Cruz’s speech, Hicks replied, “I thought it was a fine speech.”
Hayes then told Hicks that he was no longer welcome aboard Hayes’ private Pilatus plane that they had flown in together to Cleveland. To Hicks and fellow Cruz supporter Rod Chaney, Hayes said, “I think you need to ride the bus home.”
The move is similar to how Cruz has done business in the Senate, where he has alienated fellow Republicans by often going his own way rather than following political decorum in Washington. Cruz took a shot at Republican leaders and former presidential candidates who avoided the convention.
“There are a lot of options I could have taken that politically would have been a heck of a lot easier,” he said Thursday morning. “… Turn tail and run and don’t come to the convention. There are a bunch of people who did that. I ain’t one of them.”
He’s often bucked party leadership. He questioned Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s honesty on the chamber floor on Export-Import Bank legislation.
Cruz also earned the ire of former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, for venturing from the Senate over to the House of Representatives to meet with that chamber’s conservative Republicans to plot strategy that led to a partial federal government shutdown in 2013.
Boehner called Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh,” adding, “I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.”
Texans speak out
Cruz addressed his past breaks with the party on Thursday morning, saying he is about ideals, not being part of a “social club.”
“How many of y’all would like to see more leaders stand up to John Boehner and Mitch McConnell?” he said in addressing the Texas delegation. “… Anytime you stand up … leadership screams: Support the team; you’re a Republican; we’re our leadership; sit down; shut up; just support the team. And damn it, if that’s the price, I ain’t going to do it.”
Some Texas delegates said they were upset with the way Trump and his supporters seemed to ambush Cruz.
Bill Eastland, a delegate at large from Arlington, said he watched Trump’s people incite the crowd while Cruz was still speaking.
“Last night Donald Trump was very disrespectful,” Eastland said. “I was sitting on the floor when they start getting the people in neon hats to urge the people to boo. The man has no class.”
Eloise Kennedy, an alternate delegate from Texas, said she also understands Cruz’s reasoning for not endorsing Trump but feels Cruz has a duty as a leader to support the Republican Party.
“I do not agree that he did not endorse Trump but he did as much as he could do,” Kennedy said. “He is not the only one who does not want to endorse Trump because I am still not there.”
Star-Telegram Washington Bureau reporters David Goldstein, Lesley Clark and Stephanie Golden contributed to this report, which includes material from the Charlotte Observer and Kansas City Star.
This story was originally published July 21, 2016 at 4:38 PM with the headline "Cruz not backing down despite backlash over Trump."