Ted Cruz’s last crusade
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz suspended his bid for the Republican presidential nomination last Tuesday after a crippling loss to Donald Trump in Indiana.
But that doesn’t mean he and his allies are giving up.
In the span of a single 16-hour period early this week, Cruz’s top supporters revealed that they are preparing to wage war in Cleveland over the GOP platform, while Cruz himself pointedly refused rule out the prospect of resurrecting his campaign against Trump.
It’s the latest sign that conservatives aren’t embracing the GOP’s presumptive nominee — and that this summer’s Republican convention, where other conservative groups are already girding for battle over the platform , is likely to be anything but boring.
Call it Cruz’s last crusade (at least until he runs for president again in 2020).
Speaking to radio host Glenn Beck Tuesday , Cruz said that he dropped out after Indiana because he “didn’t see a viable path to victory.”
But then he added an intriguing coda.
“If that changes,” Cruz continued, “we will certainly respond accordingly.”
In a gaggle of reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday afternoon, Cruz repeated his line about not having a viable path to victory before again raising the possibility that he could reenter the race in the weeks or months ahead.
“Of course if that changed, we would reconsider things,” Cruz said. “If circumstances change, we will always assess changed circumstances.”
The Texan also declined to endorse Trump.
“This is a choice every voter is going to have to make,” Cruz told Beck. “It is not a choice that we as voters have to make today.”
Meanwhile, a group of top Cruz supporters organized a conference call Monday night urging disappointed Cruz delegates — who have to pay their own way to the convention — not to make other plans for July 18 to 21. According to Politico, the goal was to deliver “a rallying cry to Cruz’s supporters about the importance of showing up in Cleveland and not ceding control of their slots on the party’s platform and rules committees.”
To find out more — about Cruz’s curious remarks as well as the plan for Cleveland — Unconventional spoke to former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the archconservative who led Monday’s call after serving as Cruz’s top delegate hunter during the campaign.
Unconventional: Why reach out to Cruz’s delegates now?
Ken Cuccinelli : After seeing the discouragement of some of our folks, we wanted to encourage them to stay engaged. I kept getting calls, emails, texts: “What can we do?”
The Trump people are insisting he is going to be a conservative. Maybe they’re right. My response is simply that actions speak louder than words. He’s now going to be in a five-month war with Hillary. We’ll see if he takes and holds positions under fire for long periods of time. That’s the test.
So what did you tell Cruz’s delegates?
The first thing I talked about on our call Monday night was, “Let me be very clear about what this call is not. We are not trying to undo the presumptive nomination of Donald Trump. Period. End of discussion. But there are other things to do on rules and on platform.”
Your team worked aggressively to ensure that Cruz’s delegates were elected at the local and state levels so they would be in place to support the senator during multiple rounds of balloting in Cleveland. Now some those delegates can get on the rules committee and the platform committee, where they aren’t bound by anything but their own consciences. Do you think they could have a big impact?
Right now, the largest bloc of voters elected to the convention — by loyalty — are Cruz delegates. By double. We have twice as many as Trump.
What are the numbers?
At this point, those numbers are about 500 for Cruz versus 250 for Trump.
Let’s talk about the platform. What will Cruz’s delegates be fighting for?
The platform has been an area of interest for conservatives for a long time and that has not abated. It is an expression of what, on an ideal day, a Republican is supposed to be. It sets the bar.
Some issues don’t change, like the protection of life. We have to have the votes to keep the abortion plank the same. But there are new ones too. If we’re going to deal with the silliness on [transgender access to] bathrooms — and it’s ridiculous that we need to do it, but we obviously do — then we will do that.
We want to express what we believe and make sure it’s firmly rooted in the platform.
Since clinching the nomination, Trump has already departed from conservative orthodoxy on taxes and the minimum wage. Is he a threat to the platform?
I don’t want to overplay that. That remains to be seen. I’m not sure he’ll care at all.
What about the rules? Will the Cruz folks be battling it out with the Trump folks on the rules committee?
You seem to be inherently casting this as Cruz people versus Trump people. But when it comes to something like the rules, this is very much the establishment versus the grassroots, and I think you would find an awful lot of overlap between Cruz and Trump delegates in that regard.
Look at 2012 and how it infuriated a lot of us, myself included, when the additional oppression was applied by the establishment folks with Rule 40(b) [which decreed that a candidate must win a majority of delegates in eight states or territories to be eligible for the nomination].
It was a great irony that the two candidates who got over the 40(b) threshold this year were the two most antiestablishment candidates in a field of 17: Trump and Cruz. That was certainly not the establishment’s intent when that rule was put in place.
So what’s an example of a rule that the grassroots might fight the establishment over?
One example would be to forbid the RNC from amending the rules in between conventions.
On Tuesday, Cruz seemed to open the door to resurrecting his campaign “if circumstances change.” Why did he say that? What circumstances would have to change for Cruz to reenter the race?
Probably the death of Donald Trump. [Laughs] Look, Ted is a lawyer. He is a literalist in many respects. That’s the kind of constitutionalist he is. And I’m sure there is some theory — like if Trump did something so unbelievable that even his own people threw him overboard. Then in that crazy, wild circumstance, Ted wouldn’t rule it out.
It sounds like Cleveland might be exciting after all.
Yes, I hope so … since I’m going. [Laughs] Nobody likes to be bored.
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