Ted Cruz Is An Enemy Within

August 1st, 2016 | T. Carter
cruz

When Ted Cruz stormed onto the political scene in 2012, I was his number one supporter – according to myself – but as his campaign began to unfold in the fall, I turned on him. The Ted Cruz I thought I knew turned out to be someone else. He turned out to be a sniveling, two-timing politician. His refusal to endorse the Republican nominee at the RNC on July 20 reaffirmed Ted Cruz as nothing more than a typical, self interested politician. We shouldn't be surprised if Ted Cruz takes his personal vendetta to the 2020 Republican primaries, even if Donald Trump is president.


The day after being booed and passionately heckled by Republicans inside the convention hall in Cleveland, Ted Cruz tried to make the case that his stand was based on principle. However, in the same speech at a rally, he made it clear that it had less to do with principle and more to do with a personal beef. Cruz told his crowd, “I'm not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father.” Cruz sounded principled and his audience was receptive to his comments, but one big problem lurked in Cruz's logic. Ted Cruz, just like Donald Trump, was engaged in a political battle that started with a Cruz super-PAC running an advertisement that featured a nude Melania Trump. Because the ad was sponsored by a super-PAC, Ted Cruz was able to reap the benefits of it without having to claim any responsibility. According to Donald Trump, Ted Cruz was aware of the ad, even though communication between campaigns and their PACs are illegal in the United States.

Assuming that Trump believed Cruz had a hand in an ad that exploited Melania, Trump's retweet of a photo negatively portraying Heidi Cruz as unattractive was fire being returned by the Trump campaign. In the campaign timeline, Trump's wife was maligned before Heidi Cruz. In such a case, Cruz should have put aside his personal beef to endorse Trump at the RNC and help unify conservatives against Hillary Clinton. Instead, Cruz refused to endorse Trump because he is self interested and likely intent on running in 2020 by either challenging president Clinton, or challenging president Donald Trump in a Republican primary.


In 1992, Pat Buchanan did serious damage to president George HW Bush when he challenged him for the Republican nomination. If Cruz doesn't get what he wants by seeing Donald Trump lose to Hillary in November, we shouldn't rule out an attempt to unseat Donald Trump on the premise that he has failed, or is “not a real conservative”, or that he has wiped his butt with the Constitution. We shouldn't rule out the idea that Cruz's “principled conservatism” will be used as an excuse to challenge president Trump in 2020, just as Buchanan's conservatism drove him to challenge Bush.


If Ted Cruz were really principled, as he claims, he would have endorsed the Republican nominee. A principled conservative would do everything to ensure that another liberal like Hillary Clinton stays as far away from the White House as possible. Hillary will pander to political correctness, she will increase taxes, increase the debt and open our borders even wider. These aren't things any conservative would let happen.


Ted Cruz is less of a conservative and more of a self interested politician. He is the kind of politician he has claimed to fight against. His entire theme as an anti-establishment candidate was nothing more than a ruse. Ted Cruz is a career politician and his failure to endorse Donald Trump has done more damage to his reputation than to Donald Trump's chances against Clinton. If any damage is done to Trump, it will be done by Democrats who use Cruz's non-endorsement as a way to divide Republicans – or create the idea that Republicans are divided when they are really united.


If you doubt that Democrats will try to take advantage of Cruz's non-endorsement, just take a look at Hillary Clinton's tweet immediately after Cruz told conservatives at the convention to “vote their conscience”. Her tweet received over 11,000 retweets and 20,000 likes within 24 hours. The continued failure of any conservative to unite behind Donald Trump between now and November will only aide and abet Hillary Clinton's campaign for the White House.

Donald Trump won the hearts, minds and votes of Republicans and polls show that his doubters are uniting. Ted Cruz has not only proven himself to be a sore loser, he has proven himself to be an enemy within the Republican Party. He has also proven himself as an enemy of conservatives. Ted Cruz's non-endorsement of Donald Trump has made him a surrogate for Hillary Clinton and, therefore, an enemy of all Republicans and all conservatives. We should expect Ted Cruz to return in 2020 to help further destroy Trump's Republican agenda, whether we like it or not.