Ted Cruz Is An Enemy Within
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.
