Will the Republicans Unify Around Ted Cruz?

For weeks on end, the talk in Republican circles has been what can be done to #StopTrump.  The talk of a white knight(1) coming in to a contested convention in Cleveland has gathered some steam, unfortunately, it's little more than talk.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich did an excellent job of explaining why that cannot happen in an article he penned last week.  In it, he listed out several key reasons why the Republican candidate for President will be either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.  The highlights:

• According to Party rules, a candidate must have won a majority of delegates from at least 8 states. (2)

 To this point, only Cruz and Trump have done so, and unless some unforeseen event occurs, they will be the only two candidates to show up in Cleveland having done so.  Kasich missed an opportunity to build momentum when he was absolutely crushed in WI.  The fact that both he and Trump were outmaneuvered and out-thought by the Cruz team has effectively sunk his campaign, at least.  The fact that he is clinging to the hope that he might earn the nomination at a contested convention shows how little he understands about the inner workings of how the Party operates.

•  There will be no new rules allowing for an outside candidate, because it would negatively impact both Cruz and Trump, whose supporters would have to approve the rule changes.

So the only way that a new candidate can be introduced is if Cruz or Trump allows it, essentially?  I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that to occur.  I may not be a Presidential candidate, but I don't think either organization is dumb enough to allow that to happen.  So the Republicans will be left with the two candidates who brought them to Cleveland:  Cruz and Trump.

The question that the Party must now consider is which candidate will they circle up around and call their own?

Trump has tried to put forth an air of inevitability, that he is the candidate that will ultimately be chosen.  He's also been a whining, spoiled child through the entire process.  I have never believed that his numbers would rise, even as other candidates bailed on the race, because those that are attracted to Trump (for the most part) are wholly separate from those who participate in the voting process on a regular basis.  Those who were looking to a Republican taking back the White House in 2016 have always been looking for a way around his machine.

Enter Ted Cruz, whose candidacy was on life support according to many pundits as recently as a month ago.  Since then, Cruz has racked up resounding victories across the fruited plain.  Over the past few days, he shut Trump out in Colorado, and he has also been winning over delegates in several states who will be free to vote for him once a contested convention goes to a second ballot.  All of this leads to the increased probability that Cruz will be the Republicans' nominee.

This begs the question of whether or not Cruz will be able to motivate enough voters in the general election to defeat whomever the Democrats choose to nominate.  If it is Hillary Clinton, the odds are better for him, given that she is the second most despised public figure in national polls (*trailing* only Donald Trump.)  Bernie Sanders may prove a more difficult task, but if Republicans are genuinely serious about regaining the White House, they will get behind Cruz and support his candidacy.  The one hiccup in that plan would be if Trump ran a 3rd party candidacy, and possibly stole away some potential voters.  It seems unlikely that genuine Republicans would fall for this ploy, however.  This isn't 1992, Cruz isn't Bush, and Sanders is not Bill Clinton.

Of course, I also thought that Obama could ever win a national election, nor did I believe that Trump was actually in the race to stay, so my opinion may not be all that spot on.




(1) Mitt Romney amongst other names have been floated. If he is the best Republican hope, they may as well fold up the party.  Seriously, what has he won lately?

(2) This has not always been the case.  In fact, during the 1880 convention, James Garfield was nominated for President despite the fact that he had not run, and emphatically opposed his own nomination.  He had given the nominating speech for Senator John Sherman of his home state Ohio.  It was this nominating speech that in large part led to his eventual nomination.