Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, can win a convention floor fight. This is a guy who shut down the U.S. government almost single-handed. A partisan convention is his kind of brawl. But the lonely warrior's weak public support has become his biggest problem.
As of Tuesday night, the GOP presidential front-runner by a mile is Donald Trump. He's amassed 10,121,887 primary votes so far. This compares to 6,919,953 for Cruz. Trump is knocking at the door of 40 percent of primary votes cast. That's a very long way from 50 percent plus one, but nobody else is even remotely as close.
The rules say delegates matter at conventions, not votes. In theory, many of Trump's delegates can vote for someone else if he doesn't get a clear majority in the first round. That's why Cruz can win. Cruz is a "real conservative," the kind the party base -- the group many delegates come from -- has wanted for years.
So yes, Cruz can win the nomination. His practical problem, though -- and no one needs a pundit to see this -- is that such a win wouldn't even resemble a win in a fair fight. The vote gap is too big. The delegate choice would vary too widely with it. Cruz would look like he snatched the nomination.
Until the past month, there remained a sliver of an argument that Trump led only because of disunity. This race started with 17 people. It still has three. Gov. John Kasich of Ohio won't drop out. This chafes Cruz fans. They believe the party's anti-Trump voters would back their guy if only this last distraction would leave.
Ted Cruz, unity candidate? The mind boggles. It boggles a lot more now that Trump is winning primaries outright. Cruz is the only viable rival left against Trump. Kasich voters must know this. Yet Cruz is still losing. Therefore, it's now more plausible to argue that Trump, not Cruz, would be winning outright if the race hadn't been so fragmented earlier. Kasich dropping out would only widen Trump's lead.
This should surprise no one. Former House speaker John Boehner of Ohio resigned, fed up with the holier-than-thou minority that Cruz champions in Congress. There's no love lost. Still, this is how Boehner described Cruz, the would-be savior of their party, on Wednesday. He's quoted by the Stanford University's student newspaper:
"Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a b**** in my life." He won't vote for Cruz if the senator's nominated, Boehner said.
Cruz can be widely hated and still win it all. American history is replete with presidents elected after brokered conventions -- ancient American history, anyway. One of the Cruz camp's favorite examples is Abraham Lincoln's nomination. That's one of my favorites, too. "Honest Abe" won after his campaign manager promised the secretary of war position to a Pennsylvania power broker. When Secretary Simon Cameron's acquisitiveness came to the president's attention early in the U.S. Civil War, one of Pennsylvania's own congressmen "defended" the secretary by saying: "I don't think that he would steal a red hot stove."
There are very good reasons parties all but eliminated brokered conventions.
What Trump has achieved is amazing. Without disparaging his campaign so far, though, he clearly benefits from a vacuum. A dire lack of credibility and talent among the GOP's top tier of presidential prospects helped him. That was unkind, but there's simply no other explanation for the ascent of this brash celebrity political novice. I think this vacuum is temporary, and said so a year ago:
"The Republican dilemma is that they're between generations. The flood of their governors and congressmen elected in 2010, 2012 and 2014 aren't seasoned yet. There's surely great talent in there somewhere, but the leaders haven't emerged. Older Republicans, meanwhile, are either too tied to the failures of (President) George W. (Bush) or came of age during the great conservative backlash of rage against (President Barack) Obama, making them too radical for an electorate that just wants peace and prosperity."
Jeb Bush was the archetype of the "tied to the failures" faction. Trump destroyed him first. Cruz is the hero of the second camp.
It's still a long time to November. The Republicans can still win the White House. But Trump is the face and the voice of their party this year whether he's the nominee or not. There's something to say for not pretending otherwise.
Commentary on 04/30/2016