Rubio’s Exit and the G.O.P.’s Spoiled Buffet
There are Republican traditionalists rooting for Trump over Cruz, and the thinking of some goes like this:
.. He’ll embarrass the party and roil the country but maybe not cost Republicans key congressional races. Besides which, he scrambles all rules and all precedents so thoroughly that you never know. Victory isn’tunthinkable, and better a Republican who’s allergic to caution, oblivious to actual information and altogether dangerous than a Democrat who’ll dole out all the plum administration jobs to her own party.
.. “Cruz is a disaster for the party,” one of them told me. “Trump is a disaster for the country.”
.. “If Cruz is the nominee, we get wiped out,” he added, with a resigned voice. “And we rebuild.” The party needs that anyway.
.. In fact, a few Republican traditionalists have insisted to me that a Cruz nomination and subsequent defeat would have a long-term upside. It would put to rest the stubborn argument, promoted by Cruz and others on the party’s far right, that the G.O.P. has lost presidential elections over recent decades because nominees like Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney weren’t conservative enough.