The Texas senator, his standing slipping back home and eyeing another White House run, faced an excruciating choice.
At the time of his convention speech, there was compelling political logic for the ambitious firebrand to steer clear of Trump. Cruz appears likely to run for president again, and Trump, at the time, looked like was headed toward a blowout loss. Not to mention, Trump had essentially called Cruz’s wife unattractive and erroneously linked his father to JFK’s assassination.
Cruz’s allies believed if he played it right, he could emerge from the election as one of the last principled conservatives — the final bulwark against a candidate who violated many of the values conservatives hold dear.
But with Trump approaching Hillary Clinton in the polls, Cruz’s diss had become more of a liability: A narrow Trump loss might have been pinned on Cruz for keeping conservatives home on Election Day because they were following his lead.
Bernie Sander’s Fulsome Endorsement of Hillary Clinton
Toward the end of his speech, Sanders did briefly acknowledge that he and Clinton still disagree on some issues. But then he pointed to the Democratic Party platform that the two sides have agreed upon, describing it as “the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic Party.” He continued, “Our job now is to see that platform implemented by a Democratically controlled Senate, a Democratically controlled House, and a Hillary Presidency—and I intend to be in every corner of this country, to make certain that happens.”
.. Perhaps nobody had informed Clinton that “Stronger Together” echoes the slogan of the Remain side, which lost the recent Brexit referendum in the U.K.
Carson Endorses the Demagogue
On Friday, I watched yet another bizarre scene from an already bizarre election cycle: The affable but hopelessly vacant Ben Carson endorsing the demagogic real estate developer who once said of Carson that he had a “pathological temper” as a child and compared him to a child molester.
.. This is the same Ben Carson who has inveighed against the “purveyors of division,” who played a video at his presidential campaign announcement in Detroit in which the narrator said in part: