Ted Cruz and John Kasich have a message for Donald J. Trump: They don’t care if they are not invited to speak at his convention.
As Mr. Trump tries to plan a convention that will run as smoothly as possible, he said in an interview with The New York Times last week that he would not invite either Mr. Cruz or Mr. Kasich, both former rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, to speak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland unless they endorsed him.
That is fine, both said on Monday. A spokeswoman for Mr. Cruz, Catherine Frazier, said the Texas senator did not have any expectation about receiving a speaking slot. A spokesman for Mr. Kasich, the governor of Ohio, was similarly indifferent.
Cruz strategist: Trump has a math problem
Jeff Roe, Ted Cruz’s campaign manager, tells ‘Off Message’ that Trump’s allergy to analytics could be fatal.
Media share is the top predictor of electoral success.
Ted Cruz won Iowa but was third after Iowa, behind Rubio and Ben Carson.
We felt if we got him “heads up” we could win.
Fox only showed 7 minutes out of 13 minutes Iowa speech. Then switched to map showing how Trump could win.
When its raining soup, put a bowl on your head: my grandfather.
Romney had 2 segments. Obama had 9. We had thousands of segments. (49-51 min)
Donald Trump, Mainstream Conservative
Those who have long stoked the flames of populism should not be surprised by the results.
.. The American Right has become willfully disengaged from its fellow citizens thanks to a wonderful virtual-reality machine in which conservatives, both elite and grassroots, can believe anything they wish, no matter how at odds it is with reality
.. They can wake up in the morning and read email newsletters filled with nonsense from the likes of Dick Morris along with false promises of “secret cancer cures.” As they make their breakfast, they can flip through websites utterly devoid of reporting and data analysis predicting that Democrats are on the run and Hillary Clinton is sure to be indicted. During the work day, they can turn on the radio and listen to Christian nationalists like Bryan Fischer tell them how the Founding Fathers intended to provide religious freedom only to Christians.
.. Fischer and Trump are not alone in their desire to illegally target Muslims. Fischer’s preferred candidate, Ted Cruz, has proposed that law-enforcement officers conduct perpetual campaigns to “patrol and secure” Muslim neighborhoods in a sort of secret-police arrangement. Family Research Council president Tony Perkins has repeatedly said that liberal Christians and Muslims do not deserve religious freedom as well. Anti-Muslim activist Frank Gaffney wants to bring back HUAC.
.. One of the most persistent right-wing claims against Trump has been that he is better described as a nationalist than a conservative. The accusation has no power against him, however, since he has freely admitted to it, knowing as he did that the majority of Republican voters and the nation as a whole have never been particularly interested in constitutional conservatism. The data points on this subject have been out there for years,
.. But usually, instead of arguing with him on the issues, #NeverTrumpers challenge him on process questions or criticize him because his supporters are on the fringe. Conservatives cannot support Trump, the argument goes, because some of his backers are outright racists.
.. The time to stop Trump was in the 1990s, when the movement’s intellectuals were busy prostrating themselves before Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as they sought to remake the GOP into a party for white Christians.
.. The time to stop Trump was in 2009, when Sarah Palin was dumbing down conservatism into an alternative lifestyle that glorified anti-intellectualism. The time to stop Donald Trump was in 2013, when Ted Cruz was opportunistically telling Republican voters that obstreperousness was the equivalent of conservative philosophy.
Cruz vows to fight Trump on abortion plank in RNC platform
Though Marco Rubio suggested on Thursday that he expects his delegates to be released for Donald Trump and even volunteered to speak on his behalf, Ted Cruz signaled on Friday that he would take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to Cleveland. And the fight for delegates and the party’s platform is far from over, he said, despite Trump having clinched the required number to become the nominee.
.. Trump said in April that he would push for exceptions to the party’s platform on abortion to include rape and incest. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said days later that the platform is “up to the delegates at the convention” and that he would expect it to remain the same.