By Irene F. Starkehaus -
There are a lot of Republicans who are quite filled with rage over Ted Cruz's convention performance on July 20, 2016. Fox News says Cruz behaved without class. Conservative talk radio and TV personalities are apoplectic that Cruz was disloyal to the party. Party operatives are calling for Ted Cruz's head on a platter.
Sounds like a win for the RINOs to me. What's all the fuss about? All in all, members of the GOP are infuriated because Cruz failed to toe the company line at the podium on Wednesday, and instead elected to bite his thumb at the Trumpian fantasy sequence that is fermenting in Cleveland this week.
Those Republicans who are supposedly enraged over Cruz's speech believe that Cruz acted as an unprincipled and purely political hack who chose to torch his political party, a possible Trump presidency and his own future over something as petty as the loss of the Republican nomination.
For those Republicans who frame Ted Cruz's actions in this way, I would suggest that they are either incredibly naïve about Ted Cruz's motives, or they are political hacks themselves.
There are two things that happened with Ted Cruz's speech in Cleveland that are relatively historic in nature. The first is that Ted Cruz handed Donald Trump the presidency by not endorsing him. The second is that Cruz exemplified an American code of conduct that the American Founders would have celebrated as an example of fidelity to truth and was booed off the stage by the Party of Lincoln and Reagan for it.
God, family and country in that order – that is the spirit and the letter of the covenant that was forged by our Forefathers when they worked prayerfully to produce a national identity in the form of our Declaration of Independence. Are you feeling high and mighty that Ted Cruz was somehow obligated to be a party man and support the Republican nominee as he had initially promised?
Then you fail to understand the depth and scope of the scorn that is fomenting with the Never-Trumpsters. You fail to see the bridge that has been burned by Trump supporters in their zeal to win at any cost. You fail to recognize that Trump's betrayal of truth will not be forgotten. You fail to see the unifying moment in watching Cruz get booed off the stage for defending his father and wife. You fail.
It is likely that Ted Cruz's best political move would have been to decline speaking at the convention altogether in order to keep peace in the party. That was his only other alternative to what happened on Wednesday, but that didn't happen, did it? Once Cruz got past the hurdle of speaking, there was no other speech that he could have otherwise made. If you don't understand Ted Cruz's mandate, then you don't understand God, family and country in that order.
What Ted Cruz did on Wednesday was inevitable given the classless, disloyal slander thrust upon Ted Cruz's family by the Donald Trump campaign. That truth cannot and should not be underestimated because Cruz supporters are not just made indignant by the ineptitude of the Republican's unexceptional nomination this year. They are righteously indignant. They are "throw the tea in the harbor" indignant. They are furious.
The things that Donald Trump's campaign did to Ted Cruz's family cannot be written off as merely political. They were wicked. The differences between Donald Trump's and traditional American values are not theoretical or intangible or simply gut instincts that can be ignored. They are palpable and they illustrate who or what Donald Trump is willing to destroy in order to win.
And frankly, anyone who willfully discounts Trump's infidelity to truth deserves the bounty of Trump's infested harvest if there be one.
With Trump's win at any cost policy, he has infected much - including the vanguards of conservative leadership and the conservative press that support him with utter disregard for truth; who are now and forever stained by the moral relativism that they heretofore disdained.
Those specific defamations by the Trump campaign against Ted Cruz and his family cannot gibe with the values that conservatives say they embrace, so there's no going back here. There is a fissure. We are witnessing the rumblings of a divorce. The day that Donald Trump slandered Rafael Cruz by accusing him of working with Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate JFK? That may actually go down in history as the drop of rain that finally broke the levy. It's the makings of a watershed moment.
That was the day that many conservatives sought independence from the Republican Party. "Get over it and get with the program," Cruz supporters have been told over and again. But the answer from Cruz supporters remains a stolid and stubborn, "No. I won't." And they won't because what happened to Raphael Cruz matters. Until there is a strong repudiation of that slander, there can be no reconciliation.
Ted Cruz may in fact be a political animal; he may actually be a self-serving wonk. I've never met him, so I don't know, but Ted Cruz did not show himself to be disloyal to the things that really matter. He did uphold the covenant of independence by refusing to endorse the jackal in elephant's clothing that Donald Trump is.
Never fear, Trump supporters. I think that Donald Trump will win the presidential election of 2016 because I think he's an excellent representative for what America is becoming. Ravaging truth for the sake of expedience may be the best strategy for a Republican victory. Moderate Dems often show a strong preference for morally ambivalent autocrats as long as they get to see a good circus. Trump should have considered Montel Williams for the VP position to secure a landslide. Behold the new face of the Republican Party. A real Norma Desmond moment to be sure.
