Ted Cruz would run in 2020 even if Trump is president, RNC official says

[Sanguine]

CLEVELAND — For the first time in 36 years, there was a vote on the floor of a party’s nominating convention this past Monday that actually held an element of suspense.

In the hour or so ahead of a vote in which insurgents were attempting to reset the convention rules, Republican National Committee operatives circulated the floor and the back halls of Quicken Loans Arena, buttonholing delegates to argue why they should retract support for the motion, and getting them to sign their names to withdrawal forms. Trump aides, by contrast, bullied delegates with vague and ineffective threats.

In one corner of the arena floor, near CNN’s broadcast booth, delegates from the District of Columbia listened to appeals from high-ranking RNC officials.

The RNC’s argument to the D.C. delegates boiled down to this: A vote for the rules reset would open the door to Ted Cruz becoming the GOP’s nominee four years from now.

Cruz is already laying the groundwork for another run for president in 2020, but a top RNC official told Yahoo News that they expect him to run even if Donald Trump becomes president this fall. That would represent the first major challenge of an incumbent president from inside his own party since Teddy Kennedy ran against President Jimmy Carter in 1980.

“If Trump wins, you better bet your ass Cruz is going to primary him,” the RNC official told Yahoo News.

And so the RNC officials told D.C. delegates that a rules reset would open the door to an effort by a key Cruz ally, former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, to close primary contests in several states to independent and Democratic voters. Cuccinelli and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, pushed for the closed primary in the convention rules committee meeting last week.

Closed primaries would exclude independents and limit the nomination process to registered Republicans, a more conservative voting group overall, which would favor Cruz....


...as Ronald Reagan did in 1976 when speaking at the GOP convention after narrowly losing to President Gerald Ford, that the party “had chosen the wrong man.”

Cruz is betting that he will have a better chance in 2020 of becoming the nominee by appearing as a sanctioned speaker here than he would have if he had gambled on galvanizing anti-Trump sentiment this year and making a run at a convention coup. It may be wise, but it also may be the same mistake New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie made in 2012, when he passed on his best shot at the presidency, thinking 2016 would be set up even better for him.

Circumstances change. Other figures rise. And as Roe himself told Bloomberg News, “Leaders don’t pick movements, movements pick leaders.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/rnc-ted-cruz-president-2020-000000680.html?soc_src=hl-viewer&soc_trk=tw

This is the clearest explanation of what happened last week and why.

Interesting that the GOP wants to maintain open primaries.

[Cripplecreek]

Interesting that the GOP wants to maintain open primaries.

Open primaries help the GOPe and democrats.

We saw democrats openly laughing on the news about having voted for Trump here in Michigan. They try to sell our primary as closed but you get either a republican or democrat ballot with only the presidential primary on them. You can ask for either ballot.