What will Ted Cruz do or say today at the Republican Convention that has nominated Donald Trump — the New York liberal who consistently called Cruz a liar and who insulted Cruz’s wife?
“I’m very hopeful Ted Cruz will do what Goldwater did in ’60, what Nixon did in ’64, and what Ronald Reagan did in ’76,” Virginia delegate and longtime Republican operative Morton Blackwell told me Wednesday afternoon. “And that is, get behind the nominee. It was extraordinarily important.”
In the 1960 presidential race, Goldwater was a minor candidate votewise, but he was becoming the clear leader of the nascent conservative movement. Conservatives were outraged at Richard Nixon’s last-minute deal effectively letting Nelson Rockefeller rewrite parts of the platform.
Goldwater came to the convention podium and said this:
I respectfully ask the chairman to withdraw my name from nomination. I release my delegation from their pledge to me…. I would suggest that they give their votes to Richard Nixon. We’ve had our chance. We’ve fought our battles. Now let’s put our shoulders to the wheel of Dick Nixon and push him across the line. Let’s not flag back. This country is too important for anyone’s feelings. This country and its majesty is too great for any man, be he conservative or liberal, to stay home and not vote just because he doesn’t agree. Let’s grow up conservatives. If we want to take this party back—and I think we can some day—let’s get to work.
Blackwell says that this helped pave the way to Goldwater winning the 1964 nomination. Then the same thing happened, with roles reversed, four years later.
“In 64,” Blackwell said, “Nixon’s career was supposedly dead. He campaigned hard for Goldwater, which many didn’t, that helped him get the nomination in 68.”
Ronald Reagan in 1976 played a similar role — the conservative runner up rallying Republicans behind Gerald Ford. Like Goldwater and Nixon before him, Reagan won the nomination the next time around.
So Cruz could see this as a way forward — as a way to position himself for the nomination in four years should Trump lose in November.
There’s some risk in this course for Cruz, of course, as he could risk losing credibility with his conservative base and giving fodder to his moderate critics by getting behind Trump, whom Cruz has assailed as a “pathological liar” and a “narcissist.”
Timothy P. Carney, The Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
