MADISON WIS.—Ted Cruz argued today that the Republican National Convention will and ought be a contest between him and Donald Trump alone, pointing to party rules that limit the nominating process to those candidates who have won a majority of delegates in eight states. Anything else, Cruz said, would spur a “revolt.”
He dismissed as a “fevered pipe dream of Washington” the idea that “at the convention they would parachute in some white knight who will save the Washington establishment” by winning the nomination.
“It ain’t gonna happen,” Cruz said to reporters before a Madison town hall. “If it did, the people would quite rightly revolt.”
Cruz said that if neither candidate wins a majority of delegates, “if that happens, we’ll have a contested convention, and there will be two candidates. We’ll come in with a ton of delegates. Donald Trump will come in with a ton of delegates. It’ll then be about to see who can earn a majority of the votes from the delegates elected by the people.”
Cruz rejected Trump’s standard—that whoever wins the most delegates through the primary and caucus process should be the nominee. “He doesn’t want the standard to be who can earn a majority? Because he can’t earn a majority.”
The rule limiting the nomination fight to candidates who win a majority of delegates in 8 states was created in 2012, but GOP officials told the Examiner’s David Drucker that that rule may be scrapped. The rules for any convention are made at the beginning of the convention. That means GOP delegates could keep the 2012 rules—with its 8-state threshold—or they could broaden the rules to allow other names to be put forward for nomination.
Some Republicans have posited John Kasich, Rick Perry—or even a non-candidate such as Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan—could win a contested convention.
Cruz rejected that idea. “Now that the rule is viewed as inconvenient to the Washington establishment they want to get rid of it. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. The rules are the rules,” he said.
Cruz argued that picking a non-candidate or a minor candidate wouldn’t only be imprudent, but also very unlikely. Cruz pointed out that his delegates will be strongly represented on the rules committee.
When Fox News host Megyn Kelly asked Cruz about John Kasich, Cruz said “it’s simple: if you lose 49 states, you shouldn’t be the nominee.”
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.
