Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz heaped criticisms on fellow presidential hopeful John Kasich in a town hall-style interview with Fox News late Friday. The Texas senator called out the Ohio governor’s insistence on remaining in the race despite significant primary losses.
“There’s no good reason when you go 1 for 27. That’s a problem,” Cruz told interviewer Sean Hannity and the audience at the Phoenix, Ariz., event, sponsored by Keep the Promise super PAC.
Cruz, ranked second in the race with seven primary and caucus wins out of the 29 states that have voted, attacked Kasich’s one win in his home state on Tuesday. Trump, ranked as the party front-runner in national polls, has won nearly 20 primaries and caucuses since Feb. 1.
“At this point it is clear the voters have decided it is a two-man race. It is between me and Donald Trump. We are the only two candidates with any plausible path to win the nomination and at this point Kasich’s role is essentially as a spoiler. A vote for John Kasich is a vote for Donald Trump,” Cruz said.
Trump leads the remaining three Republican hopefuls in delegate counts. The New York businessman has 673 delegates, Cruz has 410 and Kasich stands at 143.
But Hannity worried that because Cruz and Trump are outsiders to the party’s establishment core, leadership could attempt to sabotage the convention as a means of hijacking the nomination. Cruz explained how a “nutty feverish dream of the Washington establishment” would fail.
“They wanna see a brokered convention where the convention is deadlocked and suddenly they parachute in some establishment choice who didn’t even run but is the white horse to save Republicans from the pesky voters,” Cruz said. “That ain’t gonna happen and if you tried it you would see an absolute revolt and quite rightly.”
Arizona’s GOP primary will take place Tuesday, March 22. Cruz spent Friday touring the border and did a press conference in Cochise County earlier in the day.
