Aside from Mike Pence, it is Ted Cruz whose political future is most immediately imperiled by the positions he has taken on Trump’s candidacy.
The Texas senator had the bad timing — and bad judgment — to endorse Trump just two weeks ago after spurning him from the stage of the Republican convention in Cleveland. In the wake of Friday’s revelations, the politician who made a name for himself taking firm and principled stands on the issues, is considering retracting that endorsement. A person close to Cruz says he is “sickened by the current state of play” and “sincerely searching for a way to salvage a GOP majority.” To that end, says the source, “All the rules are out the window.”
Cruz on Friday condemned Trump’s 2005 remarks, unearthed in a videotape published by the Washington Post earlier that day, but did not withdraw his support or call on the Republican nominee to step aside, as many of his colleagues have done. “These comments are disturbing and inappropriate, there is simply no excuse for them” and “Every wife, mother, daughter — every person — deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. On Saturday evening, Cruz had yet to reach a conclusion about whether to rescind his support.
Cruz’s positioning on Trump has been fraught from the outset — and it is one of the major strategic blunders of the political season. After heaping praise on him early in the primary season, he left the campaign trail in May calling Trump a narcissist and a “pathological liar.” His decision to offer it in the first place was a practical one, opposed by the vast majority of his top aides. He offered it late last month under mounting pressure from top-dollar donors, who revolted after his convention speech in July, and grassroots activists in Texas who helped get him elected in 2012 and whom he feared might help mount a primary challenge against him in 2018. The fact that Trump had insulted his wife’s appearance, an eerie prelude of what was to come, and accused his father of playing a role in the assassination of JFK, made it more difficult for him to endorse with much grace.
Now, he finds himself in an impossible position: Stick with a GOP nominee who seems to be intent on torpedoing the party, or reverse course once again and sacrifice once and for all a reputation for — or a perception of — being the man who stands on principle come what may.