Ted Cruz Detonates the Charges on a GOP Set to Split

Matt Purple

Politics, United States

The Republican Party fights aren't just about personalities. There's a major factional civil war coming.

Ted Cruz’s address to the Republican National Convention was an act of betrayal, a cynical résumé enhancer aimed at winning the election in 2020 rather than the immediate matter of dispatching Hillary Clinton. Cruz, once a giant in the conservative firmament, will now be remembered as the American Michael Gove, stabbing his party’s ringmaster in the front only to irreparably bloody his own career. He won’t be forgiven.

Ted Cruz’s address to the Republican National Convention was an injection of guts into an increasingly craven GOP. While the convention’s other speakers slavishly prostrated themselves before the Dear Leader, Cruz was the valiant exception, transcending the cult of personality. And why should he endorse Trump? The man mocked his wife’s appearance and insinuated his father was involved in the Kennedy assassination.

Those two thoughts, and syncretized mixtures of both, have taken up residence in the heads of Republican delegates. That they’re almost diametrically opposed shows how riven the right has become. Even a political convention, a carefully stage-managed event planned solely to project an image of unity, can’t bridge these divisions. Cruz didn’t carve out this chasm—au contraire, he stretched himself over it more nimbly than any other presidential candidate—but last night he set off a string of charges that blew it open even wider. And here we thought Melania Trump might have been set up—the real saboteur had already been given a primetime slot.

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