A Trump/Cruz ticket would be the best lineup for the GOP. It would be like the Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry/Klay Thompson killer duo (great article by the way in the WSJ on the making of the Warriors). But whose name comes first Cruz/Trump? As far as I’m concerned, my favorite candidate is anyone but Hillary or the Bern. The GOP establishment is kidding themselves if they think voters are going to put up with an annoying Paul Ryan (who just released what appears to be a campaign ad). Say goodbye to any chance of winning if that happens. Once again, Pat Buchanan tells it like it is:
Prediction: If the GOP establishment does collude to steal the nomination from the candidate who has won the most states, most delegates and most votes, not only could the party be crushed in November, but that establishment could be discredited in perpetuity.
For those who have come out for Trump, and have given the GOP the largest turnouts of any party in a primary season in history, will not be give their allegiance to a Beltway elite that cheated them of the prize they had won.
Sullen and angry, they will be going home, not soon to return.
An establishment embrace of a rule-or-ruin course — Better to lose, than win with Trump! — seems irrational. But it is not irrational if one’s preeminence and position are the summum bonum of one’s political existence.
To avoid the Hobbesian choice — back Trump or abandon Trump — the establishment must block him from a first-ballot victory. And indispensable to the Anybody-But-Trump coalition is Ted Cruz, whom the establishment, if possible, detests even more than Trump.
One testament to the esteem in which Cruz is held is that only two of his 53 Senate GOP colleagues have endorsed him, and one of these, Lindsey Graham, did so as the lesser of two evils.
Here is the second peril for the GOP elites.
If Trump is stopped on the first ballot, the delegates who leave him on the second ballot may go to Cruz, and the stampede could be on.
Yet, it is hard to see how a Cruz nomination is better for the party than a Trump nomination.
