Ted Cruz, vanquished presidential candidate, coughed up the name of the man who defeated him for the Republican nomination precisely once in his convention speech Wednesday night. “I want to congratulate Donald Trump on winning the nomination,” the Texas senator managed to choke out. Then, in a line not contained in the prepared text, “And like each of you I want to see the principles that our party believes prevail in November.”
From there, Cruz’s speech was notable not for the predictable attacks on President Obama and Hillary Clinton — indeed, by the lock-her-up standards of the Republican convention, Cruz sounded positively, uncharacteristically mild — but for its resounding silence on his party’s nominee, a man he had described as a “pathological liar,” a “narcissist” and “utterly amoral.”
If anything, the speech was pregnant with implicit nose-holding, if not tacit condemnation, of Trump.
As in: “We’re fighting, not for one particular candidate or one campaign, but because each of us wants to be able to tell our kids and grandkids … that we did our best for their future and our country.” Um, so would that be voting for President Trump?