Baca Juga
Senator Ted Cruz
said on Friday that he would vote for Donald J. Trump for president,
two months after Mr. Cruz pointedly declined to endorse his former rival
in a speech at the Republican National Convention.
“After
many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own
conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the
Republican nominee, Donald Trump,” Mr. Cruz wrote in a statement on Facebook.
For
Mr. Cruz, who has fashioned himself as the unbending conscience of
modern conservatism, the decision to endorse Mr. Trump is the latest
remarkable gamble in a career defined by them, placing him in the corner
of an ideologically elastic candidate who savaged Mr. Cruz — and,
often, the senator’s family — at every turn during the nominating
contest.
But
Mr. Trump’s rise in the polls, combined with a handful of political
overtures from Mr. Trump and his team in recent days, left Mr. Cruz
effectively boxed in, raising the possibility that a narrow Trump defeat
could be laid at his feet.
In
his statement, Mr. Cruz said he had based his decision on two factors: a
prior pledge to support the Republican nominee — which Mr. Cruz said in
July had been “abrogated” by Mr. Trump’s personal attacks on him — and
his desire to defeat Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee.
“If
Clinton wins, we know — with 100 percent certainty — that she would
deliver on her left-wing promises, with devastating results for our
country,” Mr. Cruz said. “My conscience tells me I must do whatever I
can to stop that.”
But
Mr. Cruz’s statement went beyond the perfunctory, praising the policy
aims and recent campaign promises of a man he once called a
“pathological liar.”
Mr.
Cruz did not address the personal attacks that Mr. Trump had leveled —
always without hesitation, often without evidence — against the Texas
senator and his family during the nominating fight.
Among
other slights, Mr. Trump questioned Mr. Cruz’s eligibility for the
presidency, citing his birth in Canada; seemed to disparage the
appearance of Mr. Cruz’s wife, Heidi, in a Twitter post; and insinuated
that Mr. Cruz’s father, Rafael, was involved in the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy.
Then there was the Trump-branded nickname: “Lyin’ Ted.”
In
recent weeks, several former aides and allies to Mr. Cruz had urged him
not to publicly back Mr. Trump, on both principled and pragmatic
grounds.
Such
support could be seen as jeopardizing Mr. Cruz’s professed reputation
for conservative ideological purity, given Mr. Trump’s shape-shifting
political views, which Mr. Cruz delighted in highlighting during his
presidential campaign. And by voicing his support so late in the
campaign, the senator also risks feeding a perception, rampant among
Senate colleagues, that he is a cynical political operator, mindful only
of his own interests.
At
his convention speech in July, Mr. Cruz urged Republicans to “vote your
conscience,” leaving the stage in Cleveland to cascading boos.
The
next morning, as delegates from his home state jeered him at a
breakfast, Mr. Cruz said he refused to fall in line like a “servile
puppy dog.” Mr. Trump, for his part, said this summer that he would not
accept Mr. Cruz’s endorsement anyway.
On Friday, Mr. Trump said he was “greatly honored” to have the backing of a “tough and brilliant opponent.”
As news of Mr. Cruz’s plans surfaced, first on Politico, some Cruz allies wasted no time registering their displeasure.
“I’m
just trying to get this Cruz sticker off my car,” Rick Tyler, the
senator’s campaign spokesman, said shortly after the endorsement was
announced. “I don’t want anybody to get the wrong idea and think I’m a
Trump supporter.”
Steve
Deace, a prominent Iowa conservative radio host who had supported Mr.
Cruz, called the senator’s decision “the worst political miscalculation
of my lifetime.”
Voters’ responses were often no kinder.
“I am ashamed to have supported you,” one man wrote.
“Conservatism is dead,” said another.
While Mr. Cruz is widely expected to pursue the presidency again, he faces a 2018 Senate re-election campaign first.
In recent days, signs of a tentative peace between the Cruz and Trump camps had begun to surface.
On
Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s campaign issued a news release that was
supportive of Mr. Cruz’s latest Senate venture: his opposition to the
federal government’s plan to end its oversight of the internet’s master
directory of website addresses.
Mr.
Trump also included a close Cruz ally, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, on a
list of prospective Supreme Court nominees, which Mr. Cruz praised in
his statement.
Mr.
Trump also now employs some members of the Cruz orbit: Jason Miller,
who was a top adviser to the senator’s campaign, and Kellyanne Conway,
who ran a pro-Cruz “super PAC” before becoming Mr. Trump’s campaign manager.
“Hell froze over today,” Ms. Conway wrote on Twitter after the endorsement, “and it feels like heaven.”
Longtime Cruz supporters could be forgiven for experiencing whiplash.
On
Friday, Mr. Cruz cheered Mr. Trump’s vow to nominate justices “in the
mold” of Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February. In the primaries,
he regularly disparaged Mr. Trump’s judgment on judicial matters,
holding forth on a “radical pro-abortion extremist” federal judge who
happens to be Mr. Trump’s sister, Maryanne Trump Barry.
On
Friday, Mr. Cruz named Mr. Trump’s immigration policy as a bright spot.
In the primaries, he attacked Mr. Trump’s proposals as “amnesty.”
On
Friday, Mr. Cruz cited “national security” as a reason to to back Mr.
Trump. In the primaries, the senator described Mr. Trump as so unsteady
that he might even use nuclear weapons against a friendly country like
Denmark on a whim.
Though
Mr. Cruz spoke warmly of Mr. Trump early in the primary season, telling
donors he planned to “bearhug” him in the hopes of winning his
supporters if Mr. Trump faded, he let fly a blistering critique of Mr.
Trump’s personal and political integrity just before leaving the race.
“I’m
going to do something I haven’t done for the entire campaign,” Mr. Cruz
told reporters in Evansville, Ind., hours before decisively losing the
state’s primary in May. “I’m going to tell you what I really think of
Donald Trump.”
He
went on to call Mr. Trump “a pathological liar”; “utterly amoral”; “a
serial philanderer”; and “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this
country has ever seen.”
If voters did not stop him, Mr. Cruz said, “this country could well plunge into the abyss.”
loading...
Ted Cruz Announces Support for Donald Trump
4/
5
Oleh
pengertians
