How Ted Cruz painted himself into a corner on Super Tuesday

The same questions and concerns were being shared 3,000 miles away, inside a resort overlooking the San Diego Bay, at a meeting of the Council for National Policy. That group, which serves as an umbrella organization for conservative activists from around the country, had largely been supportive of Cruz’s candidacy, though a vocal minority of its members backed Rubio. The South Carolina result sent shock waves through the gathering. Some of Cruz’s key supporters, watching the returns together, confided their concerns to one another — and, as the weekend wore on, to neutral attendees.

Things suddenly looked shaky. Trump, whom Cruz supporters openly fear and despise, emerged from South Carolina as the clear frontrunner for the nomination. Meanwhile, Cruz was bleeding Evangelical support to Rubio, who appealed to a far broader swath of the electorate, according to exit polls. These twin dynamics so unsettled some Cruz supporters that they held a private call preparing for a scenario they couldn’t have imagined just three weeks earlier: Defecting from Cruz if he collapsed on March 1, and throwing their support to Rubio in a last-ditch effort to defeat Trump.

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The biggest concern was Texas. All of the March 1 states allocate their delegates proportionally, meaning Cruz could stay competitive in the delegate race even if Trump finishes first in most places. But Cruz’s allies feared he could not survive the optics of losing his home state — something his team readily acknowledged amid the mounting nerves as South Carolina’s returns came in. “I think we have to win Texas, absolutely,” Cruz’s then–communications director Rick Tyler said on CNN.

In the face of all this anxiety, it’s easy to forget that Cruz is exactly where he wanted to be: heading into Super Tuesday as one of a few remaining viable candidates, with the strongest field operation in a majority of the day’s eleven states. For all the talk that March 1 could mark the end of Cruz’s campaign — and it certainly could — it’s also true that no date on the calendar is likelier to restore momentum to his candidacy.