“I don’t like Cruz, but I can defend most of his positions with a straight face,” one prominent Republican leader told me. “I don’t know how I go on TV and make an argument for Trump.”
There is a potential bonus of a Cruz nomination, this party leader explained. For the past several cycles, conservative activists have complained that by nominating relatively moderate candidates — Romney in ’12 and Sen. John McCain in ’08 — the party spurned its base and depressed Republican turnout.
“Let’s have Cruz, and we will put that issue to rest,” said this party leader, convinced that the Texan’s appeal, pitched to evangelicals and the right, is too narrow to command a general election. “If it’s Trump, there will be no resolution. Each side will blame the other for the disaster.”
But all these efforts to stop Trump may well be too late. Even if they succeed in depriving him of the delegates he needs to clinch the nomination, his victory in Arizona’s winner-take-all primary meant Trump probably will come close.
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