Cruz and Trump both lost in the convention face-off

That clip of Cruz getting booed by his own party convention is now the highest-profile moment of his career. It will play over and over for the next four years, and possibly beyond. Watching it, I couldn’t help but think of a story I once heard about a politician who had been captured on film being chased by his own angry constituents. Allegedly, the politician asked a staffer when the media would stop playing the clip; allegedly, the staffer replied, “Sir, they’ll play it when you die.”

Of course, Cruz has built his career on such high-profile moments. But his photogenic stands on the Senate floor were stands against Democrats, and Democratic programs, not against the fellow who won his own party’s primary.

I continue to think that the #NeverTrump Republicans are a sizeable group; I don’t think that they are, by themselves, sizeable enough to constitute anyone’s political base. For many other Republicans, this will finally make plausible what that Washington establishment has been saying for months: that Cruz is an opportunist who is willing to badly hurt his own party for the sake of some imagined political advantage. When they make that charge again in 2020, it will have a much more receptive audience.