Rush said today on his show that if Ted Cruz manages to win on the 2nd ballot at the convention, then it would be like a nuclear explosion and that would be the end of the Republican Party. Why does he say this? Because of blowback from Trump supporters:
Transcript:
Now, I’ll tell you something else. There’s one little other thing to add here. Let’s say — just pretend here that all of these efforts that Ted Cruz is making to win on a second or third ballot, let’s skip forward and say that it happened, all right? Whew. First ballot, nobody gets 1,237. Go to second ballot, and all of this work that Cruz has done in securing delegates in his favor gives him 1,245 delegates on the second ballot. I don’t think anybody understands the blowback that would happen from the Trumpsters.
If that ever happens, we are gonna see a nuclear explosion like you’ve never seen before. Because if they think what’s happened now is cheating and rigging the game, with Trump leading everything and nobody even close to him throughout the entire primary process — and nobody gets closer than 300 delegates, and then somehow on the first ballot he doesn’t get to 1,237, maybe he gets to 1,150 — and they don’t let him have it, and they go to the second ballot and all this work that Cruz has done produces 1,250 and he wins it on the second ballot?
Holy smokes! The blowback that will happen then, the backlash? That will be the end of the Republican Party. There are results. There is… I mean, there are consequences to all this. I’m not speaking about any of this in a vacuum, folks. All of it has consequences. That…? Whew! I shudder to think. That would end up being one of the most dramatic political conventions ever to be on TV. It might make the Watts and Rodney King Riots look like Romper Room when it was all over, if something like that actually happened. But that is all Cruz can do.
That’s the only chance he’s got.
He can’t get to 1,237.
The only chance he’s got is second or third ballots. It’s the only chance Reagan had in 1976. And it’s not because anything’s illegal. Everybody’s taking advantage of the rules. But if that were to happen? I shudder to think the backlash that would happen because there wouldn’t be any amount of… The words would not be there to explain to people what happened. It would just be seen as straight highway robbery right out in broad daylight, and people wouldn’t put up with it. It would be… You wouldn’t want to be near Cleveland if that scenario actually manifested. You wouldn’t want to be in Ohio if that happened.
I actually don’t disagree with most of what Rush says here. Even Ted Cruz has admitted that a contested convention could fracture the party:
One of the greatest risks of a contested convention is, if you come out with a party fractured, it potentially makes you vulnerable going into the general election. I believe, in a contested convention, we’ll have a strong advantage and we will earn the majority of the delegates and unify the party. But in that circumstance it’s not difficult to imagine Donald Trump getting very upset, and making his upsetness [known].
But what Cruz alludes to and Rush completely leaves out in these comments is that this blowback would be the fault of Donald Trump himself for lying to and misleading his supporters about the election process. How is it that Rush can suggest something as epic as a nuclear explosion of blowback from Trump supporters and not explain that Trump himself would be responsible?
It’s Trump who has been railing against the system as unfair, calling Cruz a liar and accusing him of cheating and stealing votes. It’s incredibly irresponsible for Trump to use these kind of divisive tactics, lies and distortions when Ted Cruz has done nothing but play by the rules, fair and square.
Trump is simply getting out played because he’s incompetent, that’s the bottom line. Yet he works up his people so that if he loses on a second ballot, in a scenario like Rush laid out, they feel they’ve been cheated and they lash out.
I appreciate that Rush went to great lengths to explain that Cruz isn’t cheating, and I understand that he doesn’t want to alienate Trump voters so that he can’t reach them anymore with the truth. It’s a fine line.
But the truth is the truth, and sometimes you just gotta call out Trumpertantrum for his irresponsible lies and let the pieces fall where they may. After all, if Rush is right, it won’t matter anyway whether or not he alienates Trump supporters. They are going to lash out anyway.