WASHINGTON – Now that Sen. Ted Cruz has dropped out of the presidential race, suspending his campaign on Tuesday night after a drubbing in the Indiana primary, the question is whether the deep rift in the GOP party can be healed.
Cruz did not endorse Trump in his concession speech.
Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus immediately tried to mend fences, tweeting: “@realDonaldTrump will be presumtive @GOP nominee, we all need to unite and focus on defeating @HillaryClinton #NeverClinton.”
The depth of the divide came into sharp focus before the votes were counted on Tuesday. during the latest, and perhaps nastiest, feud between Cruz and Donald Trump, who now looks certain to gain the GOP presidential nomination.
The chasm may be so wide, the question seems to be whether a split in the GOP between Trump supporters and those who say they would refuse to vote for him would leave the door wide open for Hillary Clinton to stroll into the White House.
Reactions to the latest war of words were as far apart as the candidates themselves.
Trump supporter and political commentator Ann Coulter was clinical and to the point, telling WND, “There was never a potential alliance. Cruz was born in Canada — he can’t be vice president.”
Before the Indiana results were in, Cruz supporter and political commentator Andrew McCarthy saw trouble down the road, telling WND, “Republicans can either remember there is still time to reject Donald Trump, or the American people will surely remind them of it in November – ushering in Hillary Clinton for Barack Obama’s third term.”
Talk radio titan Mark Levin also forecast doom for the GOP, now that Trump essentially has become the presumptive nominee, telling his audience Tuesday evening, “We’re going to get our [derrieres] kicked in the general election, ladies and gentleman. That’s the trajectory. Maybe it’ll change, but likely, it will not.”
Vividly illustrating the depth of the rift in the GOP, Levin also blasted Fox News for what he saw as its blatant support of the front-runner, calling it “not a news channel” and a “Donald Trump super PAC.”
When the GOP presidential campaign began, Trump and Cruz had a budding “bromance” of sorts, with each declining to attack each other. Then the race got close and the two began trading barbs. Now, the attacks have now become so bitter and personal, the differences may be irreconcilable.
The latest firestorm was touched off by a National Enquirer story that contained a photo the paper claimed showed a young Rafael Cruz, Ted’s father, handing out pro-Fidel Castro pamphlets in New Orleans in 1963 alongside Lee Harvey Oswald, the man believed to have killed John F. Kennedy.
Trump picked up on the story, saying on Fox, “His father was with Lee Harvey Oswald prior to Oswald being shot. I mean, the whole thing is ridiculous,” adding, “What was he doing with Lee Harvey Oswald shortly before the death, before the shooting?”
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Cruz went ballistic, saying on Tuesday he was finally going to say exactly what he thought of Trump, and called him an utterly amoral, narcissistic, pathological liar and a bully, as well as a serial philanderer who brags about infidelity. As for the insinuation his father was involved in assassinating Kennedy, Cruz said, “Let’s be clear, this is nuts. This is not a reasonable position. This is just kooky.”
In response, Trump issued a statement calling Cruz “a desperate candidate trying to save his failing campaign. It is no surprise he has resorted to his usual tactics of over-the-top rhetoric that nobody believes.”
It continued, “Over the last week, I have watched Lyin’ Ted become more and more unhinged as he is unable to react under the pressure and stress of losing, in all cases by landslides, the last six primary elections – in fact, coming in last place in all but one of them. Today’s ridiculous outburst only proves what I have been saying for a long time, that Ted Cruz does not have the temperament to be president of the United States.”
In the evening, Levin blasted the Fox show “Outnumbered” for what he saw as making light of the story, and issued a stinging rebuke to the network: “They may be laughing today, but they’re going to be rubbing their own faces in their own feces, I’ll tell you that, after this general election, because they have humiliated themselves.”
Although a staunch supporter of Trump, primarily because of his strong stance against illegal immigration, Coulter has criticized the front-runner’s shoot-from-the hip style, blasting his “half-baked tweets at midnight,” and lamenting, “It’s like constantly having to bail out your 16-year-old son from prison.”
In this instance, she contended there was never any chance of a Trump-Cruz alliance and did not elaborate further.
McCarthy, however, was scathing in his condemnation of Trump, and saw implications down the line that could lead to a Clinton presidency.
Like Coulter, McCarthy is a New York Times bestselling author, as well as a Fox News analyst, contributing editor at National Review, former adviser to the deputy secretary of defense and chief assistant U.S. attorney in New York.
“The second most troubling thing about Donald Trump’s latest reprehensible statement is that one can’t firmly say it is his most reprehensible statement. There are too many other contestants, and the field seems to swell whenever Trump is in the vicinity of a microphone,” McCarthy told WND.
He continued, “The most troubling thing is that many Republicans seem to have forgotten that candidates for the world’s most important office do not say such appalling and unhinged things because they demonstrate obvious unfitness.”
That’s when he added that Republicans could either reject Trump or watch Clinton elected to what would amount to Obama’s third term.
Conservative political commentator Rush Limbaugh was perhaps surprisingly reserved in his comments Tuesday on the controversy. He noted the National Enquirer originally reported the Oswald connection, and said, “Nobody picked it up because it’s kooky. It’s absurd!”
But Limbaugh did not comment beyond that.
The talk-radio giant has not endorsed either candidate, although he has spoken glowingly of Cruz, calling him “the closest in our lifetimes we have ever been to Ronald Reagan.”
Limbaugh’s brother David tweeted, “Based on Trump’s ludicrous and outrageous and scary comments about Lee Harvey Oswald and Mr. Cruz it is amazing people still support Trump.”
It was difficult to find comments from political analysts defending Trump.
National Review’s Jim Geraghty wrote an article titled, “A Stupid, Fact-Free Accusation from a Stupid, Fact-Free Candidate.”
In it, Geraghty wrote, “[Y]ou can’t change the style of a man with the impulse control of a toddler. Is Ted Cruz really going to endorse Trump and support him if he’s the nominee? If your opponent said your dad had a role in killing John F. Kennedy, or sent Tweets out that your wife was ugly, would you unite behind him?”
National Review’s Jay Nordlinger made light of the controversy, tweeting, “Trump is wrong. Ted’s father was not with Oswald. He kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. FACT CHECK!”
Glenn Beck’s The Blaze tweeted, “@realDonaldTrump pushes tabloid rumor about @tedcruz’s dad and JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Michelle Malkin’s TeamTwitchy tweeted, “And #TrumpConspiracyTheories is born in response to Trump’s linking of Rafael Cruz to Lee Harvey Oswald.”
