Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz suggested at a standing-room-only campaign stop in Raleigh on Tuesday that U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich should fold their flagging campaigns and join him to defeat businessman and reality-show star Donald Trump.
Rubio and Kasich “are good, honorable men,” Cruz, a Republican U.S. senator from Texas, told television personality Megyn Kelly during a Fox News Channel town hall filming at Calvary Baptist Church. Organizers said 1,600 people registered, and 1,000 were squeezed into the church along with rows of journalists. They estimated 1,500 more outside in an overflow area.
“Neither one of them has a path to defeating Donald Trump” by getting the 1,237 delegates necessary to win the Republican nomination, Cruz said in one of many applause lines. “I would say, come join us.”
That was the message Cruz deployed repeatedly during a 10-minute news conference prior to the town hall and during the public event. He called North Carolina, which holds its presidential primary March 15, “a bellwether state” with 72 delegates that will have “a decisive impact” on the race to the nomination.
“The last election, Super Saturday, was a very bad day for Donald. He came in proudly expecting to sweep all four contests. Instead he got clobbered,” Cruz said. The Texas senator said the more Trump loses, the angrier and uglier his insults will become, betraying his unsuitability for the presidency.
Trump has 384 delegates; Cruz, 300; Rubio, 151; and Kasich, 37.
Cruz hammered at the theme that polls consistently lowball his support, as evidenced when he wins states he is projected to lose. He bristled at a question from Kelly about pundits saying it is unlikely he can win the nomination.
Those are the same pundits who invite Trump on television nonstop for ratings, Cruz said, giving Trump free airtime that puts wind in his campaign sails.
Polls continue to show Trump is “the one person on the face of the planet” presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton can beat, Cruz said
“That means if Donald Trump is our nominee, we lose the Supreme Court for a generation. We lose the Bill of Rights for a generation,” Cruz said.
Cruz would oppose a brokered GOP convention if none of the candidates achieve the required 1,237 delegates, calling such a process “the fevered dream of the D.C. establishment” that suddenly “swoops in with their white knight,” handing a Washington insider the nomination.
That would be “absolutely catastrophic,” he said. “You would see an open revolt.”
Cruz was more receptive to a contested convention, in which elected presidential delegates, not party bosses, choose the nominee. That is how Gerald Ford defeated Ronald Reagan in 1976.
Cruz prefers a more direct route: “The way to beat Donald Trump is beat him at the ballot box.”
Trump lacks the foreign policy experience to be commander in chief, Cruz said.
Trump’s statement that he would be neutral in dealings with Israel and the Palestinian Authority demonstrate he is not suited for the job, Cruz said. Israel is our strongest ally in the Middle East, shares our values, and is a liberal democracy. The Palestinian Authority “formed a unity government with Hamas, a terrorist organization that celebrates the murder of women and children, that celebrates terrorist acts.”
Cruz also pointed to Trump’s lack of knowledge about the nation’s nuclear triad — submarines, long-range bombers, and ballistic missiles — when asked during the fifth presidential debate which part of that arsenal most needs rebuilding.
“The right answer to that question should have been submarines because of all of them it’s the hardest leg to take out. It’s the most important for deterrence,” Cruz said.
He also ridiculed Trump’s stance on maintaining but renegotiating the Iranian nuclear deal.
“Anyone who thinks he can just go and renegotiate the deal with the ayatollah doesn’t understand the nature of his adversary,” Cruz said. “The Ayatollah Khameini chants, ‘Death to America.’ If I’m elected president, on the first day in office I will rip to shreds this Iranian nuclear deal because you cannot negotiate with someone whose object is to murder you.”
To sustained applause, he added that on his first day in office, he would move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem and rescind “with a stroke of the pen” what he considers every illegal executive order signed by President Obama — including amnesty for illegal immigrants. Cruz would direct the Justice Department to investigate Planned Parenthood, tell every federal agency “the persecution of religious liberty ends that day,” and instruct the Department of Education that “Common Core ends today.”
Nateefa Wade of Raleigh, a 34-year-old black Republican, said she came to support Cruz “because he’s a constitutionalist. He stands for his principles … even if it’s against people in his own party.” She had considered Rubio but switched to Cruz.
“I definitely don’t want a — as a black person I’m saying this — a third term of Obama,” which a Clinton presidency would usher in, Wade said. “As African-Americans, we’re not better off than when Obama came into office.”
“I liked his message. Very positive. He talked a lot about helping the country, making sure that he gets rid of everything that was done illegally by Barack Obama,” said John Weber of Wilmington. He has yet to make his mind up between Trump and Cruz, but said Kasich and Rubio should end their sluggish candidacies.
Christy Wall of Raleigh said she has not committed to a candidate. She was considering Cruz and Trump.
She said she likes Cruz’s pledge to end Obama’s executive orders, senses Cruz could create a reprise of the Reagan coalition, and appreciates Cruz’s willingness to talk about his faith.
“I really haven’t heard any of that from Donald Trump.” Indeed, she said, the big drawback to her is Trump’s coarse language and “tantrums” that more closely resemble a 3-year-old than the leader of the free world. “I think our country needs more than just a businessman at this point.”
Andy Moore of Raleigh said he is “strongly for Cruz,” due in large part to his willingness to protect Christian liberties and his support for the Second Amendment.
“Those are key issues for this state,” Moore said, and Cruz has gained “good support” in North Carolina.
Lifelong Republican John Chambard of Raleigh and Kill Devil Hills first voted for Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. He decided when Cruz was running for senator in Texas that if he ever ran for president, he would vote for Cruz because he is a man of principle.
Chambard said he has become increasingly disenchanted with Republicans, starting with George H.W. Bush.
“We’re at a tipping point for this country,” he said. “We’re running like a runaway freight train towards socialism. Too many Washington insiders are self-serving politicians first, and care about the country second,” he said.
In a side development that created consternation among Cruz campaign officials, a report was posted by WRAL saying the campaign rally had been canceled and that Fox News was the only media outlet allowed to cover the event.
Cruz supporters on social media were concerned that the report made it seem as if Cruz had stood up the hundreds of people waiting for him at the rally site in order to do a media interview. In a response to a Facebook post questioning the initial report claiming that Cruz canceled the rally, WRAL News reporter Laura Leslie blamed the website’s editor for publishing erroneous information.
Numerous reporters and photographers were at the news conference prior to the town hall and during it, and WRAL capital bureau staff sat among those other news representatives at the town hall.
The post-town hall campaign rally was scratched, the campaign said, because Cruz was running late, and had another campaign stop in Kannapolis.