The Republican Establishment is grinning ear to ear right now. Two of the insurgent candidates are ganging up on the third in a petty effort to take him down from his leading position. It’s a sad state of affairs when just a couple of days ago things seemed so rosy for the cause of conservatism and the future of the United States of America.

It isn’t the message sent through the Ted Cruz app in Iowa on caucus night that hurt the insurgents. It was the responses. Donald Trump, who was once my favorite before I watched him lie about insulting a disabled reporter, has done his predictable tantrum calling everything unfair and attempting to cover up for his embarrassing loss in Iowa. Ben Carson, who has been my favorite ever since Trump fell from my good graces, decided that he wanted to play the victim rather than demonstrate his strength to rise above the fray.

There’s a true sadness that I’m feeling about this, now. Carson has been the moral man throughout the campaign, but his morality dropped when he decided to play the victim card. He knows very clearly that he didn’t lose 25,000 votes as a result of the message. He didn’t lose 2,500 votes. He probably didn’t lose 250 votes. In fact, it’s conspicuous that despite all of the coverage this is getting on every major new outlet, there hasn’t been a single voter who has come forth and said that they were coerced to change their vote from Carson to Cruz. I know that if I was going to vote for one candidate and a false report made me vote for a different one, I would be screaming at the top of my lungs. I’d have Bill O’Reilly, Mike Wallace, or somebody interviewing me so I could tell them what a dirty trick it was.

Nobody has. Somebody probably will at some point, but again the results in Iowa were not dramatically changed by the news. If it never happened, Cruz would still have beaten Trump by a large number and Carson would still be in single-digits.

There was some good that came out of this. Any other candidate would have turned his staffer into a scapegoat, a sacrifice to the political spinsters to draw attention away from him. Cruz has not done that. It’s shocking that he hasn’t knowing that his political future is at stake, but he has chosen to stand in front of his staffer and take hits from every angle possible. This absolutely shocked me. I still keep refreshing the news to see if he did what everybody else would do, but he hasn’t.

That’s exactly who Ted Cruz is. I’ve known it for a while and had him as my third choice, but this solidified his move to the top of my voting list. He has always stood for the conservative principles that guide him, which is why he deserves my vote. It’s easy to select a scapegoat, especially when it would be politically beneficial. It’s harder to stand alone against the tumult that comes with being a person of values.

While Trump is whining about everything and Carson is weeping over how his chances were destroyed by an evil opponent, Cruz is taking the heat and staying focused on the issues. He is emerging as the statesman that this country needs. He now has my vote.

Update: I feel even more secure about my decision after reading this article.