WASHINGTON — For Sen. Ted Cruz, the explosive video bombshell that laid low Donald Trump’s presidential campaign could not have come at a worse time.

The 2005 recording of Trump talking about groping women came exactly 14 days after the Texas Republican, Trump’s most bitter GOP primary rival, finally announced that he would vote for the Republican nominee.

Like many Republican officeholders, Cruz immediately denounced Trump’s leaked hot-mic remarks, calling them “disturbing and inappropriate.” But he did not rescind his support of Trump. Several Republican strategists and consultants say he’s not likely to.

While other Republicans in Congress sparred Monday over Trump’s troubled White House bid, Cruz was in West Texas talking to cotton farmers. On a three-day agriculture tour, Cruz has said nothing about the Trump video since Friday night, with the exception of a tweet on Sunday asking why NBC did not release the tape earlier.

The tweet attacked the media for what Cruz suggested was a deliberate effort to help Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in the Nov. 8 election: “NBC had tape 11 yrs. Apprentice producer says they have more & worse. So why not release in 2015? In March? Why wait till October? #MSMBias”

Cruz has not said if the emergence of such a tape would have foreclosed on the informal non-aggression pact he maintained with Trump a year ago. But since May, when he conceded to Trump in the GOP primaries, Cruz has made clear his personal feelings toward the Republican nominee, who denigrated his wife and father.

Among the string of epithets Cruz hurled Trump’s way in the final hours of the critical Indiana primary was “serial philanderer,” which would seem to cover the revelations from Friday’s damaging video showing Trump, then newly married to his third wife, talking about trying to seduce a married woman.

In Sunday’s presidential debate, Trump dismissed the banter as “locker room talk” and denied that it described any actual past behavior on his part.

Either way, the internal party chaos from the leaked video has put Cruz on the spot as much as any other Republican besides Trump, a predicament owning almost entirely to his belated support after bluntly refusing to endorse the nominee at the GOP convention in Cleveland.

The predicament earned Cruz a spoof on “Saturday Night Live” (where the Trump character calls him a “loser”) and a viral internet meme based on a photo of a weary-looking Cruz making get-out-the-vote calls last week at Tarrant County GOP headquarters.

“It may be possible that Ted Cruz has the worst timing in political history,” said University of Houston political scientist Brandon Rottinghaus. “Two more weeks and he looks like the genius of 2016.”

Despite the awkwardness, analysts say that for Cruz, the calculation of his tepid Trump endorsement Sept. 23 hasn’t changed. His endorsement, made on Facebook, described the election as a “binary” choice between Trump and Clinton, leaving little choice but for conservatives to back Trump.

Cruz reminded his supporters that he was duty-bound to support the party’s nominee — an obligation he had voided at the convention. He also cited Trump’s promises to appoint a socially conservative jurist to the Supreme Court and to back his unsuccessful push in Congress to maintain U.S. control over the internet’s domain name system.

Several Texas consultants with connections to the Cruz camp have emphasized that none of the senator’s endorsement criteria was based on any admiration of Trump’s temperament. Their personal animosity was on full display in Indiana and Cleveland, where Trump’s backers booed Cruz off the stage.

Now, having yielded to party pressure and publicly announced his intention to vote for Trump, Cruz is hardly in a position to reverse course.

“Cruz is in even more of a no-win situation now than he was before he decided to endorse,” said Austin GOP consultant Matt Mackowiak.

Two weeks ago, with the momentum building behind Trump’s campaign, it would have been inconceivable for Cruz, a 2018 Senate candidate eyeing another White House run in 2020, to withhold his support from his party’s nominee.

No matter what Trump’s personal baggage — which Cruz has attacked as strongly as anybody — Cruz’s advisers see no advantage in rescinding his support now, especially in an unpredictable election season that has the capacity to change in another instant.

His best course, some analysts say, is to embark on the course laid out Monday by House Speaker Paul Ryan: focus on the down-ballot races and ensure the Republicans hold on to both chambers in Congress.

Cruz, working with senior Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, did just that last week, helping raise more than $400,000 in a pair of fundraisers in Houston and Dallas. All that money will go to help elect Republican Senate candidates, not Trump.

Unlike other Republicans who bailed on Trump over the weekend — including freshman U.S. Rep. Will Hurd of San Antonio — few Texas Republicans see Cruz as particularly vulnerable in 2018.

“I’m not advising the Cruz team on what to do, but I can tell you he’s very formidable,” said Anthony Holm, a GOP strategist who has worked with many top Texas Republicans. “He’s a formidable actor who might have made some mistakes, but he’s still a very formidable candidate.”

All the same, some analysts say Cruz can ill afford to alienate the many grass-roots supporters who have flocked to Trump, even if die-hard conservatives remain wary of the GOP nominee. Moreover, the Trump crisis may have a Nov. 8 expiration date.

“Cruz gets credit for being one of the lone holdouts and flying the flag of purity in the party,” Rottinghaus said. “Maybe he gets less credit now in some circles, but two years from now is a long time, and four years is an eternity.”

kevin.diaz@chron.com