Cleveland

At a meeting Thursday morning with members of the Texas delegation to the Republican National Convention, Ted Cruz was repeatedly peppered with questions from his own constituents about his decision Wednesday night to decline to endorse Donald Trump and tell voters during his primetime speech to "vote your conscience for anyone who will uphold the Constitution."

"In that speech last night, I did not say a single negative word about Donald Trump," Cruz told his fellow Texans inside a Marriott ballroom. "And I'll tell you this morning and going forward I don't intend to say negative things about Donald Trump."

When the floor opened up for questions, a man immediately shouted without being called on: "Are you voting for Donald Trump!?"

"I am doing what millions of Americans are doing. I am watching and I am listening. And as I told you last night, the standard that I intend to apply is which candidate I trust to defend our freedom and be faithful to the Constitution," Cruz replied. "I can tell you, I'm not voting for Hillary."

"I actually thought later last night that Newt had it exactly right," Cruz said Thursday, referring to Newt Gingrich's explanation of Cruz's remarks. "Newt stood up and said, You know what? The standard Ted laid out—who will defend freedom, who will be faithful to the Constitution—Newt said Donald Trump is the only candidate that meets that standard. I'll tell you this: If we want to win this election, that's the only way we're winning this election. We're going to win this election by making the case to the American people. We're not going to win this election by yelling and screaming."

Cruz underscored the point later in response to another Texan's question. "What does it say when you stand up and say, 'Vote your conscience,' and rabid supporters of our nominee begin screaming, 'What a horrible thing to say!?' If we can't make the case to the American people that voting for our party's nominee is consistent with voting your conscience, is consistent with defending freedom and being faithful to the constitution, then we are not going to win, and we don't deserve to win," Cruz said.

Asked about his pledge to support the Republican presidential nominee, Cruz said he made that pledge intending to honor it, but it was "abrogated" when Trump viciously attacked his wife and father. "I am not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father," Cruz said Thursday morning. "And that pledge was not a blanket commitment that if you go and slander and attack Heidi that I'm gonna nonetheless come like a servile puppy dog and say, 'Thank you very much for maligning my wife and maligning my father.'"

The Texas senator explained that his comments about conscience and the Constitution should actually help the Republican party win in November. Cruz told the Texas delegation that he read an article online last night about his speech and noticed that the "word cloud" for the article displayed "freedom" as the largest word, while in prior nights' word clouds the dominant word was Trump.

"If we go to November and the dominant word the voters hear is Trump, or for that matter if the dominant word is Hillary or email server, we're gonna lose," Cruz said. "We will win if the dominant message the voters hear is freedom."