Cleveland

In a moment that perfectly captures the insanity of the 2016 Republican contest and exposes the deep rot of modern American politics, Ted Cruz was booed by Republican delegates and criticized by political analysts for refusing to endorse Donald Trump, a man who had mocked the looks of his wife and repeatedly suggested his father had helped Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Twenty-three minutes on the third night of the 2016 Republican National Convention reflected—and exacerbated—the deep divisions in Trump's Republican party. Cruz, who was Trump's closest ally and his most bitter rival over the course of the yearlong nominating process that led to this moment, delivered a powerful speech filled with evocative calls for a return to conservative principles but devoid of the one thing the Trump campaign, and many delegates in Cleveland, wanted more than anything: an endorsement.

Many in the crowd shouted at Cruz throughout his denouement. When he finished, delegates argued in the aisles about what he'd done. Trump supporters charged his wife as she was led from the convention floor. Fat-cat fundraisers cursed at Cruz. Former supporters said they would never back him again. Elected officials denounced him for doing, in withholding an endorsement, what many Republican officeholders here have told me they wish that they could do.

The response from the Trump campaign was, characteristically, confused. Some Trump representatives said they were blindsided by the speech. Others said they'd known well in advance what to expect. Some Trump representatives said they hadn't vetted the speech. Others, including the candidate, said they'd seen the speech in advance and approved it. Some Trump representatives were disgusted by the speech, with Chris Christie calling it "awful" and "selfish" and Roger Stone calling it a "huge mistake" delivered by a "treacherous prick." But others, including the candidate himself, shrugged it off, saying it was "no big deal."

Angry Trump supporters called for party unity and pointed to the pledge that Republican candidates had taken in this same venue nearly a year ago—a promise to support the eventual nominee. By refusing to back Trump, Cruz is plainly violating that pledge. But Trump can't very well criticize him for failing to keep his word. At a CNN town hall in March, Trump himself disavowed the pledge. Asked whether he intended to keep the promise to support the GOP nominee, Trump said: "No, I don't anymore." Beyond that, on the eve of the convention, Trump told Robert Draper of the New York Times that he wasn't terribly concerned whether Republicans kept control of the Senate in November, saying that he'd operated as a "free agent" before and could do so again.

Cruz's speech was a gamble based on a simple assumption: At some point, he'll be right about Donald Trump. Cruz thinks Trump is going to lose in November, an outcome that today looks far more likely than not. If Trump loses to the most unpopular major-party candidate in polling history, other than Trump himself, Republicans will look with embarrassment at the rental of their party to an amoral progressive. GOP officeholders will point back to the many times they expressed reservations about Trump with the hope that those moments will cancel out their support for him. In withholding his endorsement, Ted Cruz has done what scores of Republican elected officials will wish they would have done. (In private conversations here this week before Cruz's speech, many Republican officeholders have confessed to me that they wish they could have avoided endorsing Trump).

If Trump were to win in November, Cruz believes that his many warnings about Trump's lack of character and conservatism will be validated. Judging from the last year, that's a safe bet.

There are valid criticisms of Cruz's behavior with respect to Trump. For months before the voting began, Cruz embraced and praised Trump, criticized those who criticized Trump, and legitimized a man whom he surely understood was unfit to serve as president. If the battle between populist nationalism and constitutional conservatism had taken place at the beginning of the Republican nominating contest rather than become its legacy, it's possible Republicans might have avoided the Trump travesty altogether. There's little doubt Cruz shares some of the blame for Trump's rise.

It's also fair to question Cruz's decision to challenge Trump at the convention. Others who say they cannot support Trump, like John Kasich and Jeb Bush, have made their views clear without doing so in a way that thrust them in the spotlight in such an obvious way.

I'm more sympathetic to the first complaint than the second. For those of us who are thinking about a post-Trump conservative movement, and a post-Trump GOP, it's necessary to make clear that Trump doesn't speak for everyone. Whether Trump wins or loses in November, Republicans will spend years trying to cleanse their party of his toxic candidacy. And the fact that the party formally embraced Trump after his many controversies—after he slandered Mexican immigrants, after mocked POWs, after he ridiculed the face of a female opponent, after he called for banning a religion, after his bigoted comments about an Hispanic judge—means that the damage will be lasting.

For that reason, and many others, what Ted Cruz did Wednesday was important. He made a case for principled, constitutional conservatism. At a time when one Republican leader after another has capitulated in the face of Trumpism, that's no small thing.