Ted Cruz essentially gave a career-ending speech at the GOP convention on Wednesday night.

Cruz’s speech was a slap in the face to GOP nominee Donald Trump. This whole business about “vote your conscience” �?? that’s a wonderful-sounding phrase. But we all know what he meant: Don’t vote for Donald Trump.

I was in the convention hall and the crowd’s reaction was unbelievable. It started out as a few hands waving in the air and some booing and then it just grew and grew throughout the entire convention hall. And then boom! It was absolute bedlam.

I’ve been to most of the GOP conventions since 1980, and I’ve never seen anything like it. These people stood on their feet and booed. These are Republicans! They don’t do this. They don’t know how to stand up and boo! And yet, Cruz so divided them and worked them into such a frenzy that it happened.

Cruz tried to pass it off as just the New York delegation acting up. But that is wrong. The whole hall was in an uproar. You couldn’t even hear the last two paragraphs of Cruz’s speech because the booing had reached such a crescendo!

Cruz left an absolute disaster in his wake when he finished that speech. Everyone was dispirited �?? as you might expect.

And then came Trump running mate Mike Pence.

Pence delivered a terrific speech. He touched on all the major themes �?? the economy, shaking up Washington and Trump being an outsider. He talked about how Trump understands that middle class wage earners have been hurt �?? they haven’t had a raise in 15 years. That’s something that Cruz, in all of his years of political experience, still doesn’t understand!

Really, in the space of about 10 or 12 minutes, Mike Pence turned a demoralized, dispirited, depressed, negative convention into an upbeat, optimistic, united convention. He hit all the right notes and had a lot of optimism in his speech. The Cruz disaster, that had left the convention hall spinning just moments before, was suddenly swept away.