Going into Wednesday night, Ted Cruz intentionally left people wondering what the meaning and the subtext of his prime-time Republican National Convention speech would be: Would he endorse Trump? Come close to endorsing Trump? Or would he largely ignore Trump and talk about ideas he wants to see vindicated eventually in our politics?

In the end he did not endorse Trump, nor did he come particularly close. He did talk about some ideas (abstractions, mostly, but ideas nonetheless) that defined conservatism in the pre-Trump era. But none of these was his main objective.

Trump-skeptical Republicans have been despondent about the state of their party and their prospects for victory in 2016 for months now. It was no secret as the party convened in Cleveland that ambitious GOP up-and-comers would use the convention as a platform to increase their own profiles ahead of 2020, while also hedging their bets and endorsing Trump, in case he somehow wins in November.





Cruz was up to something different altogether. Like the other ambitious speakers, Cruz is still eyeing the presidency. Unlike any other speaker, though, Cruz enjoys the tacit support of a huge minority of assembled delegates. Many of them are Cruz people at bottom, and regret that Cruz isn’t the GOP nominee today. And so rather than hedge like others did, Cruz made a career-defining bet, not just that Trump will lose, but that Trump will lose badly.

In a way, Cruz seemed determined to use his moment in the spotlight to maximize the size of Trump’s defeat. If it pays off, Cruz will cement his status as the one Republican 2016 candidate who practices politics with an eye toward the horizon, and the Republican in politics most willing to elevate personal ambition above party interest–a useful if not heroic trait at a time when Republican interests and Trump’s are converging. He will spend the ensuing years as the presumptive frontrunner in the 2020 primary. But it will only work if Democrats humiliate Trump this fall.