Ted Cruz feels confident he can beat Donald Trump in a contested Republican National Convention, but he told Newsmax, his path to the nomination would be much easier if John Kasich were not in the race and delegates committed to Marco Rubio and others now out of the race came over to him.



"There is no doubt at this point Gov. Kasich has no path to the nomination," Cruz told us, shortly after his speech to an overflow crowd at the annual Pennsylvania Leadership Conference (PLC) in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. "Mathematically, he's been eliminated. And so the only role he can play is that of a spoiler. To help Donald Trump."



The Texas senator needs roughly 83 percent of the delegates remaining to be selected in order to overcome front-runner Trump. However, he "fully agreed" that if Rubio released the 164 delegates committed to him and the other former candidates did the same with their handfuls of delegates, the nomination would be easier for him to secure.



Were that to happen, he said, "and if we win consistently going forward, we will win the delegates needed to earn the nomination. If it turns out no one gets to 1,237 [the majority of the convention needed to nominate a presidential candidate], then Donald Trump and I will both enter the convention with a ton of delegates. In a contested convention, I think the odds overwhelmingly favor us winning a majority of the delegates who have been elected by the voters."



Cruz spoke to us as the Rules Committee of the Republican National Committee was planning its mid-April meeting in Hollywood, Florida. At the top of its agenda is consideration of repealing the controversial Rule 40-B, which limits candidates for nomination and consideration at the 2016 to those who have secured a majority of delegates from eight states. Under 40-B, which was crafted by allies of nominee Mitt Romney and enacted at the 2012 convention, Trump and Cruz can be nominated but Kasich — who has so far won only his home state of Ohio — cannot.



When we spoke to Kasich when he was at PLC earlier on Friday, he signaled that he favored repealing 40-B. Cruz left no doubt he took the opposite stand.



"It would be ludicrous for the Republican Party officials to change the rules to subvert the will of the voters," he said, "Rule 40-B was put in place in 2012 as an effort by the establishment to stifle the Ron Paul campaign. Today the establishment perceives that Rule 40-B is an inconvenience to them. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.



"We should operate under the rules in place. Under the rules, there are only two candidates who will be appear on the ballot at the convention — me and Donald Trump. In that circumstance, I believe we will earn a majority of the delegates, win the nomination at the convention, and go on to win in November."



We asked if Trump was avoiding debates because he is afraid of debating or of facing Cruz.



"Both," he replied, "Donald has a lot of rhetoric. The reason Donald is afraid to debate is he cannot defend his policy positions. He prefers to communicate in 140 characters or less.



"On every issue, he yells, he screams, he curses but he has no solutions. When it comes to bringing jobs back to America, he has no understanding of problems facing this country. No concrete solutions to bring jobs back to America. When it comes to foreign policy, Donald has no real understanding of our enemies and he continues to lay out more and more dangerous policy proposals — to withdraw from Europe, to abandon our friends to Putin, to ISIS, to radical Islamic terrorism and now is not the time for an untested and weak foreign policy president."



John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax.





















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