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Offering commentary and analysis from Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, The Cascadia Advocate provides the Northwest Progressive Institute's uplifting perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2016

Ted Cruz ends presidential campaign after losing to Donald Trump in Indiana

Reac­tionary right wing Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz of Texas has end­ed his pres­i­den­tial cam­paign fol­low­ing his loss in the Indi­ana Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry to fiery real estate mogul Don­ald Trump, who will now almost cer­tain­ly be the Repub­li­can nominee.

“What you have done, the move­ment you have start­ed is extra­or­di­nary,” Cruz told somber sup­port­ers towards the end of a long con­ces­sion speech.

“I love each and every one of you. From the begin­ning I have said i would con­tin­ue on as long as there was a path to vic­to­ry. Tonight, I’m sor­ry to say it appears that path has been fore­closed. Togeth­er, we left it all on the field in Indi­ana. We gave it every­thing we’ve got. The vot­ers chose anoth­er path.”

“With a heavy heart, but with bound­less opti­mism for the long-term future of our nation, we are sus­pend­ing our cam­paign,” Cruz said.

Respond­ing to Cruz’s announce­ment, Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee Chair­man Reince Priebus acknowl­edged that Trump was now the “pre­sump­tive nom­i­nee.

Cruz’s deci­sion to end his cam­paign means he will not be show­ing up in Wash­ing­ton State for the events that he had planned for next week, includ­ing a fundraisi­er at a pri­vate home on the East­side co-host­ed by Dino Rossi.

The only oth­er cred­i­ble can­di­date left stand­ing is Ohio Gov­er­nor John Kasich, who has a minus­cule num­ber of del­e­gates and is run­ning on fumes.

Cruz’s deci­sion to with­draw from the race is a severe blow to Susan Hutchi­son and the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty, for it means the forth­com­ing Wash­ing­ton Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry is unlike­ly to be com­pet­i­tive. Bal­lots for that elec­tion are just about to go into the mail. The dead­line to return them will be Tues­day, May 24th.

It’s pos­si­ble the anti-Trump fac­tions of the par­ty will now ral­ly around Kasich. But that is unlike­ly to make Kasich com­pet­i­tive. Cruz had much built a deep­er base of sup­port, aid­ed by fig­ures like Glenn Beck and, more recent­ly, for­mer rival Car­ly Fio­r­i­na. If any­one was to come from behind and over­take Trump, it was going to be Cruz, who had out­last­ed a bevy of rivals, from Jeb Bush and Chris Christie to Ben Car­son and Mar­co Rubio, who end­ed their cam­paigns back in the winter.

Only a few hours ago, The Seat­tle Times pub­lished a sto­ry by polit­i­cal reporter Jim Brun­ner announc­ing that Cruz planned a major tour of Wash­ing­ton State and hyp­ing the forth­com­ing Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry. The lede to that sto­ry was as follows:

Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Ted Cruz plans a cam­paign swing across Wash­ing­ton state this week, sched­ul­ing ral­lies Wednes­day in Spokane and Thurs­day in Both­ell and Vancouver.

The Texas sen­a­tor trails front-run­ner Don­ald Trump in the race for the GOP pres­i­den­tial nom­i­na­tion — and may face even longer odds if Trump wins a key Indi­ana pri­ma­ry Tuesday.

But Cruz has a strong orga­ni­za­tion in Wash­ing­ton and is look­ing for a win here in the May 24 pri­ma­ry, with 44 del­e­gates at stake. Pri­ma­ry bal­lots go out this week.

The sto­ry went on to sum­ma­rize Cruz’s planned Wash­ing­ton events:

On Thurs­day morn­ing, Cruz plans a ral­ly at Cedar Park Chris­t­ian School in Both­ell , 16300 112th Ave N.E., accord­ing to cam­paign sources. Tick­ets for the free event were being adver­tised on Eventbrite, an online tick­et­ing ser­vice. He’ll hold a ral­ly lat­er that day in Van­cou­ver, Wash.

Cruz’s Wash­ing­ton trip will start with a ral­ly 3 p.m. Wednes­day at the Spokane Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, his cam­paign announced in a news release.

Lat­er that night, Cruz is sched­uled to attend a pri­vate fundrais­er at a home in Red­mond. Tick­ets for that event cost $1,000 a per­son, or $2,700 to get into a VIP recep­tion with the candidate.

Now that Cruz is out, all those events have been canceled.

Once Cruz had announced his deci­sion to end his cam­paign, the arti­cle above was swift­ly replaced by the Times with a new sto­ry at the same URL fea­tur­ing reac­tion from Cruz’s Wash­ing­ton State cam­paign chair­man (who pro­fessed him­self shocked) and Tim Eyman ally Doug Erick­sen, an enthu­si­as­tic Don­ald Trump boost­er. The orig­i­nal sto­ry is gone from the Times’ web­site, as if it nev­er existed.

Ear­li­er in the nom­i­nat­ing sea­son, pun­dits spec­u­lat­ed that Wash­ing­ton might be the kind of state that could give John Kasich a boost, if he could sur­vive that long.

But our guess is that when the results are post­ed on May 24th, Don­ald Trump will have won Wash­ing­ton’s Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry in a rout, van­quish­ing his rivals in much the same way that he has in oth­er states across the country.

That’s cer­tain­ly what the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty expects.

“The Repub­li­can par­ty is now offi­cial­ly the par­ty of Trump,” said Jax­on Ravens, State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Chair. “Repub­li­cans chose as their stan­dard bear­er a real­i­ty tele­vi­sion show host who reg­u­lar­ly makes hate­ful and dan­ger­ous remarks about women, His­pan­ics, and Mus­lims. Don­ald Trump may be a good reflec­tion of the Repub­li­can par­ty’s val­ues, but his views are deeply incon­sis­tent with Wash­ing­ton state’s val­ues of com­pas­sion, empa­thy, diver­si­ty, and inclusion.”

“There’s no doubt that Trump’s pres­ence on the top of the tick­et will poi­son the already weak Repub­li­can brand in Wash­ing­ton state,” he concluded.

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One Comment

  1. Trump is much worst than any pre­vi­ous Repub­li­can can­di­date both suc­cess­ful and unsuc­cess­ful and indeed could draw a com­par­i­son to a Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dent. Andrew Jackson!

    # by Mike Barer :: May 5th, 2016 at 8:24 PM
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