Cruz puts a cloud over his future

Ted Cruz’s speech Wednesday night at the Republican National Convention marked a career-defining moment for the Texas Senator — but potentially a disastrous one.

{mosads}Cruz’s decision to refuse to endorse his party’s nominee, Donald Trump, created the most dramatic moment of the Republican convention, and friends and foes of Cruz believe his decision could mean he never achieves his dream of becoming the GOP presidential nominee, let alone president.

The anguish about Cruz’s future is being deeply felt by those closest to him.

His inner circle was divided about the speech, with some agreeing with his decision. But in the hours before he addressed the convention some of Cruz’s top aides were still pushing for him to endorse Trump — not because they liked the billionaire, but because they were worried about Cruz’s political prospects should he not endorse.

Their fears were borne out.

Cruz was booed off of the stage; Trump was cheered for his surprise entrance into the arena while Cruz spoke.

Things got so bad that Cruz’s wife, Heidi, had to be protected as she was hurried out of the arena.

On the morning after the speech, Cruz friends and political supporters were agonizing over his decision.

Some thought he’d ruined his political future. They worried that he’d marginalized himself by rejecting the GOP nominee; potentially cut himself off from important megadonors including casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who reportedly didn’t allow Cruz to enter his suite in the convention center after his speech; and that Cruz would ultimately be blamed by many in the party grassroots if Trump lost to Hillary Clinton in November.

Another fear was more immediate: That Trump and his allies would use the megaphone that he now owns – his titular position as the presidential nominee of the Republican Party — to bash Cruz so badly over the coming days that the Texas Senator is political rubble by the weekend.

Asked about the anguish felt by Cruz’s friends and allies, Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier didn’t deny it was there.

“Senator Cruz is never going to regret doing the right thing,” she told The Hill on Thursday. “Sometimes doing the right thing makes your path more difficult, but he has never shied away from taking political risks when it’s the right thing to do.”

“I have no doubt that his future is bright and full of opportunity. … Emotions are going to simmer down, and we are all going to move forward.”

But while Cruz and his aides are publicly projecting confidence and positivity, the private reality is far more anxious.

If there remained any Cruz aides in denial about the political downsides of Wednesday night, there won’t be now.

“He has alienated himself,” a former campaign manager for a 2016 candidate told The Hill.

“Two years from now, whether Trump wins or loses, people are not going to be defined by whether or not they supported Donald Trump. But Cruz has done something that will define him, and I don’t think it’s going to define him in a positive way.”

Cruz had tried to walk a thin line with his speech — no clear endorsement but a general, forward-looking framework that could possibly include Trump if a supporter squinted hard enough.

But the majority of delegates didn’t buy it, and Cruz sent conventiongoers into a frenzy when he told delegates to “vote their conscience,” the very language of the Never Trump movement.

It was a tough moment for Cruz, who continues to keep on a political staff under the pretense of his 2018 Senate race but with the understood goal of keeping the lights on for a 2020 presidential campaign.

Even lawmakers sympathetic to Cruz believe he hurt himself on Wednesday night.

“I endorsed Ted, but I think Ted missed a two-foot putt last night,” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the Texas lawmaker and head of the powerful House Financial Services Committee.

Team Trump looked to kneecap Cruz, with attacks coming as soon as Cruz left the stage.

Trump surrogate Rep. Tom Marino (R-Pa.) was seated in the front row on the convention floor and gave Cruz a piece of his mind just as the Texas senator walked off stage.

“As Cruz was leaving the stage, he looked at me, I shook my head, and put my thumb down and said, ‘You blew it,'” Marino, who knows Cruz, told The Hill on Thursday.

“I think this puts his political career in jeopardy — it may even be the end of it.” 

And Trump ally Roger Stone told The Hill that he and InfoWars founder Alex Jones met for drinks to discuss a possible Cruz primary challenger for Senate in 2018.

Cruz found no allies in the party apparatus.

During an interview Thursday, Republican National Committee chief strategist Sean Spicer welcomed New York Rep. Peter King’s assessment of Cruz as an “asshole.”

“I’d probably use the same verbiage,” Spicer said.

Cruz’s calculation could be compounded if Trump loses in the fall, some said.

“The first 100 days of a potential Clinton presidency, you are going to get liberal Supreme Court justices, and she’ll have a 100-day agenda that she will ram through,” GOP strategist Matt Beynon said.

“We’re going to forget about the warts we may have seen on Donald Trump and say, ‘We could have stopped four more years of a liberal administration.’”

Cruz was publicly excoriated at the Texas delegation’s breakfast Thursday morning. His home state delegates yelled at him, interrupted his speech and ordered him to endorse Trump.

Cruz refused.

”Ted Cruz did it for Ted Cruz,” Texas delegate Geraldine Sam said to reporters Thursday morning, after she tearfully confronted Cruz during the session.

“He has lost my support. He’s lost all respect from me.”

It was a rare Republican official in Cleveland who would say that Cruz did the right thing.

Republican Gov. Matt Bevin of Kentucky — a Tea Party favorite and no friend of the Washington establishment — was among that minority.

“If people look at the words themselves, and the substance and the totality of it … it was a good speech,” said Bevin.

“It was a speech about unification. … I think what people are trying to do is make more of it than was there.”

The far more popular view would best be described as schadenfreude. Cruz is widely loathed by the party establishment and some seemed to be delighting in his vulnerability.

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a prominent Trump supporter, spoke darkly about Cruz’s future.

“He’s a young man. He’s got a long life in politics. His opponents will say, ‘Well how can you trust this man?’” he told The Hill.

“He makes a promise and then he loses and he complains about the nasty things that were said about him, but he forgets the nasty things he said, and some of the sleazy things he did.”

Scott Wong contributed