Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Donald Trump’s primary competitor in the Republican race for nomination early this year, declared his support for the candidate, ending a prolonged and bitter rivalry. He had refused to endorse Mr. Trump at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in July On his part, Mr. Trump had said he does not need Mr. Cruz’s endorsement.
However, on Friday, when they praised each other, Mr. Trump tweeted “[It] was a wonderful surprise. I greatly appreciate his support! We will have a tremendous victory on November 8th.”
Mr. Cruz has been an outlier in the Republican Party. However, his support for Mr. Trump demonstrates the candidate’s success in making reluctant leaders fall in line. Mr. Cruz’s popularity has been on the decline after he refused to support Mr. Trump at the RNC.
Personal insults Their rivalry has been more personal than ideological as the two share similar views on issues like immigration. The personal abuses they hurled at each other had sunk the Republican race to a new low. Mr. Trump had referred to his rival as “Lyi’n Ted” while Mr. Cruz called Mr. Trump a “pathological liar and a serial philanderer”.
Mr. Cruz’s turnaround, which he said was after “many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience”, is also an indication of the thinking among many fence-sitters as election day approaches. “This election is unlike any other in our nation’s history. Like many other voters, I have struggled to determine the right course of action in this general election,” the Senator wrote on Facebook.
Mr. Trump has promised to reverse the amnesty schemes for undocumented immigrants and to stop the “deluge of refugees”, Mr. Cruz said in his list of six reasons why he is now supporting the candidate. Mr. Trump’s promise to nominate only conservative judges to the Supreme Court, to repeal Obamacare, to free oil and gas industry from environmental regulations, and to keep Internet governance within the domain of American jurisdiction are the other reasons, he said. “We know, without a doubt, that every [Hillary] Clinton appointee would be a Left-wing ideologue,” he said of the Supreme Court.
Mr. Trump and Ms. Clinton will come face to face for the first time on Monday, for the first of the three presidential debates. Mr. Trump has so far ran his campaign without offering specifics and sidestepping most of the questions relating to his controversial policy proposals. Ms. Clinton may try to pin him down on his positions. In an interview last week,
Mr. Trump said he does not want to rake up Bill Clinton’s extramarital affairs during the debate, but added, “it all depends on how I am treated”. Meanwhile, a new ad released by the Clinton campaign features young girls feeling insulted by a series of statements by Mr. Trump and asks, “Is this the President we want for our daughters?”
