Day Three Of The Republican Convention Got A Little Wild

Another non-endorsement from Cruz, who passed up an obvious chance to mention Trump’s name. Instead, he asks voters “please, don’t stay home in November … stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

Oh, how funny that was if you got the joke. Cruz just grouped Iowa and New York together in a spiel about states’ rights. He gave a little smile, as if he was reliving the time he spoke about “New York values” when trying to win the Iowa caucuses.

The specific line Cruz added to his speech was, “I want to see the principles our party believes prevail in November.” To me, that’s emphatically not an endorsement of Trump. And given that Cruz is spending the rest of the speech articulating a traditionally movement “conservative,” not-very-Trumpian agenda, you might even read it as a subtweet about Trump, i.e., Cruz is pointing out that Trump isn’t really a conservative.