Sen. Ted Cruz recently told Breitbart News how he would get to 1,237, and he explained that voters in the Hoosier State would decide “which path America goes down.”
Tuesday night those Indiana voters voted to support GOP frontrunner Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.
From behind the scenes at the California Republican Convention, just minutes before Cruz would take the stage, we asked him about the importance of Tuesday’s Indiana primary election.
Cruz replied:
Indiana is a critical state. I am encouraged by the energy and momentum and support on the ground. But Indiana is at a crossroads. Hoosiers are deciding which path the Republican party will go down and which path the country will go down. Will they get behind a campaign that is based on yelling and screaming and cursing and insults? Or will we instead unite behind a positive, optimistic, forward looking conservative campaign based on real policy solutions to the pressing challenges facing this country.
Results of Tuesday night’s vote left Trump with 53.5 percent, Cruz with 36.6 percent and Ohio Gov. John Kasich with 7.6 percent of the vote with 97.0 percent reporting according to Politico.
After the loss in Indiana Cruz addressed supporters at a campaign night event in Indianapolis. He told those supporters, “Together, we left it all on the field in Indiana. We gave it everything we’ve got, but the voters chose another path. And so, with a heavy heart, but with boundless optimism for the long term future of our nation, we are suspending our campaign, but hear me now, I am not suspending our fight for liberty. I am not suspending our fight to defend the Constitution, to defend the Judeo-Christian values that built America. Our movement will continue.”
Cruz vowed to fight on so long as God grants the strength to do so.
He also spoke of former President Ronald Reagan who lost at the 1976 contested convention.
When I look back at that convention in Missouri, I think of the speech that Ronald Reagan gave to our party. He spoke not of the next four years. He saw not the close horizons, that are of interest to those who seek to build their own fortunes in the short-term, but instead, he looked to the distant times that concerned the men and women, whose purpose it is to secure the blessings of liberty to their posterity. Ronald Reagan spoke of the next 100 years, and of the generations of Americans who would come to know whether our nation had escaped the existential threat of nuclear war, who would know whether our party had succeeded in its fight against the erosion of constitutional freedoms, that only grow and multiply under rule of the Democratic Party. Ronald Reagan spoke of the purpose that defined our party then and that must unite and drive our party now.
The Cruz that on Saturday afternoon pegged the Indiana election result as the crossroads, the path forward for the Republican Party and the nation, on Tuesday night called for unity to tackle the challenges that America faces today, challenges that in his words, “remain as great as ever.”
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana