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After Ted finished his keynote address to the Federalist Society conference in Austin last Saturday, he hung around for a bit to chat with conference attendees.  I approached him and reminded him that he had so kindly mentioned me and my friend in his Iowa victory speech.  He seemed genuinely thankful for all the volunteer work we had done throughout the campaign.  I then thanked Ted for his genuinely principled stance in Cleveland, and mentioned how I had written “glowingly” about it for The Resurgent.  Ted told me that he remembered reading the piece, and that he was very appreciative of the kind words I had written.

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While I was again humbled by his gratitude and appreciation for the piece I had written, I actually intended my words to be a not-so-subtle reminder to Ted of the political—and, indeed, moral—compass that he so conscientiously staked out in his Cleveland stand.

The reminder was needed: Ted Cruz came dangerously close during his speech at our Federalist Society conference to openly endorsing Donald Trump for President of the United States.

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Over the past few days since the Austin confab, some in Cruz’s inner circle have been fairly explicit in laying the groundwork for what might be an eventual endorsement.  Here was his former campaign manager and still-close confidante, Jeff Roe:

Roe on endorsement: Cruz is “on a journey”- he’ll have an answer before election day. “We talk about it every day.” Recent performance helps

— Liam Donovan (@LPDonovan) September 21, 2016

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…..Following his highly principled, thankless stand in Cleveland, how exactly did we end up in a situation where Ted “Vote Your Conscience” Cruz might still end up endorsing Donald Trump?

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All of which is to say that I feel I need to say this in the bluntest, most straightforward terms possible: Ted Cruz should not endorse Donald Trump for President of the United States.

There are at least six reasons why.

1. Any Attempt to Make This Look Principled Will Fail – Perhaps the most obvious reason for why Cruz should not endorse Donald Trump, at this stage, is that it will inevitably look calculated and conniving.  After his Cleveland stand, I tweeted that the well-worn argument that Cruz is simply yet another self-interested, run-of-the-mill politician must now go the way of the dodo bird.  Cruz purposefully eschewed the easy way out in favor of taking the principled high road.  I and so many others were so very proud of him; this was the Ted Cruz we knew all along.

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There is simply no possible way for Cruz to try to spin this as principled.  Contra what Sean Hannity or the Breitbart.com team might have you believe, there is no “pivot.”  What you have seen all along with Donald Trump is what you get.  The only reason the polls are tightening at all is because Hillary Clinton is a living, breathing dumpster fire who is terrible at doing pretty much everything in life.  Trump has done nothing at all since late July to make “vote your conscience” now appear to actually be an implicit call to vote for the “alt-right” god-king.

2. There Is No Walking Back From Cleveland – Whatever the internal debate in the Cruz world inner circle may or may not have been, Cruz made his strong stand at the convention.  He hedged harder than I would have preferred the next morning by making the speech seem even more like a chivalrous stand in defense of his wife than it was a principled substantive stand against Trump’s noxious brand of existentially threatening “alt-right” non-conservative populism, but the fact remains that Cruz conscientiously decided not to endorse Trump during his nationally televised speech at the convention.  There is simply no getting away from that very basic fact.  He made his stand, and he had to be aware of the reasonably foreseeable fallout of taking that stand.  The righteous and honorable thing to do now is to defend that career-defining stand.  If Pandora’s box has indeed been opened, then it is far better to make the best of the resultant chaos than to attempt to put the box back together again.

3. Cruz’s Most Ardent Supporters Will Be Disappointed and/or Horrified – Cruz’s current situation is no doubt a tenuous one.  The GOP establishment, which once again revealed its true colors in March/April when it failed to rally to Cruz’s side when the Party of Lincoln faced its existential civil war of convivial constitutional conservatism versus nefarious nationalist populism, hates Cruz more than ever in the aftermath of his Cleveland stand.  The Trumpstablishment is interested in potentially trying to primary Cruz in Texas in 2018, and, while Ted should be safe, crazier things have indeed happened.  But Ted knew well that the GOP establishment would double down on its Cruz-Hatred Syndrome™ following his Cleveland stand; surely, that was already baked into the calculus.

Cruz is simply too well-established, at this point in his political career, as a polarizing figure.  While he can help mend some bridges and assuage some concerns (see point (6), below) with his future actions, a figure as polarizing as Cruz must always be conscientious about retaining the core of his extant support.  And the core of his support, which includes folks like me and so many other millions of proud constitutionalists across the country, will not be happy if he now endorses Donald Trump.  Heck, most will be worse than merely not happy.  They will be bitter.  They will be angry.  Many will be so disheartened so as to give up on politics forever.  My personal conversations over the past few days and my Twitter feed are both extremely telling, in this regard.

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4. It Will Not Help Cruz in His 2018 Senate Reelection Campaign – Perhaps Cruz thinks endorsing Trump will help fend off a potentially intimidating Trumpstablishment/establishmentarian squish/nationalist populist primary challenge in his 2018 reelection race to return to the U.S. Senate.  Perhaps it actually would ward off a tacit NRSC-aligned establishmentarian, but it is difficult to foresee a scenario in which the “alt-right” does not attempt to primary Cruz anyway……And since classically pro-Constitution, pro-free market, pro-limited government sentiment is genuinely more popular in a (counter-intuitively) urban/suburban-dominated red state such as Texas than it is in more rural-dominated red states, it is not unreasonable to think that much of Cruz’s core first-generation Tea Party support will sour on him for making the Trump endorsement.

5. The Resistance Needs Ted Cruz, and Ted Cruz Has a Unique Role in the Resistance – Almost every other prominent Republican in the country—with notable, admirable exceptions, such as Nebraska’s Sen. Ben Sasse and my former boss, Utah’s Sen. Mike Lee—has sacrificed some degree of ideological, intellectual, and/or moral integrity by being tainted with Trump/”alt-right” complicity.  …..

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Cruz is, whether he covets the role or not—and I suspect he does—the de facto leader of the exiled conservative movement in America.  His Cleveland speech assured him of that role.  That role, furthermore, is his path to victory in a potential 2020 presidential primary.  Plenty of candidates will be able to say they endorsed Trump and did all they could to campaign for him.  Cruz will never, ever win the supporters that those candidates will be courting.  Instead, he should focus on securing the support of those of us who emphatically believe in training and mobilizing the conservative movement for a possible proverbial return to Jerusalem out of Babylonian exile.

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I hope and pray that Cruz, as a principled movement conservative for all of his adult life, appreciates the necessary role he has to play in all of this high drama.  He must not taint himself, and thus discredit the Resistance’s most natural leader, by now endorsing Trump.

6. There Is a Better Course to Steer – I continue to think that the least bad option for Cruz—and, to be clear, they are all sub-optimal—is to continue saying exactly what he has been saying through Election Day.  He should continue to preach the imperative of voting one’s conscience.  But he does not need to affirmatively accede to the “lesser of two evils” narrative and actually pick a side, when the choice is between Hillary Clinton and her old donor Donald J. Trump…..

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I sincerely hope Ted does the right thing by following the trail he so courageously blazed in Cleveland.  He should not, under any circumstances, now endorse Donald Trump.  We in the Resistance need an untainted Ted Cruz.  And Ted, whether or not he realizes it, also needs us.