So, can we say he’s pale, rested and ready?
Ted Cruz seemed to open the door -- if only a crack -- to jumping back into the race for the Republican presidential nomination.
In an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck on Tuesday, one of his most vocal supporters before the Texas senator suspended his campaign last week Cruz said that he would be open to restarting his campaign if he saw a “viable path to victory.”
Perhaps he would consider it, he said, if he were to unexpectedly win tonight’s primary in Nebraska. However, the tone of the conversation suggested that he was not entirely serious, and he added, “I’m not holding my breath. My assumption is that that will not happen.”
Related: Why a Pure Conservative Platform for the GOP Is So Last Election
However, Cruz did make it clear that he is not prepared to support the nomination of Donald Trump, the man who finally drove him out of the race last week with a crushing victory in the Indiana primary. Republican voters, he suggested, have plenty of time before November to explore their options, and may find that they have other options when they head to the polls in November.
Cruz has already made it clear that he plans to play a role in the GOP’s nominating convention by working with delegates who support him to try to craft a party platform that retains their conservative policy preferences even as the party’s presumptive nominee treats many of them as negotiable.
Cruz’s supporters will also try to exert their influence on the Rules Committee, though a close adviser to the senator said yesterday that there would be no effort to attempt to engineer Cruz’s nomination through procedural maneuvering at the convention.
While Cruz did not directly attack Trump, he did suggest that part of his aversion to the New York billionaire is what Cruz views as low moral character. US citizens, he said, ought to be able to “look up to our president.”
Related: Is Paul Ryan Backing Away from a Confrontation With Trump?
Cruz was the second of Trump’s former rivals in the space of a day to come out with actual or implied criticism of the presumptive nominee.
On Monday, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who dropped out of the race after being blitzed by Trump in his home state, said on Facebook that he still has concerns about Trump’s policies and tried to quash ongoing speculation that he might be a potential vice presidential pick for his former rival.
“While Republican voters have chosen Donald Trump as the presumptive GOP nominee, my previously stated reservations about his campaign and concerns with many of his policies remain unchanged,” Rubio wrote. “He will be best served by a running mate and by surrogates who fully embrace his campaign. As such, I have never sought, will not seek and do not want to be considered for vice president. Instead, I will focus my attention on representing the people of Florida, retaining a conservative majority in the Senate and electing principled conservatives across the country.”
Trump, never one to let an offense slide, tweaked Rubio on Twitter without directly naming him. “It is only the people that were never asked to be VP that tell the press that they will not take the position,” he wrote.
