“You’re mad now, but have I told you about my grades?”

So, I didn’t watch last night, but obviously caught up on Ted Cruz’s refusal to endorse, and the delicious chaos that followed. Cruz looks bad, and is hated, and his good buddies are turning their back on him. But this was peak Cruz. He knew what would happen, and still did so. Here’s why.

Cruz is betting on a huge Trump loss, and wants to position himself for 2020. That’s pretty obvious. But the way he’s doing it is to lay the groundwork for The Great Hijacking narrative that will be the Republican story after the loss. The nativists and racists in the party will claim betrayal by the elites, of course, and there will be opportunistic politicians who try to attract them, but what’s left of the Party (not much!) will try to rally around the idea that they were hijacked and bamboozled by a New York billionaire, and that conservative ideas weren’t represented.

Cruz is in a perfect position to do this. On immigration, on Muslims, and on the red-meat social issues, he’s no less and often more hideous than Trump. He can appeal to all sides of the party and its fractured remnants. So he takes the heat now, but then seems like the only person who had the sheer balls to stand up to Trump. So when the party is dazed after their drubbing (this is the theory; not a prediction), Cruz can be the one they turn to.

Paul Ryan is trying the same thing. But as much of a piece of work he is, he’s still slightly more responsible and party-oriented. For Cruz, the GOP has always just been the best avenue for his Messianic outlet. He’s a true believer, but only in himself. He’s willing to break the party if he thinks he can collect the shards into his own basket. I think that’s his plan here. He might be overplaying his hand; he is, as we’ve talked about, more clever than actually smart, more of a striker than a strategist. In four years (or two, really) the nativist wing might, in their anger and betrayal, suddenly remember that he’s a goddamn Mexican or whatever, and the what’s left of the Establishment might try to freeze him out.

But don’t count him out. He is still a good politician, and got hundreds of delegates despite being one of the most unlikable men in America. In it’s own way, it was more remarkable than what Trump did.

What’ll be interesting is when he’s up for reelection in 2018. Who knows if this will hurt him or not. But how can he possibly run and even pretend that he has any interest in serving as a Senator? He’ll be running for President the day his second term starts in 2019. He might not even stop in Washington on his way to Iowa. At least Rubio has two years to pretend to be a Senator. Cruz will run for President regardless of if Trump wins or loses. He’s not waiting another eight years. He’ll do what Reagan did to Ford and Teddy Kennedy did to Carter. That’s a prediction.

The last note is that Cruz did the impossible last night. For literally anyone else, not endorsing Donald Trump would be a sign of character and of decency, of principle and, if you are a Republican, of sacrifice. Only Ted Cruz can make doing the right thing self-serving and selfish. He’s a remarkable man.

(12:10 CST, so things can change, but the point remains)

The political world is abuzz with the speculation that Ted Cruz, fresh off devastating losses last night, and looking to change the conversation away from Trump’s supposed inevitability, is just a few hours away from announcing his Vice President.

There is some precedence to this. In 1976, locked in a tight race with the incumbent Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan surprised everyone by announcing a VP pick, a hapless liberal Republican named Richard Schweiker, who died just last year. This was a disaster of a move, and many of the far-right movement which helped push him so close to the nomination felt betrayed.

(That this is largely unknown is because history has scrubbed how a greedy Reagan attacked Ford throughout a contentious primary, helping to elect Jimmy Carter. His “11th Commandment” apparently didn’t cover the incumbent President.)

Reagan had what seemed like a good reason for it. Ford had dropped Nelson Rockefeller, the VP he chosen after he was appointed President following Watergate, who was despised by the right. He had yet to say who Rocky’s replacement would be, and so Reagan hoped to either back him into a corner or make him look like he had something to hide. Conservatives, the thinking went, shouldn’t back him if he just might appoint another liberal. That Reagan picked a liberal was spun as just an opportunity for the Great Communicator to convert young Schweiker to conservativism, because, as always, Reagan was an incredible liar and self-mythologizer.

I think Cruz will do the same thing, self-righteously spin this to say that he is the principled one, and who knows who the liberal Donald Trump will pick, probably a tranny, you know? He’s standing up for people, and giving voters the right information, because he’s the only one with real values.

Ted Cruz’s gift is being able to convince himself that whatever craven move he’s making is one of unassailable principle, a trait he shares with Reagan. Reagan could convince them with charm. Cruz doesn’t have that, so his abilities speak more of his audience than it does of his innate gifts. But this move, like the Kasich alignment, is nothing more than a desperate move to change the headlines.

And the thing is, it will sort of work: it will change the headlines to talk about what a desperate clown he is, just like with Kasich. Because Cruz, for all his campaign’s organizational prowess, is a debater, not a strategist. He thinks in quips and believes that a clever move can carry the day. His soundbites sound good, and he is generally good with a zinger, if you are already in the tribe, but he trips over himself too much (to say nothing of when he calls a hoop a “basketball ring” in goddamn Indiana).  His line about transgendered bathrooms was a perfect example of this.

“Let me make this real real simple for folks in the media who find this conversation very confusing,” he said. “If Donald Trump dresses up as Hillary Clinton, he still can’t go to the girls’ bathroom!”

It works on the surface because it sounds simple, and makes the whole enterprise sound threatening, and mocks the media, and most importantly makes people think of Donald Trump in a dress like a girl or a queer, and somehow mocks Hillary Clinton, but it elides the point, ignores the real issue, and makes him seem like an idiot. It’s clever without being smart.

That’s what will happen here. He’ll sneer about how he’s standing up for people, but it won’t work. It will make him look desperate, and there is no real pick, outside of maybe a David Petreaus (who wouldn’t do it) who won’t make things even worse. It’s the flopsweat move of a man who thinks he’s twice as smart as he really is.

Especially if it is Carly Fiorina. Man, I’d laugh my ass off. That’d be great.

The brutal and terrifying interrogation scenes in Koestler’s Darkness at Noon are, in some ways, a generational clash. Rubashov, the old revolutionary, is interrogated primarily by two men, Ivanov and Gletkin. Ivanov is a contemporary, a former running mate, and has some sympathy for Rubashov, if not for his apostasy. This sympathy and inability (or unwillingness) to get a confession by any means necessary leads to Ivanov’s own execution. Gletkin has no such hangups, and not out of fear. He’s a child of the Revolution, essentially born into it, and has had his moral compass shaped entirely by the revolutionary rhetoric. He doesn’t just force Rubashov to confess. As Hitchens put it, “Orwell’s more widely read Nineteen Eighty Four, which has many points of similarity with Darkness at Noon, makes the same terrifying point that the fanatics don’t just want you to obey them: They want you to agree with them.”

Anyway, long story short, I think Ted Cruz is actually pretty happy he’s going to lose New York today.

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