Texans didn't turn out to vote in numbers large enough to keep Cruz out, and now we're stuck with Cruz. Shame on them.

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COMMENTS: 
*  It's a vicious cycle:  the Republicans continually decrease education funding, hoping to breed new Republicans
*  Low voter turn out in Texas is almost a 'given' these days. I always laugh when I hear someone won by a 'majority' of the vote.  NOT something to be proud of Texas!
*  Cruz is an extremist and attracts extremists' votes.  He is well hated by all folks in every facet of his life historically, including his current job in the US Senate.  Their aren't many candidates that could push R's to vote for a D, but Cruz is just the man for the job.
*  cruz has even less chance against clinton than trump does. cruz can't even smile convincingly.
*  Oh, yes, the Tea Bag Party believes that if it nominates someone "conservative enough," the Republicans will win the election.  I hope that Cruz is nominated, because there is no one more conservative than he, and when he gets stomped in the general election, the Tea Bag Party will have nothing to say.
*  I wish I was surprised that my fellow Texans would vote for a doughy weasel faced sleaze like Cruz, but, sadly, I’m not.
   *   ...and them's his good points.
*  I don't understand how anyone who could possibly vote the most hated Republican in the Congress.. the man virtually single-handedly caused an obstructionist label to be placed squarely upon the party.  
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What we did to deserve Ted Cruz
By Jim Mitchell, April 11, 2016

Sometimes it is good to remember how the world got Ted Cruz, GOP presidential candidate.

I was channel surfing one evening last week as Rachel Maddow was chattering and chair dancing to a campaign song about David Dewhurst. That’s a name I hadn’t heard in quite some time, the former lieutenant governor and the guy who was supposed to follow Kay Bailey Hutchison into the U.S. Senate in 2012. Add in chair dancing, and there was no way to change the channel.

I had forgotten how the planets — or perhaps the tea party leaves — aligned to give Cruz a Senate seat. Yes, I remember that Dewhurst ran a miserable campaign, skipped forums and was in a field of nine GOP Senate contenders in a presidential election year. But I had forgotten just how much a slim primary voter turnout, combined with an even slimmer runoff turnout, sealed the deal for Cruz.

Ted Cruz                  480,558               34.16%
David Dewhurst      627,731               44.63%
Total votes cast for nine candidates: 1,406,648

And the runoff:

Ted Cruz                  631,812              56.82%
David Dewhurst      480,126              43.18%
———–
Total votes cast in a two-person runoff: 1,111,938

Rachel Maddow is such a great storyteller that I urge you to listen.



But here’s the bottom line: About 1.4 million Texans split their votes among nine candidates, forcing a runoff between Dewhurst and Cruz. Cruz didn’t even finish first; Dewhurst did. Cruz was 147,000 votes behind Dewhurst.

But it was enough to get Cruz into the runoff.  Even fewer voters, 1.1 million, showed up for the runoff, and not enough were Dewhurst establishment Republicans. So Cruz won the GOP nomination and glided to victory against his Democratic challenger in the fall of 2012.

Contrast that with 2014, when Sen. John Cornyn won re-election after ripping through an eight-person primary field with 781,259 votes, or 59.4 percent of the 1,314,556 GOP primary votes cast. Roughly the same number of contenders in the field, but Cornyn received nearly six of every 10 votes cast and won outright. No one else came close.

This is why establishment candidates, or at the very least front-runners, want to avoid a runoff at all costs. Strange things can happen, as Dewhurst discovered. In terms of raw numbers, the Dewhurst and Cruz vote totals flip-flopped between the primary and the runoff. Cruz built on his base, and Dewhurst built on nothing.

If you are Donald Trump, or part of the GOP establishment that isn’t thrilled about Cruz or Trump as the party flag bearer, you have to be mindful that Cruz has a way of hanging around long enough to get a favorable match-up.

This is the delegate math that Cruz is playing. Stay close, peel off Trump supporters and force anti-Trump forces to see him as the fallback position.

Just saying.
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