Ted Cruz, a Man of Principle

SAN DIEGO -- Don't get it twisted, Cruz haters. The Texas senator is a straight-up hero.

When Ted Cruz accepted the invitation to speak at the Republican National Convention, and then refused to endorse Donald Trump -- only going so far as to urge delegates to "vote your conscience" -- members of the Trump family and many pundits accused Cruz of putting himself before the party.

Baloney. What the senator really did was inject decency, standards and integrity into a GOP nominating process that has abandoned all three in the rush to provide a united front against presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

Also, this wasn't Trump's convention. It belonged to the Republican Party, and that's who Cruz was addressing.

So what if Cruz isn't falling in line like former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who not long ago called Trump a "cancer" on the GOP but now supports Trump. Or like House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said Trump's accusation that a U.S.-born Latino judge couldn't be impartial because of his ethnicity was the "textbook definition" of racism but now supports Trump. Or like New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who described Trump's plan to ban Muslims as "the kind of thing that people say when they have no experience and don't know what they're talking about" and now waits on Trump like a butler. Or like Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who in May said he didn't intend to vote for Trump in the Indiana primary but now calls him a "good man" and serves as his running mate.

That's not how Cruz rolls. As the senator told angry members of the Texas delegation the day after the speech, he is not a "servile puppy dog" that is eager to please.

Good. We already have enough people like that in politics.

For Cruz, the decision not to endorse was personal. The scorched-earth tone of the final days of the primary campaign -- when Trump and his loyalists attacked Cruz's wife, Heidi, on her looks and implied that Cruz's father, Rafael, was involved in the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy -- nullified his pledge to support the party nominee, no matter who it was.

"I'm not in the habit of supporting people who attack my wife and attack my father," Cruz told the delegation Thursday.

Political observers say the senator destroyed his chances of being the nominee in 2020 and that he may have put his current job in jeopardy if Texas Republicans run someone against him in two years.

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