The former House speaker predicted that Cruz could be boosted at a contested convention by establishment support, something that would be unthinkable without an even more polarizing figure like Trump in the race.
“The challenge is entirely on Trump,” said Gingrich, who has been supportive of Trump. “He is not gonna get any help out of the establishment. They have reluctantly concluded that if, you know — Trump in a funny way has normalized Ted Cruz because without Trump, the establishment would be totally opposed to Cruz.”
Indeed, the senator has only garnered support from fellow Sens. Mike Lee and Lindsey Graham. But Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush have also backed his campaign as the best alternative to Trump.
Gingrich pushed back on the notion that anyone other than Trump or Cruz could win the nomination. The 2012 convention rules, he said, were designed to block anybody from competing with Mitt Romney and now make it nearly impossible for someone who isn’t running in 2016 to become the nominee. The 2016 rules, however, won’t be set until the convention begins.
“This could end up being, you know, a really right-down-to-the-wire contest between these two guys,” Gingrich said. “If Trump doesn’t get it, then it will slide to Cruz.”
Trump has a 226-delegate advantage over the Texas senator, who won Wisconsin by a double-digit margin Tuesday. But the Republican front-runner is still nearly 500 delegates shy of the 1,237 needed to clinch the nomination outright before the convention.
While it’s tough to see Cruz surpassing Trump in delegates, Gingrich continued, he has the campaign to win a multi-ballot convention.
“What Cruz of course has done, very intelligently, is he has gone out and he has poached on the delegates that are going to be bound to Trump legally on the first vote, but they’re not bound after the first vote,” he said. “So what he’s trying to do is win elections in Louisiana, in Georgia, etc., where he picks up people that are pledged to help him once they meet their legal obligations. So Cruz, I think, will tell you he will actually get stronger on the second and third ballots. Trump probably won’t. Trump really has to rush to victory on the first ballot, I think.”
Gingrich said he could support either candidate as the nominee but joined the choir of people urging the New York billionaire to be more presidential. Trump has said he will, but doing so would be “boring as hell.”
Trump blasted Cruz and the establishment following a 13-point loss in Wisconsin — a message Gingrich decried as “self-destructive.”
For Trump to win, Gingrich said, his campaign has to give his convention manager Paul Manafort significantly more authority — “because Manafort’s the one real professional he has in the organization who has been through this before, who knows how to do it” — and pump more money into a more expansive daily grassroots delegate operation, in addition to being more presidential.
“The statement he issued last night was, frankly, just self-destructive,” Gingrich said about the missive, which stated, “Donald J. Trump withstood the onslaught of the establishment yet again. Lyin' Ted Cruz had the Governor of Wisconsin, many conservative talk radio show hosts, and the entire party apparatus behind him.”
It went on say, "Ted Cruz is worse than a puppet — he is a Trojan horse, being used by the party bosses attempting to steal the nomination from Mr. Trump.”
Gingrich on Wednesday said: “It was angry and it was hostile. It was demeaning. It’s everything that turns people off about him. He has had a great run, but he has to get to a new plateau if he’s gonna win.”
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