The scorpion approaches the frog with a humble proposal.
Directly and through surrogates, [Ted Cruz] is aggressively reaching out to his Senate colleagues as he prepares for the possibility of a convention floor fight against Donald Trump. And Cruz’s emissaries on Capitol Hill are now signaling to senior Republicans that Cruz would be willing to work with them as the GOP nominee in a way Trump would not.
Here's a question for his Senate colleagues. Has Ted Cruz done anything, during his entire Senate tenure, that would suggest he would be willing to "work with them?” A large part of Ted Cruz's recent career path seems to have been predicated on screwing those around him and then counting on those so enscrewed to be gullible enough to trust him the next time around. Ted Cruz led the government shutdown, and thinks there should be more of them. Ted Cruz has repeatedly bashed his fellow Republican senators in public speeches for their insufficient purity to conservatism. Ted Cruz is running for president because he thinks everyone else in the race and in the party is a sell-out, part of a too-compromising "cartel" that isn't really as dedicated to conservatism as they say they are and who, therefore, cannot be trusted.
On the contrary, Senate Republicans would probably get a lot more done with Donald Trump. Trump doesn't have an ideology behind him. The Trump ideology is that he’s very smart and he'll therefore believe whatever he thinks the most people want to hear and be done with it.
“With Cruz we can win the election, hold the Senate,” said former Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Texas), who was tapped by Cruz to lead outreach to members of Congress. "I think with Trump we almost certainly lose the Senate, lose the election for president, even lose the House.”
That's great, one of the key architects of the great recession is now acting as a mastermind of Cruzmentum. Maybe Ted has found his vice president.
The Republican conundrum here is fascinating. To be sure, they all know that a Trump-topped ticket would likely be an electoral disaster—and Republicans in close races this November don't need that anchor tied around their necks. But Everyone Hates Ted Cruz, and for damn good reasons, and for reasons so fresh in Republican minds that not even a healthy dose of Fox News-enforced amnesia can scrub it—and it's not clear at all that a Cruz-led ticket would be better for Republicans in November, because Cruz has policies equally rancid to anything Donald Trump has proposed but can be tied closely to his fellow Republicans. Republicans could conceivably distance themselves from Trump. They can't distance themselves from Cruz.
So does the frog give the scorpion a lift, in this scenario? How dumb a frog are we talking about?