Republican delegates will switch from Donald Trump's side over to Ted Cruz's in the second ballot of the GOP convention this summer because the "grassroots of the Republican Party is not in favor" of the current front-runner, Cruz's camp said Monday morning.
"They recognize that a Donald Trump nomination, at the end of the day, would result in Hillary Clinton being in the White House and Democratic control of both chambers of Congress, and the Supreme Court [would be] going to the left," Cruz national campaign spokesman Ron Nehring told
Fox News' "America's Newsroom" host Martha MacCallum.
Part of the reason for that, claimed Nehring, is that Trump "consistently smears" GOP activists and volunteers by calling them party bosses and insiders.
"We just were at the California Republican Party convention this past weekend, and there are no party bosses or insiders there," said Nehring. "These are activists. People walk the streets or people make sure phone calls get made at neighborhood Republican headquarters. For them the opportunity to be a delegate to the national convention is a reward, even though it costs them several thousand dollars out of their own pocket to be able to go."
And, he continued, it's "not surprising so many of these Republican party volunteers who get consistently smeared by Donald Trump don't want Donald Trump to be the nominee, because this is a guy who alienates everybody within the party and outside of the party as well," said Nehring.
However, MacCallum pointed out, Trump is winning primaries while Cruz is winning delegates, but Nehring said that there are two elements at work.
For one, people who come to Republican Party conventions are there because of the issues, said Nehring. Also, he said, delegates have to vote in the manner in which they're bound, and "Donald Trump will not get a majority on the first ballot."
"On the second ballot it's up to Ted Cruz to put together a majority of the delegates and I believe that after the first ballot you will see the biggest run off on Donald Trump stock since Enron," said Nehring. "People will abandon him like crazy because they will recognize that, what people already recognize. If Donald Trump is the nominee, this party is headed to wipe out of biblical proportions. Republican activists who are volunteers and delegates don't want to see that happen."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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