John Fund: Cruz More Likely Than Ryan to Be GOP's Trump Alternative

Talk of drafting House Speaker Paul Ryan as an alternative GOP presidential nominee isn't likely to come to fruition, National Review columnist John Fund tells Newsmax TV.

Instead, Fund says Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who is running in second place, is the most likely alternative if front-runner Donald Trump fails to secure the 1,237 delegates needed on a first vote at the party's convention this summer.

"I think that it's a little bit much though to expect that Paul Ryan, who's the actual secretary of the convention, is going to want to damage his career and step down as House Speaker and become the nominee," Fund said Monday on "Dennis Michael Lynch: Unfiltered."

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Lynch said most members of his audience can't stand Cruz, but Fund said that more than half of Ronald Reagan's supporters in 1976 indicated they'd never vote for Gerald Ford if he got the nomination.

"It turned out almost all of them ended up voting, and that was when the alternative was a Jimmy Carter we didn't know about," Fund said.

Trump already has lost Wisconsin, which votes on Tuesday, Fund said.

"I was just in Pennsylvania at the Pennsylvania Leadership Conference," he said. "What I learned there is that it doesn't matter how well Trump does in Pennsylvania, 80 percent of the delegates are unpledged. It doesn't matter."

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