Ted Cruz’s War

Yesterday afternoon, several hours before he gave the speech that split the Republican National Convention, Ted Cruz held a rally at a waterfront restaurant for twelve hundred of his supporters, to thank them for their work on his Presidential campaign and to insist that they had participated in something of deep meaning. “I’m reminded of one of my favorite scenes in cinema,” Cruz said, and he described one from the movie “Patton” in which the general, mustering his troops and channelling Shakespeare, tells them that, when “our grandkids ask where were you in the great one, the great battle, we’ll be able to say to our grandkids, ‘I wasn’t shovelling crap in Louisiana.’ ” Cruz mentioned the matter that preoccupied the Convention—whether or not he would endorse Donald Trump—but said only that “every one of us has an obligation to follow his conscience.” It was clear that Cruz had in mind a crusade, but it wasn’t obvious whether that crusade included the Republican Party, or Donald Trump, or his movement alone. If Cruz was Patton in the conservative wars, who were the Germans?