Urgent final pitch

In Indiana, Cruz delivers urgent final pitch

'Right now the entire the eyes of the nation are on Indiana.'

By Katie Glueck

INDIANAPOLIS — Flailing in the polls and struggling to regain a foothold in a state he once thought he could win, Ted Cruz took the stage here in Indiana on Monday night and made a closing plea.

“Indiana faces a choice, and a choice not just for the state, not just for the Republican Party, but for the entire country,” Cruz said. “Do we get behind a campaign based on yelling and screaming and cursing and insults, or do we continue to unify behind a positive, optimistic, forward-looking conservative campaign?”

Cruz’s appearance at the Indiana State Fairgrounds, in a cavernous room that was perhaps two-thirds full, comes on the eve of the state’s primary, a contest that Cruz himself had repeatedly made clear he needed to win. But while polls show that victory has slipped further and further from his grasp over the last several weeks, with Donald Trump looking poised to decisively defeat Cruz, the senator argued Monday night that he is still viable.

“As we stand here now, there are two and only two people that have any plausible path to winning the Republican nomination: Me and Donald Trump,” Cruz said. “Right now the entire the eyes of the nation are on Indiana.”

The race in Indiana, Cruz claimed, is “effectively tied.”

The Texas senator spent the bulk of his appearance at the rally, which was hosted by a pro-Cruz super PAC, delivering a version of his stump speech he’s used for weeks as he vowed to protect religious liberty and the Second Amendment, pursue economic growth and promote a strong national defense. He also described a tense interaction he had earlier in the day with Trump supporters, saying that Trump wouldn’t have been willing to constructively engage his detractors.

But most of all, Cruz put the pressure on his Indiana supporters, saying: “Millions of Americans are lifting the state of Indiana up in prayer.”

“We are not going to look into the eyes of our children and grandchildren and tell them we sat by while the greatest country in the history of the world went down the drain,” Cruz told his supporters as he went on to urge them to bring people to the polls.

The urgency of that message is reflective of Cruz’s standing in the race: If he loses Indiana, he will have lost seven contests in a row to Trump, who will move closer to notching the 1,237 delegates needed to win the GOP nomination. While neither will have clinched the nomination after Indiana, Cruz’s path to regaining momentum, if he loses here, is very narrow and he will face pressure to exit the race.

Cruz, however, is going all out in the final hours before the primary and was aided in making his closing argument throughout the day Monday by a phalanx of surrogates, including newly announced endorser Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana, and others who have been with Cruz since the Iowa Caucuses, including Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert and conservative radio host Glenn Beck. Collectively, the crowd hit 10 stops as they urged Hoosiers to turn the tide against Trump, an increasingly uphill battle.

“History will record what Indiana did on this day, 100 years from now,” Beck told the crowd.

Carly Fiorina, who Cruz tapped as his running mate last week as he sought desperately to inject momentum into his Indiana campaign, also opened for him at his final rally of the day, and Cruz praised her willingness to confront Trump.

Bullies, Cruz said, are “scared, insecure, they’ve got an empty hole inside they fill by trying to find someone weaker than they are, picking on them, abusing them. ... Carly Fiorina is someone who stands up to bullies, whether it’s Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton or Vladimir Putin.”

The crowd gathered at the event appeared to number several hundred, clearly not filling the room, and attendees were subdued during Beck’s and Fiorina’s warm-ups. But for Cruz, they were still enthusiastic.

“This has been a strange and long journey,” Cruz said as he wound down his speech. “It hasn’t been boring.”