Did anyone notice how quiet the convention auditorium was when Speaker Paul Ryan was delivering his Tuesday night speech outlining his perspectives on the future of the GOP?

The media don’t want to discuss the lackluster audience response, and the right side of the UniParty punditry definitely don’t want to draw attention to it – but the meek applause was deafening.  The Ryan party is in the minority, the Trump party is in control – this is now the people’s convention.

And right there the stage is set for Senator Ted Cruz tonight.  Donald Trump masterfully invited Ted Cruz to speak at the convention without requesting any endorsement.  Hundreds of column inches have previously outlined this seemingly unprecedented approach, however the maneuver is typical Trump – brilliant.

In the broadest of terms, Donald Trump won the GOP nomination because he has a pulse on the electorate.  Simply put, Trump gets the “Cold Anger”; Donald Trump understand the motivations behind the “Monster Voter”.

Trump understood at the beginning of his campaign the recipe for common sense campaigning.   He articulated reasonable positions that made those who previously carried hidden agendas expose themselves.   The monster voters took notice.  The scope of the primary results speak for themselves.  Donald Trump gets it.

When candidate Trump asked Senator Cruz to speak to the convention audience, in essence he’s calling a bluff.

Those who followed the campaign nuances closely recognized that Senator Cruz evolved his own campaign bid to co-opt the positions of Trump in an attempt to win the voters.  It didn’t work because the bid was inauthentic, pure strategy.  Data doesn’t mean squat when the principled common sense heart beating behind the data is viewed simply as a tool; a means to an end.

It’s trickery.

The end result was a Cruz coalition comprised of a loud, insufferably annoying and irrelevant group of Never Trump Gnats.  And most of those gnats have their future financial dependence attached to the premise that was behind Cruz’s pretense.

When Cruz speaks tonight at the convention his audience is those same annoying gnats; and hilariously he doesn’t have any way to avoid it.

In essence what Trump has done is put Senator Ted Cruz into a position where he either supports Trump (not requested), or is left to showcase the minute scale of his rabid gnat following.   It’s a brilliant maneuver by Trump based on the fundamental truism that was evident in the primary:

The more voters got to see and hear Senator Cruz, the more his support actually, and factually, diminished.

In defeat, and with this reality evident, Senator Cruz had only one option to try and retain any hope of remaining relevant in the future – disappear.   He did.

But Donald Trump is smart enough to know the way to marginalize Cruz -as a future oppositional entity- is to embrace him, to drag him back out into the spotlight and provide him the opportunity to display the scope of support that Trump has already, and correctly, gauged as inconsequential.

The NeverTrumpers are chasing an ideological myth, a projection candidate that is no more factually “conservative” than Cruz’s  TPA/TPP partner Speaker Paul “Omnibus” Ryan.

There’s an old saying that’s factually appropriate for this event:  be careful what you wish for, because someone might just give it to you.

The NeverTrumper’s worked earnestly toward an opportunity to display the scope of their admonishment toward Donald Trump.

Well, there you go.  Here it is…

….right out there in prime time for everyone to witness.

 

Good Luck !