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Ted and Carly — and Daring
Naming a running mate some three months before the convention makes Ted Cruz look desperate — so goes the charge I’ve encountered on Drudge, in half a dozen reports of the event, and at saturation levels on Facebook and Twitter. You know what? Ted Cruz was — is — desperate. After Cruz’s victory in Wisconsin, a lot of observers (I include myself here) thought that Trump had peaked. He’d win in New York, but probably fail to take much more than 50 percent of the vote even there, in his home state, then sink. Instead Trump won big in New York — very big, even carrying all the upstate congressional districts — and then just yesterday he swept five out of five northeastern primaries. Ted Cruz had to do something. He had to.
Given that exigency, how has Cruz performed? In my judgment, impressively.
Carly Fiorina will give Cruz a couple of entire news cycles, and at a time when Trump would otherwise have dominated the news, that’s invaluable in itself. She also extends a certain appeal to Republican women, among whom she has higher favorability ratings than Cruz himself. She’s also a very fine campaigner — well spoken, endlessly energetic; the kind of performer who may very well make a material difference in coming days in Indiana. Most important? Carly is a believer. She adds credence and a certain new energy to what has always been Cruz’s fundamental appeal: devotion to the Constitution and an insistence — a really very fierce determination — to roll back the administrative state to protect the liberties of the people.
Wednesday afternoon, Ted Cruz announced Carly Fiorina as his vice presidential running mate at a rally in Indiana. A Hoosier State victory is crucial to the struggling campaign’s strategy of denying Donald Trump the 1,237 delegates necessary for a first-vote nomination at the Republican National Convention. Cruz is mathematically eliminated from reaching that number himself, so he has surrendered New Mexico and Oregon to John Kasich in order to focus on Indiana’s 57 delegates.
From the candidate’s 
The next GOP primary debate is scheduled for Saturday and every major candidate is invited to participate. Well, everyone except Carly Fiorina. She wrote an open letter to the Republican National Committee to request that they 
At last, Lindsey Graham 
Last night, CNN hosted the fifth Republican primary debate, held at Las Vegas’s lovely Venetian hotel and casino. There were, of course, two debates. But the one that people were interested in was the prime-time debate. Unfortunately for everyone involved (especially anyone who had to write about it after), the undercard debate didn’t finish until 8:12 pm ET and the primetime debate, scheduled for 8:30, didn’t start until later. The first candidate didn’t speak until 8:42. (Not that we were tapping our foot with annoyance or anything.)
