Eugene Robinson: Cruz Is ‘Finished if He Doesn’t Win Texas’

[excerpt]

BRZEZINSKI: “Could Ted Cruz lose his home state of Texas?”
SCARBOROUGH: “He could, and I think it’s very convenient, Gene Robinson, that his bed — that he gets to sleep in actually happens to be — so if I’m going to go, I’m sleeping my own bad. That’s also — it’s the must-win state for Ted Cruz.” [crosstalk]
ROBINSON: “Oh, yeah. I mean, he’s finished.”
SCARBOROUGH: “He’s got to win or it’s all over.”
ROBINSON: “He’s finished if he doesn’t win Texas. You know, even more than the evangelicals, what I think should be stunning to the Cruz campaign is that they’re not winning very conservative voters. And they’re not winning very conservative and somewhat conservative voters.”
SCARBOROUGH: “How could that be?”
ROBINSON: “If he can’t win them, whom can he win? I mean, whose votes can he win. He’s the ideological conservative —“ [crosstalk]
SCARBOROUGH: “Can we talk about the man you first called Godzilla several months ago — [crosstalk] — shock him with electricity and he gets more powerful. [crosstalk] There’s a reason you won a Pulitzer prize.”
ROBINSON: “That’s proved all too true.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Think about what he’s done to his main opponents.”
ROBINSON: “Yeah.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Number one, Jeb Bush, low energy. We all have stories about people that we’ve talked to that said they like Jeb Bush but ‘You know what? He’s just too weak.’ Trump defined one of the strongest leaders I’ve ever seen up close as weak.”
ROBINSON: “Yeah.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Ted Cruz since Iowa has been — Donald Trump has been calling Ted Cruz a liar.” [crosstalk]
ROBINSON: “Exactly.”
SCARBOROUGH: “Harsh, he lies. For an evangelical, how does he lies so much?”
ROBINSON: “A liar, he’s dirty campaigner.”
SCARBOROUGH: “He’s a dirty — he’s a liar.”
BRZEZINSKI: “Yeah.”
SCARBOROUGH: “It stuck, evangelicals are listening.”
ROBINSON: “Exactly. Exactly.”
SCARBOROUGH: “This guy — I’ve never seen anybody frame people the way he does.”
ROBINSON: “Oh, he’s done a brilliant job of it and that’s what you do. You try to frame — you know, you try to define your opponent before your opponent defines him or herself and define him or her in the way that — that’s most advantageous to you. Trump has done that, frankly brilliantly. And, look, he is more than I think right now the odds-on favorite to win the nomination. And I am — as long as Cruz and Rubio keep thinking that the other of the two is their major opponent and keeping track of each other —“ [crosstalk]