Cruz: Brokered Convention Would Be ‘Enormous Mistake’

DICKERSON: "And we’re back with a quick look at where the race for the Republican nomination stands. After yesterday’s victories, Ted Cruz has narrowed Donald Trump’s lead in the delegate count. We caught up with him Friday at a gathering of College Republicans just outside Washington."
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DICKERSON: "Let me ask you about your political path. Is it to win the nomination and the delegates outright, or is it to just deny and get to Cleveland and figure it out there?
CRUZ: "Look, we’re campaigning to win. And I will say any time you hear people talking about a brokered convention, I think that is the fevered talk of the Washington establishment. The Washington establishment is in a panic. They’re confused. They don’t understand what’s happening. And their favored candidates, the ones that they want to win, are not getting the votes. But if a bunch of Washington deal-makers try to step in, in a brokered convention and steal the nomination, I think we will have a manifest uprising. If you want to beat Donald Trump — and I don’t think Donald Trump is the right nominee to go up against Hillary Clinton. If you want to beat him, you got to beat him at the ballot box. And our campaign is only campaign that has demonstrated we can do so over and over.
DICKERSON: "Do you think there is something illegitimate, though, about trying to have a brokered convention, work it out at the convention?"
CRUZ: "You know, I think, if it’s a bunch of Washington deal- makers and lobbyists who want to parachute in their preferred candidate because they don’t like what the voters are doing, I think that is illegitimate. I think it’s wrong."
DICKERSON: "Ronald Reagan in 1976 used convention to try and beat Gerald Ford. So, there wasn’t anything inherently bad about that."
CRUZ: "But there’s a difference there when that’s coming from the people, when it’s a battle of the people. A lot of the folks pushing brokered convention in Washington don’t want it to be based on the people. They want to drop in their favorite candidate and then try to stifle the will of the people. I think that would be an enormous mistake."