Cruz Might Bring Back His Campaign If This Happens

During an interview with conservative pundit Glenn Beck on Tuesday morning, former presidential candidate Ted Cruz announced that he may reinstate his campaign if he wins the Nebraska primary. "We launched this campaign intending to win. The reason we suspended our campaign was that with the Indiana loss, I felt there was no path to victory," Cruz said on air during Beck's radio show. "If that changes, we will certainly respond accordingly."

Cruz suspended his campaign after a tough defeat to rival Donald Trump in last week's Indiana primary, leaving Trump as the only Republican candidate left and therefore the presumptive nominee. The reaction to a Trump reality has been lukewarm at best, with conservative leaders like Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney failing to offer their support and others, including John McCain and former vice president Dick Cheney, only begrudgingly hopping on board the Trump train. Cruz did not comment on the less than warm embrace of Trump as the nominee, but it certainly suggests that there still may be an opening in the Republican party for a challenge to the nomination at the convention in June.

Although party elites have expressed their discomfort or outright refusal at the idea of supporting Trump, the delegate math tells a different story, one that hasn't changed for Cruz since last week. Cruz is still technically mathematically eliminated from the nomination, even if he does win Nebraska's 36 delegates. His only hope of still clinching the nomination would be a massive uprising of support at state delegate conventions and a near sweep of the remaining primaries, including California, where Trump was already leading by two-to-one before Cruz suspended his campaign.

A win in Nebraska may not exemplify the backlash to his drop out that Cruz would need to shift the fate of the primary race anyway. Although there's currently no polling data for the state to give a clearer picture, Cruz performed well in other states in the region with similar conservative and religious ideologies, such as Oklahoma and Kansas. Cruz likely would have won in Nebraska if he hadn't dropped out, but it doesn't change the reality that securing the nomination would be next to impossible.

Cruz renewing his campaign efforts would be another interesting and unprecedented twist in the epic saga of Election Season 2016, but it doesn't seem likely to have any actual effect on the outcome of the convention. If Cruz does decide to once again challenge Trump, it would be a minor hurdle on Trump's path to the nomination.