Ted Cruz Rejects Brokered Convention: 'Beat Donald Trump With the Voters

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – Texas Sen. Ted Cruz rejected the movement toward a brokered Republican National Convention when he spoke before a highly supportive crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday.

"They seize on this master plan, we go to a brokered convention and the D.C. power brokers will drop someone in who is exactly to the liking of the Washington establishment," Cruz said in an interview on stage with Sean Hannity after he delivered his remarks. "If that were to happen, we would have a manifest revolt on our hands all across this country."

"If we want to beat Donald Trump, here’s how we do it," Cruz said. "You beat Donald Trump with the voters."

Republican presidential candidate Texas Sen. Ted Cruz speaks at the American Conservative Union's CPAC conference at National Harbor near Washington, D.C., Friday. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

Cruz called out Trump, the Republican front-runner who has won 10 of the 15 Republican primary contests so far. Cruz has won four, and came in second to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio in Minnesota. He said he is the only candidate who has repeatedly beaten Trump and called on all Republican voters who want to stop Trump to rally to his campaign.

He also ripped Trump for boasting of his flexibility. "Flexible is code word in Washington, D.C., for the get ready to stick it to you," Cruz stated. "Have you noticed every time they are flexible in Washington it benefits the giant corporations, it benefits Wall Street, it benefits the special interests and the working men and women in this country get left in the cold?"

Cruz also talked about filling the Supreme Court seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

"In the debate last week, there was a moment of clarity on this issue," Cruz said. "He has been supporting liberal Democratic politicians for four decades. When it comes to the Supreme Court, you’ve got to be ready to compromise. You’ve got to be willing to cut a deal with the Democrats."

Cruz said it would only take one liberal justice to wipe away religious liberty and the Second Amendment and assured the crowd that he would never compromise on a Supreme Court nomination:

Let me be very clear to every man and woman here at CPAC: I am not going to compromise away your religious liberty. I will not compromise away your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

If any president does what Donald is trying to do, Donald is promising to do, cut a deal with Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer to agree on Justice Scalia’s replacement, then we know that replacement will be a leftwing judicial activist who will strip away our rights. I give you my solemn commitment that everyone I put on the Supreme Court will be a principled constitutionalist.