Gov. John Kasich mocked Sen. Ted Cruz on Twitter after the results of Tuesday’s primary rendered Cruz’s ability to clinch 1,237 delegates before the Republican National Convention “mathematically impossible,” a turn of phrase Cruz himself used previously to call for Kasich to drop out of the race.
Cruz, who finished far behind Donald Trump and Kasich in New York with only 15 percent of the vote, had frequently argued that Kasich did not have a feasible path to reach the 1,237 delegate threshold a candidate needs to secure the GOP nomination outright.
“Facts are stubborn things,” Cruz previously said on CNN. “But he has no path to the nomination. It’s mathematically impossible.”
In another appearance on CNN, Cruz argued that Trump stood to benefit from Kasich’s continued presence in the primary.
“I think any candidate, if you don’t have a clear path to winning, it doesn’t make sense to stay in the race,” Cruz said.
But after Tuesday’s results in the Empire State, it’s clear that the senator also does not have a path to earn 1,237 delegates before the July convention, though he does boast more delegates than Kasich. Cruz holds 559 delegates, which Kasich trails with 147 delegates, according to NBC News’ delegate tracker.
Kasich and his strategists, in an attempt to ensure that the senator’s previous statements about eligibility would come back to haunt him, compiled clips of Cruz’s remarks in a taunting tweet. Even Trump, who has 845 delegates and likely won’t meet the 1,237 threshold, either, weighed in on the situation, calling Cruz a “spoiler.”
Now that Cruz, a man of "principle," has no path 1,237, will he drop out as he urged Kasich? Now that Cruz is now mathematically eliminated, the only diff between him and Kasich is Kasich can defeat Clinton.https://t.co/D7Nmg9dhod Ted Cruz is mathematically out of winning the race. Now all he can do is be a spoiler, never a nice thing to do. I will beat Hillary! While campaigning in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Cruz maintained that the Republicans were headed for a contested convention. Cruz insisted to reporters that neither he nor Trump would reach 1,237 delegates prior to Cleveland, and later took to Twitter to call for another debate before the April 26 primaries.
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