Ted Cruz may be able to retain his Senate seat but his future in presidential politics is over.  His speech at the Republican National Convention was his swan song from the national stage.  Even his own delegates booed him for refusing to endorse Donald Trump for president.  Ironically, he told the crowd to vote with their conscience as if he was a role model of that belief, but he’s just the opposite.  Before his speech, his closest aides begged him to endorse Trump even though he signed an agreement to endorse the nominee.  Of course, when he signed it, he assumed he would be the nominee.

Cruz was booed off the stage  and the crowd chanted, “We want Trump.”  That wasn’t the end of it for Cruz.  He entered a donor room and he was immediately confronted for his refusal to endorse.  Heidi had to be escorted from the convention over fears associated with delegate’s displeasure with her husband.

Joel Pollak, editor for Breitbart News followed up his original post with 11 updates.  Here are just a few of the more pointed ones:

Update #2: Jonathan Swan at The Hill reports that aides to Ted Cruz pleaded with him to endorse his former rival, but the Texas senator refused:

Just hours before Ted Cruz took the stage for his convention speech Wednesday night, senior members of Cruz’s team were still pushing him to endorse Donald Trump.

Cruz never wanted to endorse Trump and is still furious about the personal attacks the GOP presidential nominee made on his family during the primary campaign, sources familiar with the speech preparations told The Hill.

But top aides had concluded he needed to formally endorse Trump at the Republican National Convention.

For Cruz, it was always personal.

[…]

Still, some aides to Cruz, a Republican senator from Texas, were pushing him to endorse Trump for the sake of his own political future.

Cruz has indicated intentions to run for president again in 2020, and he has a team forming behind him to execute that plan. 2020 was the unspoken undertone beneath the drafting Wednesday night’s speech.

Update #5: CNN’s Ana Navarro, a former Jeb Bush surrogate who is no fan of Trump, panned Cruz’s speech.

While you should always “vote your conscience,” she said, if you’re invited to dinner, “You don’t eat the food, drink the wine, and then piss on the carpet. It was tacky.”

Update #6: Hillary Clinton has weighed in, tweeting Ted Cruz’s tagline.

Vote your conscience. https://t.co/xahMq2sU1q

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) July 21, 2016

Update #7: Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey seems visibly shaken as he speaks to CNN’s Dana Bash, telling her that Cruz’s speech was “selfish” and that he had broken his pledge — not to Trump, but to all the candidates.

He adds that America can now see why Cruz has “richly deserved” his bad reputation among colleagues on Capitol Hill.

Update #9: One of the other highlighted lines in the prepared version of Cruz’s speech was: “And citizens are furious — rightly furious — at a political establishment that cynically breaks its promises and ignores the will of the people.”

Now that Cruz is being accused of having broken his promise to support the party’s nominee, it is a rather ironic line.

Ted Cruz, have you ever considered a rewarding career in electronics?