After northeastern drubbing, Ted Cruz says more favourable terrain coming

Anti-Trump forces hunker down after billionaire sweeps five northeastern states

Ted Cruz looks to Indiana to regain credibility after Tuesday losses (AP)

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas tried to put his bravest face on his failure to win or even manage a respectable showing in primaries in five northeastern states on Tuesday reassuring supporters that the election now moves to “more favourable” terrain for his sputtering campaign.

The hard numbers were hard to ignore - Mr Trump achieved the clean sweep of all five states that many had predicted - but the Cruz campaign reached into cinematic sentimentality placing its candidate in an Indiana gym once used as the set of the 1986 basketball film “Hoosiers” about a plucky underdog team rising to win the state championship.

“There is nothing Hoosiers cannot do,” Mr Cruz declared, making reference to the common nickname to residents of Indiana. The state votes next Tuesday and represents Mr Cruz’s possibly last best chance to slow Mr Trump’s march towards the nomination.

With large numbers of conservative, evangelical Republican voters, Indiana should be fairly fertile ground for Mr Cruz. He and the other rival still in the field, Ohio Governor John Kasich, have announced a strategic partnership whereby the latter would eschew campaigning in Indiana while Mr Cuz would leave Oregon, which votes a week later, to Mr Kasich.

“Tonight this campaign moves back to more favorable terrain,” Mr Cruz said during his rally in Knightstown, Indiana, the town famous for accommodating the cast of the cast of the 30-year-old film that starred Gene Hackman as the coach of the team.

Mr Cruz acknowledged Mr Trump’s strong showing on Tuesday even though he was speaking before all the results from the northeastern states were in. “The media is going to say Donald trump is the republican nominee,” he said. However, he issued a warning about what that would mean of the party. “Donald Trump is the one man on Earth Hillary Clinton can beat,” he offered.

While it is true that Mr Cruz remains his nearest rival, Mr Trump is not evincing much fear about him, not least because the firebrand Texan no longer has a realistic chance of winning enough delegates to claim the nomination before the party convention in July. Although narrow, that path remains at least navigable for Mr Trump.

The rejection of Mr Cruz along the eastern seaboard was emphatic with early returns suggesting that he had placed third in four of the five states, possibly managing second place only in Pennsylvania. He was similarly wiped out in New York a week ago.