Could Ted Cruz be going for the ‘really big play’ to crush Donald Trump?

When Donald Trump said the convention would be entertaining, I thought: The Rockettes. But last night surpassed even that when Ted Cruz stepped on stage.

As Cruz’s speech went on and on without an endorsement, the people sitting next to me started yelling: “Say it!” “Say the name!” “Endorse Trump!”

By the end, he was getting audible boos.

I was sitting near a chemical engineer from Tennessee who said he’d been a Cruz supporter.

“Yes, I was,” he said. “But when it comes to the good of this country, it’s his loss — it’s our loss — if he doesn’t support Trump now. Now.”

Photos: Drama at the Republican National Convention

But Cruz couldn’t bring himself to support the Republican presidential nominee. And Trump — who saw the speech and knew what he was going to say — let him say it anyway. When your enemy is about to ambush himself, why stop him?

But Cruz was making a calculation too. I heard some people say he’s betting on Trump losing in a landslide.

But I think Cruz is going for the really big play: Let Trump get elected, then implode. He will become a catastrophic president and won’t pivot even after the inauguration.

Cruz is betting Trump will keep making stuff up, giving fifth-grade nicknames to foreign leaders; sending crude re-tweets from the Oval office. Then, as the impeachment trial begins, the video of Trump slowly walking off as the boos rain down would make Cruz look not just like a prophet, but like a Savior who sacrificed himself for people too blind to see the truth.

I have to give Ted Cruz one thing: the guy has guts. And for now, anyway, most Republicans hate them.

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