REPORT: Wingnut Cabal Ready To Ditch Ted Cruz

Tony Perkins isn’t very happy with last night’s report from the National Review:

A group of conservative activist leaders that voted late last year to endorse Ted Cruz over Marco Rubio held a conference call Tuesday to re-evaluate their positions based on new developments in the Republican presidential race, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

The upshot: If Cruz is not successful on Super Tuesday — by carrying his native Texas at the least — some of his prominent backers are prepared to defect to Rubio. The call was held by members of The GROUP, a secretive cabal of prominent conservatives led by the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins and the Senate Conservatives Fund’s Ken Cuccinelli.

The outfit has endeavored since late 2014 to coalesce “the movement” of grassroots activists nationwide behind a single GOP candidate, hoping to prevent a splintering of the conservative vote that would allow a more moderate Republican to clinch the nomination.

Not all members were invited to the discussion, which was apparently guarded from Cruz’s most loyal backers. Perkins, who did not respond to repeated calls seeking comment before this story’s publication, said afterward he was not aware of any conference call, and said there isn’t “a snowball’s chance” that he will support Rubio. (He also said any suggestion of Cruz’s allies abandoning him are “lies from the Rubio camp.”

In fact, the call and recent conversations surrounding it were confirmed by multiple sources, including those not aligned with Rubio.) The GROUP voted in early December on an endorsement, and after five rounds of balloting Cruz clinched the 75 percent supermajority needed for members to publicly support him.