Ted Cruz debuts new campaign theme: ‘Yes we will’

While awaiting his disappointing results in the New York Republican primary, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz unveiled a new campaign theme that seems to be looking ahead to the general election as a response to Barack Obama’s famous 2008 campaign slogan.

“They are the words that when Americans come together they say with conviction, they change the world,” Cruz said at a watch-party in Philadelphia on Tuesday night hours before the polls in New York closed. “They are the vision of this campaign. Not ‘Yes we can,’ but now, ‘Yes we will.’”

Cruz also made an unusual analogy to wrestling or yoga, depending on which mat you prefer.

“America has always been best when she is lying down with her back on the mat,” he said.

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Sen. Ted Cruz at a primary night watch-party in Philadelphia on Tuesday. (Photo: Charles Mostoller/Reuters)

Cruz finished a distant third to Donald Trump in the GOP frontrunner’s home state, where the Texas senator struggled to connect with voters whose values he infamously questioned.

The conservative firebrand figures to do better in Pennsylvania’s Republican primary on April 26. But unlike the winner-take-all Empire State, 54 of Pennsylvania’s 71 GOP delegates are not bound to vote for any of the party’s presidential contenders at the July convention in Cleveland. In other words, even if Trump takes the Keystone State, he’s guaranteed just 17 delegates.

According to NBC News, Cruz is expected to grab more than half of Pennsylvania’s total delegates even if he finishes third.