Amidst speculation about both his present intentions vis-a-vis Donald Trump and his future plans, Sen. Ted Cruz will address the Republican National Convention tonight in Cleveland. It’s widely assumed that the junior Senator from Texas has emerged from the 2016 GOP primary race as one of the surest undeclared candidates for the 2020 GOP presidential nomination (in the event that Donald Trump does not win the election, and maybe even if he does). In the interim, however, Cruz will return to the Senate to represent the state that nurtured his development as a conservative standard bearer and trenchant critic of all things Washington D.C.  Cruz remains a very popular figure among the Republican base in Texas, though the last year of national political exposure has caused a dip in his numbers. This phenomenon doesn’t surprise much: as the last man standing in the Trump-led ultimate fight of a GOP presidential primary, Cruz was bound to both take some sharp blows and to be forced to expose some weaknesses. In any event, there will be plenty of time to regain any lost luster, whether those efforts take place under a President Trump or a President Clinton.

In the more immediate run, despite the throaty support for Cruz from the Texas delegation, the June 2016 University of Texas / Texas Politics Project Poll found that of those who professed to have supported Cruz in the March primary, 69 percent said they would vote for Trump in the general election; only 2 percent said they would vote for Clinton, 22 percent said they would vote for “someone else,” and 7 percent didn’t know. For now, Cruz supporters largely have accepted Trump at the top of the ticket, but for a wide swath of the Texas GOP this is an arranged marriage facilitated by the depth of their partisanship and their intense dislike for Hillary Clinton. Their real passion lies elsewhere, and their preferred suitor waits in the wings.