CLEVELAND — Ted Cruz refused to endorse Donald Trump in daring and dramatic fashion on Wednesday, telling Republicans to “vote your conscience” in a 20-minute snub that played out in slow motion on national television.

Cruz’s rejection exposed the raw rifts still festering inside the Republican Party, overshadowed the planned coming-out speech for Trump’s vice-presidential pick, Mike Pence, and all but guaranteed that Republicans would depart Cleveland a party divided.

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Boos rained down on Cruz, and his wife had to be escorted from the hall amid verbal taunts in an unreal scene that marked an end to a surreal primary season.

“We deserve leaders who stand for principle, who unite us all behind shared values, who cast aside anger for love,” Cruz said. “That is the standard we should expect from everybody.”

It was a standard that Cruz determined Trump did not meet.

“Don’t stay home in November,” Cruz told the audience. “Stand and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

But he wouldn’t say Trump’s name.

In doing so, Cruz handed Hillary Clinton and the Democrats a potentially devastating cudgel of a slogan — “vote your conscience” — with which to hammer Trump all the way through November. Clinton grabbed it immediately, tweeting the phrase and a link to a voter registration page.

It was a shocking rebuke coming from the same stage on which Trump had become the nominee only 24 hours earlier and from which he will address the nation on Thursday.

The Texas senator, who is widely believed alreadyto be planning to run for president again in 2020, paused dramatically toward the end of his speech as the delegates shouted for him to endorse Trump.

“I appreciate the enthusiasm of the New York delegation,” Cruz said, as boos came from Trump’s home state, who were seated front and center, and throughout the hall.

To add to the high drama, Trump arrived inside the arena just as Cruz was wrapping up. Cameras cut to Trump, who wore a tight smile and gave a thumbs-up to the crowd.

Later in the evening, Trump’s team tried to make the best of the rejection. “The best unity I saw was everyone booing him off the stage,” Donald Trump Jr. said on Fox News. Trump himself wrote on Twitter, “Wow, Ted Cruz got booed off the stage, didn’t honor the pledge! I saw his speech two hours early but let him speak anyway. No big deal!”

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who spoke after Cruz in the prime-time lineup, was left to clean up some of the Cruz mess for the television audience. “To paraphrase Ted Cruz, if you want to protect the Constitution of the United States, the only possible candidate this fall is the Trump-Pence Republican ticket,” he said.

Cruz’s team relished the scene. “History will judge it to be significant and courageous,” said one Cruz source about the senator’s speech.

“Tough decisions are easy to criticize. Incredible leadership from Cruz tonight,” wrote Brian Phillips, who worked on Cruz’s campaign. “Friends, we can put this Party back together.”

“This is the speech of Cruz’s life,” said Amanda Carpenter, his former communications director.

Trump’s team was not blindsided by the fact that Cruz was not endorsing.

“It is a fact that Cruz spoke, by phone, to Trump two days ago and told him his speech would not include an ‘endorsement,’ rather would lay out principles we can all unite around,” said Jason Johnson, Cruz’s chief strategist. “This was not a surprise.”

But inside the arena, it was a different story. It wasn’t just the fact that Cruz did not endorse but the teasing, dramatized fashion in which he delivered the snub. Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, a Cruz ally, said he escorted Heidi Cruz out of the arena after Cruz spoke because he was worried for her safety.

“They were coming out of their seats, coming on down. Very inappropriate, threatening behavior,” Cuccinelli said. She was showered by chants of “Goldman Sachs!” — the Wall Street bank where she has worked.

Cruz’s public rebuke brought some immediate blowback.

Doug Deason, a major Cruz donor now helping Trump, said he was “disappointed.” “He is a bigger man than that. He should have endorsed Trump, period,” Deason said, adding, “Ted didn't do himself any favors.”

Shaun Ireland, a 33-year-old delegate from Texas, said, “There was so much good feeling and unity at this convention for three days, and Ted Cruz just came in and cravenly threw it against a brick wall just so he could set himself up for 2020.”
Martha Huckabay, a Louisiana delegate, said she burst into tears when she realized what Cruz was doing. “I haven't stopped crying,” she said, her eyes watering. “I’m devastated by what Cruz said.”

The Cruz delegates seemed enthused, and “for them voting your conscience means voting libertarian,” she said.

“I just sat down in disgust,” said Terrie Bourgeois, sitting next to Huckabay. “I felt repulsed.”

In a twist for Cruz, who was deeply embittered by the media’s lopsided coverage of Trump during the primaries, he finally stole a news cycle from his former rival. According to Google, there was an 1,100 percent spike in searches for Cruz, compared to only a 450 percent spike for Pence.

Pence’s workmanlike address got second-billing for the night, even as Cruz was left out of the allotted network hour. Pence cast Clinton as the “secretary of the status quo” and someone who “personifies the failed establishment in Washington.

“It’s a change versus status quo,” he said unsubtly.

Pence hailed Trump as a man of character, as evidenced by his children, four of whom have been granted convention speaking slots.

“You can’t fake good kids,” Pence said.

Cruz’s prime-time rejection came as Trump is running out of days to unify the Republican Party.

The Trump campaign spent much of Wednesday fueling the distracting plagiarism story line from Monday’s speech by Melania Trump. Trump and his allies reversed from their initial denials to acknowledge that passages had indeed been lifted, though the staffer in question would not be fired.

“Good news is Melania's speech got more publicity than any in the history of politics especially if you believe that all press is good press!” Trump tweeted.

Soon after, the campaign issued a statement from Meredith McIver, a writer in the Trump Organization, who took the blame for the passages in the speech that were lifted from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention address. She offered to resign, but Trump refused to accept her resignation.

Cruz, at least, appeared to have pushed the plagiarism story out of the headlines.

Alex Isenstadt, Seung Min Kim, Nolan D. McCaskill, Dan Spinelli and Julia Ioffe contributed to this report.