This is hardly a scientific poll, but I would be willing to bet that were one to poll sane, informed people the results would be similar to what I’ve concluded.
I have asked a number of people who they would choose if they knew that either Trump or Cruz would actually become president, moving to Canada being off the table, implicitly or explicitly. So far, no one has chosen Cruz. Not only have their responses been unanimous, but there reasons have been quite similar, and I must say I agree.
Don’t get me wrong. Either one would be a disaster. Let me articulate my own reasoning, which as I say, is roughly similar to what everyone else seems to think.
First, let’s start with the proposition that it is highly unlikely that Trump would, in fact, be any worse than Cruz would be. Sure, he sometimes expresses himself in ways that even Cruz avoids, but note that while Cruz puts rhetorical distance between himself and Trump, he is careful to avoid disagreeing with him on substance. So, even if Trump ended up being as bad as he promises to be, we are no worse off than if we had gotten Cruz, who is infinitely more likely to do what he says he will do than is Trump.
Along these lines, almost everyone agrees, there is little if any reason to believe that Trump would be as bad as he is promising to be. He really makes no bones about the fact that one can never take him at his word. He’s a businessman, and says and does what he needs to get what he wants, and that’s precisely what he’s doing now. There is no question that Cruz would do whatever he could, for instance, to restrict women’s access to abortion and even to birth control. In my own humble opinion, despite what he’s said, the Donald would do nothing on either score. If there’s one issue on which it’s absolutely clear that he’s pandering, it’s abortion. Similarly, it’s quite unlikely that he’d mount an all out assault on gay rights. It’s just not something he cares about. There are probably one or two right wing issues that he would push hard on, just by way of keeping his cred with his base. I’d say he’d pick immigration. But, for the most part, it is quite likely that he would walk away from his campaign rhetoric in the same way he walks away from responsibility for his business ventures.
It is perfectly possible that this analysis is wrong. Everyone I’ve spoken to agrees that’s a possibility. But the thing is, even if Trump was as bad as everyone expects, he would probably still not be as bad as Cruz would be. Even here, unfortunately, there’s a caveat, though it’s one that I’m less worried about now than I was a month or so ago. Back then there seemed the very real possibility that, were Trump elected, he might become an American Mussolini, something Cruz, given his personality, could never become. While this remains a distinct possibility, it seems more unlikely now, since Trump is no longer the dominant force he was a month ago, and will likely be weakened more as the election approaches.
Now, all this being said, it doesn’t answer the strategic question of which of them one would prefer as the candidate. Our candidate will no doubt (or almost no doubt) be Hillary. Which could she more easily beat? That’s a harder question. My gut tells me that once again, Trump is our man, but that’s really not clear. Cruz, by reputation, is a first class asshole, and it’s quite possible that the public would tumble to that. But that requires a press that reports about the real Cruz, and if he beats Trump to the nomination, it’s likely we won’t be hearing about the real Cruz. Rather, we’ll be hearing that he is the moderate “not-Trump”, the guy the Republican Party turned to after regaining its sanity after a flirtation with Trump.
In the end, though, both of these questions are totally academic, in that we will never be faced with this particular choice. If the Party establishment decides to steal it from Trump, they won’t gift it to Cruz. He is merely their convenient stalking horse. They’ve got Paul Ryan waiting in the wings. If there’s a brokered convention, the folks who decide will be the money men, and Ryan is their candidate, now that their other flunkies, (Jeb! and Marco) have crashed and burned.
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