America is staring down at a precipice and the liberals in Washington DC are trying to push us over the edge. It’s not just the Democrats. Many Republican lawmakers betrayed our trust once we gave them control of Congress by squandering the opportunity to halt President Obama’s disastrous policies and massive expenditures. This has to stop. The line must be drawn right here, right now.
Voters are deciding between three candidates: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio. All have their strengths and weaknesses. All would have been better candidates than anyone the GOP has nominated since Ronald Reagan. All of them will do good things. Only one of them has the right mix of skills and ideologies perfectly crafted for this very moment to reverse the damage and put us on the path away from the precipice. Republicans must nominate Ted Cruz.
There are three primary reasons that he should supersede his opponents as the champion for America today. Before we explore those reasons, let’s look at the one component that should not be taken into consideration.
Electability
Since before the party broke from the Republican Establishment to nominate Ronald Reagan and with every nominee since, they’ve been trying to sell us on the idea that we have to pick the most “electable” candidate. This is a complete fallacy. This fallacy kept Bill Clinton in office for an extra term. This fallacy gave us Barack Obama and sustained him through another term. “Electability” gave us Bob Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney for nominees.
The Democrats haven’t had as weak of a candidate as they do in 2016 (regardless of which one of them gets the nomination) since Michael Dukakis. Whether we nominate Trump, Rubio, or Cruz, we will adjust our strategy to fit their strengths. It’s time for Republicans to stand firm behind the ideology that we know is right and stop trying to pick the candidate that’s best suited for a general election sales pitch. We need the best President, period.
Trump has the lowest net favorability of any candidate since before Jimmy Carter. Cruz has a likability problem. Rubio’s lack of accomplishments and financial woes effectively declaw Republicans from being able to attack Clinton on her weakest points. None of this matters! They all have challenges and they all have strengths in the general election. Stay strong, assume the win, and pick the best candidate to lead the country, not the candidate that will beat the Democrats by the highest margin. A win is a win.
Now, let’s look at the three reasons Ted Cruz must be our nominee.
Supreme Court Appointments
Some people are scared of Trump’s (and Rubio’s) willingness to make deals with Democrats. Others think that Trump is too much of a wildcard, that he doesn’t have the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief. Lastly, there’s a fear that his policy proposals are often aligned with Democrats. All are valid points, but the thing that scares me the most about Trump is that his Supreme Court and lower federal court appointments will be absolutely wrong.
What many don’t realize is that Trump has a very well-documented history of hiring and promoting people for the wrong reasons and with the wrong ideologies. He’s a crony capitalist – even he doesn’t deny it. His lukewarm opinions on legal hot topics like the 2nd Amendment, abortion, sanctity of marriage, eminent domain, and affirmative action should terrify everyone other than liberals. Even moderates should be fearful of what the courts will look like with lukewarm judges on the various federal benches, most importantly the 2-4 appointments the next President is likely to make to the Supreme Court.
His view that Maryanne Trump Barry would be a “terrific” Supreme Court Justice is scary. She supports pro-choice doctrines to the point of being militant about allowing partial-birth abortions. She’s all in for gun control. Even if Trump were to nominate judges who were half as liberal, it would be damaging to the country for years, even decades.
Cruz is the only candidate with intimate knowledge of the Constitution, the role of the Supreme Court, judges around the country, and the proper legal path to fix liberal issues that have plagued us for decades and that have hit their tipping point under Obama. Cruz has sworn to fill the court systems from top to bottom with rock-ribbed conservatives who are necessary to reverse our dangerous trajectory. This isn’t just for the future, though our children and grandchildren will be better protected as a result. The Supreme Court Justices that Cruz nominates will have an impact on our lives immediately.
Personal Liberties
From religious liberties to privacy protections to personal property defense, all of the candidates combined have done less to fight for the Constitutional rights of American citizens than Ted Cruz. In fact, there are few Americans at all who have the impressive history of defending our personal liberties that Cruz has accumulated before and during his Senate term.
We are seeing our rights stripped down piece by piece, bit by bit, year after year. Rubio, for all of his conservative principles, has stood squarely aligned with the liberal Neocon philosophies that impose more and more government into our lives. His proposals against personal liberties are Draconian in nature and run squarely against the principles that Ron and Rand Paul have espoused for years. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not a Libertarian, but when it comes to personal freedoms, I’m certain that empowered citizens with a smaller government will do more for improving the economy and protecting the nation than the Patriot Act could ever do.
As far as Trump, there is absolutely nothing in his history outside of empty campaign promises that would lead any discerning voter to believe that he’s a fan of personal liberties. He’s actually to the left of Hillary Clinton on many liberty issues with his desires to increase and insert more government into our lives. Donald Trump will be the Bureau of Land Management’s best friend because he firmly believes that the federal government can be “better stewards” than states or individuals, as he put it. Then, there’s eminent domain, a topic that I won’t even discuss because this article will become a 10,000 word rant if I do. You either see that Donald Trump is squarely against the personal liberties of American citizens or you’re one of those who doesn’t pay attention to such things.
National Security
The first two components are barely debatable – Cruz is the clear choice for those two important Presidential duties. National Security is different. There are perspectives that the candidates share and then there are differences. Within those differences, there’s not a black and white answer as there is with the previous two components. Before discussing those differences, let’s first stipulate the similarities and then highlight why Cruz’s policies are better for keeping Americans safe here and abroad.
- Build a Wall: Trump and Cruz want it (and to be very clear, Cruz has been fighting to build a wall for much longer that Trump despite what you hear from his Tweets and mainstream media). Rubio has been non-committal but likely doesn’t want one.
- Deport Illegal Immigrants: Trump and Cruz want to deport. Trump wants to bring the “good ones” back, which will account for over 10 million of the 11 million returning to the country through touchback amnesty. Rubio… his policy depends on the day of the week and the audience he’s in front of, but we know that he won’t be deporting people.
- Build up the Military: All three want it. Cruz and Rubio have released similar plans with Rubio’s recommendations being strangely more expensive but less effective. Trump hasn’t released his plan but we can assume that it will be similar to Cruz’s.
- Defeating the Islamic State: Trump has no plan, just sound bites. Rubio wants to arm the Sunnis, though his plan is nebulous. No reason to believe it would be a bad plan, but he hasn’t been specific thus far. Cruz wants to focus on the Kurdish Peshmerga as the “boots on the ground” which is by far the most sensible plan. We’d need to bypass Baghdad and deal with them directly for it to be effective, but since Turkey has accepted it with the caveat that doing so cannot help the PKK, it’s conspicuous that we haven’t done it already. One might even speculate that President Obama isn’t interested in victory (say it isn’t so!).
Now that we have those portions covered, let’s discuss ideologies. On one extreme, you have Trump offering the ludicrous populist approach of temporarily banning all Muslims from entering the country. On the surface, it’s easy to see why voters would like this idea. Unfortunately, it’s so full of holes that it’s completely untenable as a plan. Having a religious test for entry basically means that peace-loving Muslims who are beholden to their god will not be able to enter because of their principles while radical Islamic terrorist simply have to declare that they’re not Muslims to enter. It’s insane that so many smart people are not seeing this for what it is. Trump’s plan fails on every level and will make our country less safe as a result by antagonizing them without mounting an actual defense against their entry.
Cruz’s plan is to block entry through travel history, background checks, and regional blocks. He isn’t targeting the religion of Islam. He’s targeting the areas where jihadists reside and barring the actual terrorists from entering. They can lie all they want about not being Muslims but they still won’t be allowed to enter with Cruz’s plan. Trump’s plan will bring them in unchecked.
Rubio’s plan on this issue doesn’t even deserve a note. It’s bad.
As far as homeland defense through the Patriot Act versus the Freedom Act, I could write for hours about evidence that details why the Patriot Act attacks privacy more than the Freedom Act while doing less to defend the country, but that, too, would be too lengthy for this article. I strongly encourage you to do your research to determine why Rubio’s pet project Patriot Act or the successor that he has cooked up in his anti-freedom machinations would do less to keep us safe. Trump has been given a free pass for the most part by mainstream media when it comes to discussing this complex issue, so we have no clue where he stands.
Lastly, let’s discuss military adventurism. I’m not an isolationist like the Pauls, but I do believe that the idea of military intervention for the sake of regime changes and policing the world make Rubio a dangerous potential President. He is more hawkish than Bush 43 and without the justification of 9/11 to back him on it.
Conservatism
One last point. Trump has shifted much of the angst that would normally be propelling us to our first conservative President since Ronald Reagan towards an idea of populism. He’s even come out and blamed conservatism for many of our problems today despite the fact that we’re only now seeing the conservative movement make headway against the Republican Establishment.
Ted Cruz is the conservative that we need. Somewhere along the line, the Democratic leanings of Trump’s populist sales pitch started luring conservatives into believing that they need to become liberals like him. This might be acceptable to the Establishment, but true patriots must unite to stop the leftists from hijacking our party through Trump.
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