Ted Cruz Continues to Impress Me

I am not a conservative Republican, although there are some important issues about which we stand together in agreement.  One is that we need a strong national defense and a strong system of international alliances in order to keep the peace.  Another is that trade, without the burden of overbearing tariffs, should be free-flowing between countries.  These are two vastly important areas...national defense and the economy...incidentally, they are also two areas in which nominee Donald Trump has departed from the conservative mold, if, that is, he was ever there in the first place.  On the other hand, his chief challenger for the Republican presidential nomination, Texas senator Ted Cruz, clearly is on the "right" side in those crucial areas...

Trump has recently said that, if he were president and one or more NATO countries were attacked...presumably by Putin's Russia...then he might not assist them as the alliance demands.  Wow, that's a very dangerous road to go down, and it should make all of us feel much less secure.  And his idea of bringing jobs back to America is to impose exorbitantly high tariffs on countries like China and penalizing American companies that outsource abroad with high penalty taxes.  Wow, that's a surefire way to bring us and the world spiraling downward into a depression.  Ted Cruz is against Trump on both accounts...ironically, it is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, Hillary Clinton, with whom the conservative Cruz is closer on at least these two important issues than the Republican nominee...

Ted Cruz and I differ a bit on several other issues, but I have been pleasantly surprised and impressed by how dignified and focused of a campaign he conducted.  In spite of that, Donald Trump repeatedly questioned his citizenship and qualifications to be president, continually referred to him in his campaign as "Lyin' Ted", openly insulted his wife's looks, and accused his father of being part of the "conspiracy" to assassinate John F. Kennedy.  Cruz, along with the other sixteen G.O.P. candidates, earlier pledged to support the eventual party nominee...but both he and I agree that Trump's disgusting and offensive personal attacks on him and his family annul any such commitment.  After all, it was Trump, following that pledge that he himself also made, who said that his own fulfillment of it depended on whether or not he was treated fairly...

After Ted Cruz was elected senator in 2012 and began serving there the following year, I quickly came to despise him...as apparently did many of his Senate colleagues, even within his own party.  He had an uncompromising way of doing things and his speeches just grated on me.  But the biggest surprise for me in this 2016 presidential campaign has been how tough, humorous, and eloquent he can be...especially under pressure and even adversity.  Last night he delivered the greatest speech of his career at the Republican Convention...and was roundly booed at its end by the Trump fanatics there for not endorsing the admirer of Putin and Mussolini.  I say to Ted, "Way to go, bro'!"