Cruz in USA

Scott Hardie | June 24, 2014
Some of my thoughts after reading this great profile of Ted Cruz:

- He's a terrific orator and debater, which makes him a much more formidable candidate than I have thought in the past. He should not be underestimated by rival campaigns, left or right.

- What would a Cruz presidency accomplish? Congress wouldn't work with him, because his own party hates him. On foreign policy, he's willing to cut off our nose to spite our face -- for instance, he trashed our credit rating and decentralized the dollar as the global standard for the sake of his anti-Obamacare government shutdown stunt -- so I don't see him achieving much there. What good would he do?

- He favors a strict textualist reading of the Constitution, except when it works against him, such as on the matter of his foreign birth making him ineligible for the Presidency. Hypocrite.

- Cruz is a master at reframing a losing argument to become about something else entirely, and prides himself on this winning strategy. That makes him a formidable lawyer and candidate, but I think it undermines his claim to bedrock principles about the Constitution and other subjects. If your values aren't good enough to win a debate on their own, and you have to transform the debate to win it, then your values are still broken. Let me put it another way: I write code for a living. I presume that Cruz has no programming knowledge, but could maybe make up a few ideas about coding like anyone could. If I were to debate Cruz about coding principles and best practices, he would probably find a way to "win" the argument by outmaneuvering me, because he's a much better debater than I am. But my technical advice would still be the advice worth following in that debate. His "victory" would serve to mask the real better solution, and would do more harm than good. As his profile rises and he makes good soundbites on TV, I fear that people will mistake Cruz saying things that sound good for Cruz being correct.

- This analogy has probably been made elsewhere because it's obvious, but here's how I see Cruz and other Tea Party politicians: The government is our vehicle to drive somewhere good. Republicans want to drive back to the place that we've been already because they liked it and it's cheaper there. Democrats want to spend a lot of money on gas to drive the car forward to an unexplored place that they believe will be much better. The Tea Party wants to crash the car so that nobody can spend another cent, even if it strands us in the middle of nowhere at all. ...Actually, a better analogy might be that the Tea Party seizes the wheel and crashes the car while everyone else is trying to settle the disagreement like adults. Is that unfair of me to think?

Whether you read the article or not: What do you think of Ted Cruz?

Scott Hardie | March 28, 2015
Thoughts on Ted Cruz now officially running for president?

It doesn't bother me at all that he's so far to the extreme IRS-abolishing right; I can respectfully disagree with his positions. But it bothers me that he's so slick of a salesman (and so irritatingly self-satisfied) that people will believe his lies. He's the least honest Republican candidate by far, but he sells his enormous lies and terrible advice with such conviction and well-framed arguments, thanks to his background as a trial lawyer and debate team captain, that people believe him. That worries me.

But it's moot, because his chances of winning the primaries, let alone the general, seem to be virtually nil. I believe he's running to establish himself as a respectable brand, so that he can subsequently land a Fox News gig or other high-profile speaking engagements or book contracts.