Candidate profile: Ted Fucking Cruz

Ted Cruz is by a surprisingly large margin, the worst possible option for President. And yes, I realize that Donal Trump is still in the race. This article will be interspersed with a selection of pictures from my vast collection to make him look as stupid as possible, because I hate him. As usual, almost all of the pictures you see are official campaign photos.

Okay, the facts first, Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz is the junior senator from Texas, his father is native born Cuban, but his grandfather is from Spain, so the family basically stopped over for about a generation  before moving to Canada where Ted was born. He is an American citizen because of his mother who is from Delaware, and his status as a natural born citizen is on somewhat shaky ground, but more on that later.

Cruz held dual American/Canadian citizenship until people found out about it in 2014, after which he renounced his Canadian citizenship.

Unfortunately a fake

He graduated from Harvard Law, and spent time in the private sector before moving into politics, serving almost five years as Texas' Solicitor General, after which he fairly easily won his Senate seat in 2013.

He is largely responsible for the government shutdown in 2013, putting pressure on the House of Representatives (which, as a Senator, he wasn't actually a member of) to prevent compromise on any deal that included Planned Parenthood and the ACA funding, among other things. This was disastrous for the Republicans, they expended a lot of energy on that fight, and they came out quite clearly the losers there, Cruz made very few friends in the party leadership during this period as they were willing to negotiate a compromise deal, but pressure from people like him and the Heritage foundation meant that they were unable to put together enough votes to actually spur real debate on the issue.

It was around this time that people began thinking he was planning for a 2016 presidential run, three years is a long time in politics and by then he could point to how he made a stand on his principles and try to spin the whole debacle as a positive for him, which by and large he has done, though he has shied away from explicitly saying the shutdown was a good thing.

Ted Cruz is a loathsome piece of shit in the form of a partially melted butter sculpture of Richard Nixon. He shows a complete lack of empathy for anyone who isn't a rich, white Christian, has no sign of being able to work across the aisle, has courted the evangelical vote so thoroughly that his platform now shows no sign of having anything even approaching Constitutionality in it.

He is currently running a contest where you can win an engraved shotgun from him, you must pass a background check to win it, he is against those by the way.

He has shown a remarkable competence in getting out in front of the crazy religious wing of the party and then doing what they want, his ability to motivate the powerful lobbies of that faction give him a power base that doesn't rely on party leadership or endorsements from other Senators, he shows no interest in working with anyone, including his own party, and if elected would act as a dictator more than any president in recent memory.

While Donald Trump is running for president almost as a vanity project, he has shown consistent goals about what he wants to do with his power, those goals are uniformly terrible it is true, but at least they seem to be coming from actual beliefs he holds, even if those beliefs are stupid and fascist.
Cruz does not have those beliefs, he seeks power for it's own sake, and if elected he will work to secure that power and I do not want to see what happens in his effort to do so.

The "moderates" in the field are approaching the time when they are going to thin out some more I think, and the GOP is going to have to make a choice in who to start endorsing, if it comes down to a choice between Trump and Cruz I think they will choose Cruz, the man is terrifying and has no respect for them or the system, but at least he came from that system, a Trump nomination would destroy the GOP as we know it and while that is undeniably a good thing, even for the party itself, it holds no appeal to those in power, or those funding them.

Cruz would probably lose in the general, he has negative charisma, is unable to use or respond effectively to the use of facts during a debate, and hardly anyone in either party likes or trusts him, however he is still more likely than Trump to win the general, which makes Trumps latest attack on him bring a small glimmer of joy into my life.

Trump, as you may know, is one of the originators of the incredibly stupid "Birther" controversy about President Obama, and to his credit, has held that position consistently since he latched on to it, more to his credit, he seems to not care what party he attacks with it, see Cruz was born to an American mother and a Cuban father in Canada, which makes his status as a Natural Born Citizen something of a point of contention. Trump decided that now is the time to bring that up, which is rational as Cruz is averaging second place in a lot of polls these days.
Now, the definition of Natural Born Citizen is not clearly laid out in the Constitution, but the majority of legal scholars tend to favor an interpretation that means Cruz counts and can be president, there is a significant minority that disagree however, and it is possible that the courts may need to rule on it if interested parties decide to make a big deal out of it, but it doesn't need to come to that for damage to be done, Trump has pointed out that Cruz was born in Canada, and that is enough for some people, possibly a lot of people.

In conclusion, Ted Cruz is a power hungry madman who would destroy this country without a second thought if it kept him in power for even an hour more, he should be avoided at all costs and the fact that he was elected Senator in the first place is a more damning indictment of Texas and Texans than almost anything else could be.