Cruz appeals to solid conservatives. There isn’t anyone in the race espousing a more consistently conservative series of positions.
Everyone wants to nitpick that fact. But really, nitpicking over a guy who has the right basically locked down on all positions is nitpicking, not fundamental undermining.
Social Conservative.
National Security Conservative.
Fiscal Conservative.
Border Conservative.
Economic Conservative.
I think Cruz has consciously attempted to make sure he has coherent, full on conservative positions on each. Does that mean he has been perfectly consistent throughout his career? No. There are a very few instances where he strayed. But he got back on the reservation pretty quickly.
Folks may want their populist red meat. Fine. That still means the Uniparty loses.
But I’ll take as much actual conservatism as I can find every time.
Today, that’s Cruz.
Trump is newly focused on many of the issues; has not spent years focusing on those issues. But I believe that Trump is a genuine Conservative, who is now in the process of focusing on the functional concepts with respect to which, Cruz resolved his own perceptions, years ago.
The point I keep stressing, is that we need both the philosophically coherent conservative faction, and the subjective personality driven Conservatives, who are motivated to preserve America as it was intended, even though they have relied on the Ted Cruzes to iron out the details of how best to explain what is essential to that purpose.