Yes, you’re spot on and I believe your very insightful!
It makes perfect sense to me, too. I see Trump as a kid from Jersey with the instincts of a street fighter, mixing it up with all races and nationalities, exposed very young to labor and the working around blue collars and in church on Sunday, for mom.
To me you’re saying Trump is as smart as anybody, but he has a way of hiding it in the way he talks on the stump, but he has actually broken a sweat, was a fine athlete, very competitive, extremely instinctive.
All my life I was taught to appreciate instinct. He’s got it and I like it. A lot! I also believe that is what THE ART OF THE DEAL is, actually.
Cruz probably is a striver. Seems he didn’t all the time have a happy home growing up, and then lost a sister. Somewhere in there he became a devout Baptist.
I don’t know much or imagine much about Cruz, except for his knowing how to throw red meat to the base in his actions in the senate, to prepare the folks, in a positive fashion, for his presidential run.
He sure knew how to lay the ground work for attracting the base, but then along came TPA, to bring TPP, and then the HB1-Visas for the establishment types, and the blasted quadrupling of foreign Visas for high skilled foreigners, all which has caused him to go back into the weeds to un-do.
I think you nailed it all.
They are both calculating but for different reasons.
Maybe Cruz has a bit of a messianic complex while Trump’s calculating nature is born from being highly competitive.
Cruz wants to save his ideal America while Trump sees problems he wants solved.
Like Trump has said. He waited on someone else to step up and do it but no one did so he decided he had to.