Its pure emotion that’s driving his support. Its difficult for his supporters to look at him objectively.
Ted Cruz is the person best suited for the Presidency but conservatives would rather have a shallow suit nominated for the nation’s highest office.
The desperation to win at all costs is leading conservatives to abandon life-long held convictions to back a candidate who tells them what they long to hear.
Naw, it’s that many are waking up to the fact that they’ve been #cuckservatives all along, and that it’s time to reject #cuckservatism in favor of nationalism.
Trump is no shallow suit, as you say. Wonkish he isn’t either — that’s the point.
For the rest it was pretty much a verbal brawl.
It is not pure emotion driving Trump’s support. Many of us who do support him recognize that he is not a philosophical conservative. We have watched the GOP machine prove itself for years to be ineffectual, contemptuous and treacherous to its base. We recognize that Trump -might- be sincere on a few points where we agree, and are willing to give the man a chance to effect good policy. Policy which we know from experience the GOP machine will pervert, subvert, or simply ignore.
That is not an emotional assessment. It is the intellectual recognition that the Republican Party is treacherous, enervated and hostile towards conservatives.
Whether or not Cruz is best suited for the presidency—and yeah, I’d take him first for the position among the alternatives right now—he’s not best suited to win the two races he needs to get there. Just comes across as oily and posturing, like a televangelist, in his delivery, and has no sense, such as Trump has a keen one, on how to connect with big numbers of average people. Cruz is also beholden to his top donors, for whom religious liberty is their single issue, so he’s even hampered on an issues point in executing his race.
Cruz’s best chance at this point is to sneak in as Trump’s veep and move up from there.
Now, IMO Trump will also have to learn (fast) not to mug so much for the camera in debates or to gratuitously go after small fry like Rand and all of that. But he is sharp—like Cruz or Carly or Ben or Bobby—with much more emotional intelligence in, again, connecting with people. In that way, he’s probably more like Christie than any of the other candidates.
Trump’s still got to learn, but he’s in a great position to have the luxury of a sizable lead while doing so.
In my case, at least, it is not desperation to win at all costs.
Trump or Cruz are the only ones I will vote for.
I will never vote for the GOPe again.
I will vote for Trump because of the things I found out about him by reading his books or I will vote for Cruz because we all know he is the standard for conservatism.
For me the Trump draw is about how he is able to take down the establishment (uniparty, LSM) like nobody else can. To me that is the most important thing any of them has to offer. I like Cruz a lot but if we are going to achieve what he wants to achieve, we have to get passed the establishment first. And they are deeply entrenched as you know.