I grew up under Reagan’s era. Cruz is the first politician I’ve seen who reminds me of Reagan. There are two main reasons for that, and Trump couldn’t be more opposite of Cruz and Reagan on both of them. Cruz speaks from a perspective of deep faith eloquently and passionately but without sounding like a preacher or like he’s talking down to people. And Cruz is fully marinated in the small-government, low-tax, libertarian economic ideas of Milton Friedman. While both Cruz and Trump sound fine on military matters, Cruz gets ALL of it. He is Reagan reincarnated.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I was already an adult when Reagan came to power. I went toe to toe with the many people who hated Reagan. My recollections must be much more vivid than yours. Reagan had more charisma and likeability in one of his toenails than Cruz has in his whole body.
Reagan also understood that politics is a team sport and he got people to follow him. He even invited the man who coined the term “voodoo economics” to be his vice president as distasteful as that must have been. That is how he put together the Reagan coalition and enabled a bunch of people to hang onto his coattails to get into office.
Cruz has no coattails, he doesn’t care about even those in his own party and has managed to alienate nearly everyone who has ever tried to work with him. It is a little hard to understand how he has been able to succeed as much as he has. This is not the way that Reagan worked. Reagan was even a leader when he was still working as an actor, even when he was still a Democrat... it came natural to him. It is crazy to compare Cruz to Reagan. Trump is a leader like Reagan.