Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee - On a Collision Course

When it comes to Ted Cruz - today's version of Joseph McCarthy - and Mike Huckabee who has said he'd like to scrape the U.S. Constitution in favor of the Bible, it is hard to decide which is the more despicable individual.  Both are demagogues and neither of them give a damn about the common good of the nation.  Thus, it may be entertaining to watch them on a collision course as each heads toward joining the clown car of lunatic GOP presidential candidates in the run up to 2016.  The National Journal looks at who their posturing and maneuvering may lead to a collision course full of batshitery.  Here are some highlights:

When Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee were asked to deliver dueling speeches at a secret gathering of America's most influential socialconservatives, both camps knew what the invitation represented: a private audition to be the evangelical movement's presidential candidate in 2016.

They prepared accordingly, and on back-to-back nights in mid-September, the White House hopefuls delivered impassioned addresses to the Council for National Policy's clandestine conference in Atlanta.

he courtship of Christian leaders by White House contenders—"the evangelical primary," as some call it—has become a staple of Republican presidential politics. But this year is different.

After back-to-back cycles in which social conservatives failed to coalesce around a single candidate—resulting, they believe, in the nomination of moderates who haven't mobilized the Christian base to vote in November—evangelical leaders are acting early and with unprecedented urgency. In a series of private meetings over the past two months in Washington, Iowa, Florida, and elsewhere, Christian political leaders have emphasized narrowing their options sooner than ever and uniting behind one candidate to defeat the establishment favorite.

The Atlanta event, then, signaled not just that the 2016 evangelical primary is well underway but that for many leading social conservatives, the field is already winnowing.

"Those are the two," Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said of Cruz and Huckabee. "And they share the same core base, so I do think there's probably only room for one of them to be successful."

Perkins is not alone in this view. Conversations with some of the country's most influential and well-connected evangelical power-brokers suggest an emerging consensus—out of private gatherings like CNP as well as public events like the Values Voters Summit—that 2016 is shaping up as a two-horse race. Even a senior adviser to former Sen. Rick Santorum, who won Iowa in 2012 and is considering another run, admitted that talk of Cruz and Huckabee distancing themselves from the field is "accurate."

[T]he early indicators of a head-to-head contest for the social-conservative contingent could have a significant impact on the Republican primary season. And both the Cruz and Huckabee camps know it.

In recent months, allies of both men have eyed one another as mutual threats in the quest to win the evangelical endorsement—and have even launched early efforts to undermine the other. Cruz allies have suggested that conservatives won't be able to ignore Huckabee's questionable fiscal record; Huckabee's team has questioned Cruz's ability to connect with religious audiences.

There are other potentially viable contenders, but Santorum, the 2012 runner-up, is perceived by many top social conservatives as one of the very few who might be able to crack the Huckabee-Cruz competition.  "And frankly I'm not sure there's going to be much time for anybody else to get in," Perkins said of the strength of Cruz, Huckabee and Santorum, "because I do think you're going to see conservatives very possibly coalesce around a candidate fairly early in the process, while it would still have some significance."

Cruz and Huckabee both have been courting Perkins, who's regarded as the chief rainmaker in evangelical politics. (In fact, during one recent stretch, Perkins said he spent five of six weekends with either Cruz or Huckabee—or both.) Cruz has paid a multiple visits to the early, evangelical-friendly states of Iowa and South Carolina this year. Huckabee has done the same—and, for good measure, is traveling with a group of nearly two-dozen Christian leaders from those states on a 10-day European trip next month.

[A]s evangelical leaders approach 2016 with unprecedented urgency and emphasis on coordination, it appears the decision to collectively endorse one person may come down to two very different candidates: Huckabee, the once-ran preacher with inimitable charm and religious bonafides; or Cruz, the fresh-faced agitator who refuses to compromise or play nice with his party's establishment.

I find both men incredibly frightening.  One can only hope that they will pull the GOP conversation so far to the lunatic right that they will ultimately help the Democrat cause.