Why Ted Crus is Dangerous

I often think that foreigners must at times view America as one large insane asylum, especially when they consider the lunatic members of the Republican Party base.  The same, of course, holds when one considers GOP elected officials, including members of Congress. A piece in The Economist, a long standing British publication looks at announced GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz and winces and labels the man dangerous.  The Brits have their problems, but ignorance embracing lunacy is not typically one of them.  Here are article highlights on the danger Cruz poses:

Republicans who do not like Mr Cruz—and that includes many of his colleagues in the Senate—liken him to Barack Obama before he became president. This is meant both as an insult and a backhanded compliment. They mean that Mr Cruz’s career so far has consisted entirely of talking and that, with no executive experience, he is hopelessly unprepared for the White House. But they also acknowledge that he is a brilliant speaker and a candidate who should not be underestimated. They are right on all points.  But he would make a terrible president.

First, he offers not a coherent plan for governing but a series of applause lines. “Imagine abolishing the IRS!” is one. How he would pay for his proposed trebling of the Border Patrol after scrapping the Internal Revenue Service is unclear, but no matter. He reveres the constitution, yet he wants to change it quite a lot

Second, he has treated the Senate not as a place to craft laws but as a stage for self-publicizing stunts. In 2013 he led the charge to shut down the government in an attempt to defund Obamacare. He was prepared to risk a sovereign default over raising the debt ceiling. . . . . He compared Republicans who refused to support him to Neville Chamberlain appeasing Hitler.

Mr Cruz will not win the presidency, since he repels the swing voters who decide things. But he could still do harm. If he turns the Republican primary into a conservative purity contest, in which anyone softer on Mr Obama is labelled a sell-out, other contenders may be dragged so far to the right that they become unelectable in the general election. That would be bad for the Republican Party and for America. Voters in 2016 deserve a choice between two grown-up candidates.