The best that can be said of Ted Cruz is that he is a worse Donald Trump

[WhiteTara]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2016/03/23/the-best-that-can-be-said-of-ted-cruz-is-that-he-is-a-worse-donald-trump/?tid=hybrid_collaborative_1_na


The best that can be said of Ted Cruz is not that he is not Donald Trump.

If only.

The trouble with Ted Cruz is that he is like Donald Trump in ways that are actively bad (ideas about how to treat Muslims, for one) and not like Donald Trump in good ways (say, having more charm than a plate of cold liver).

He is not Donald Trump in the sense that he is actually less appealing than Donald Trump. Some people who have met Trump like him. Whereas Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) joked, “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”

snip

I suppose with Cruz you can feel sure that people won’t vote for him just for the entertainment value, because — what entertainment value? Part of Trump’s obscure charm is the fact that you never know what is going to come out of his mouth, and he certainly gives off the impression that he doesn’t know either. With Cruz, on the contrary, you have the sense that every off-the-cuff remark is something he has been rehearsing carefully in the mirror for the last 40 years. Perhaps over-rehearsing. Cruz is the guy in the yearbook voted Most Likely To Cackle and Murmur “Everything Is Proceeding As I Have Foreseen.”

The Trump campaign is a dumpster fire from which you can’t tear your eyes away. The Cruz campaign lacks that charisma.

[Agnosticsherbet]

1. Cruz is a theocrat. Trump is a Autocrat.

It is like comparing Assholes an Dickheads.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. What's worse about Ted Cruz is that he's smarter than Trump

in ways involving how government works. Trump has a special talent for marketing, but he's clueless about everything else. He'd spend most of his time trying to impress other heads of state by having yuuuge, elaborate but tacky state dinners (once he'd redecorated the White House so it looks like Versailles as imagined by Saddam Hussein's pimp) but he wouldn't bother with the actual work of government beyond making ridiculous speeches about how wonderful he is. Cruz, on the other hand, knows how the machinery works and he'd promptly go about dismantling everything Obama had done by appointing various lunatics and religious fanatics to all positions presidents can appoint. I think he is really more dangerous in the long run.

[WhiteTara]

4. yes he is. Vote Democratic in November!

[FLPanhandle]

3. Without Trump, Cruz would have been gone by now

Trump draws all the attention and headlines and, even here on DU, message board topics.

Snickering away in the background is Cruz who is much worse than Trump but is now the anti-Trump choice.

[Warpy]

5. They're both loose cannons and egmaniacs

and I just hope people are paying attention to this middle school playground pissing contest they're having. I can't imagine too many people are favorably impressed by it. Hate directed at women, POC, and anybody who isn't a right wing Christian sells very well. Two overgrown brats going "neener" at each other won't.

[WhiteTara]

6. It's a god awful nightmare that doesn't end. nt

[Warpy]

7. I just hope they're like matter and antimatter

and they'll annihilate each other on contact the next time they share a stage or a venue or whatever.

All right, I don't want anyone close by to be killed by the blast wave, so let's just hope they finally mutually embarrass each other enough that both of them slink off the stage, never to reappear in public, especially in politics.

[WhiteTara]

8. We can hope!