Ted Cruz is the second-most-popular Republican vying for the GOP nomination, trailing Donald Trump and just ahead of Marco Rubio. The senator from Texas is the only Republican who has a ghost of a chance of stealing the nom from Trump. Cruz has won four of the fifteen states that have held primaries or caucuses, amassing 226 delegates versus Trump’s 319. Betting odds for Ted Cruz to win the nomination are currently hovering around +1,600. Strangely enough, Marco Rubio’s odds of securing the nomination are actually better than Cruz’s, despite only winning 110 delegates. With 16 more primaries in March, including winner-take-all Florida, there are 780 delegates up for grabs this month.
Ted Cruz could possibly win some states with higher percentages of evangelical Christian voters, but so far, evangelical strongholds like Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas have all gone for trump. This does not bode well for Cruz. It may very well be that voters are more fed up with the political establishment than people first thought. Cruz’s appeal is rather limited to rural America, and he is not a particularly rousing or charismatic candidate. However, many Republicans politicians are jumping aboard the Cruz bandwagon, if only to stop Trump from winning the nomination.
When South Carolina Republican senator Lindsay Graham calls Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic bigot” and the only candidate worth rallying around is Ted Cruz, whose ideas are decidedly more right-wing than Trump’s, you know the GOP has gone far outside the mainstream. For many in the GOP, the most important thing is to stop Trump from clinching the nomination. What this comes down to is a choice between a theocracy under Ted Cruz and an oligarchy under Donald Trump.
The main reason why the GOP establishment supports Ted Cruz is that he is one of their own. A career politician, imbued with a smugness that is completely in line with the status quo, Cruz toes the party line all the way. Whereas Trump has held liberal views in the past and still does on certain issues, Cruz is a died-in-the-wool conservative on every issue. He would also be less of an overall embarrassment to the party if he won the nomination. The GOP has made Cruz its anti-Trump golden boy, but will dissatisfied voters take the bait? If recent primaries are any indication, the answer is a resounding “no.”
Despite some Republicans supporting Cruz over Trump, many in the GOP are not fans of the Texas senator. “I just don’t like the guy,” said former president George W. Bush in his usual laconic fashion. Bob Dole criticized Cruz for calling Republican lead Mitch McConnell a liar on the senate floor, noting that it is inappropriate to insult someone in such a public setting. The betting odds on the 2016 election have never been in his favor either. Then again, if this political race has proven anything, it is that bedside manners have gone by the wayside. In the end, many Republicans see Cruz as pushy, arrogant, self-serving, and even creepy. Even Cruz’s facial expressions evoke disgust among some people. The fact that many in the GOP are now supporting Cruz over Trump should tell you something about the dangerous waters the Republicans now find themselves in. As Senator Graham once put it, the choice between Trump and Cruz is “like being shot or poisoned.”