The Republican Mess

But it must be acknowledged that if you were scripting a path to the nomination for a populist candidate who only has a third of the party in his corner, this is almost exactly the script that you would write — with a strong but still-limited hard-right candidate like Cruz, and then a logjam of weak and deluded mainstream politicians competing deep into the primary season for the rest of the vote.

.. Or does the idea that it’s safer to let Trump “rent” the party than to cede it to Cruz actually have purchase outside of a few donors and consultants?

.. What we should be rooting for — what I’ve tried to hope for — is a candidate who can channel, à la Richard Nixon with George Wallace, the legitimate grievances of the Trumpistas while stiff-arming his rank, un-republican fascismo.

.. Or should we begin to root for Donald Trump — not as a candidate actually to champion, now or in the fall, but as an agent of divine retribution for a corrupt and stumbling party, a pillaging-and-torching Babylonian invasion of which it must be said: The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

The Plausibility of Ted Cruz

On foreign policy, too, Cruz’s Jacksonian, “bomb ’em all” positioning on the Middle East seems more in tune with the party’s post-Iraq war mood than Rubio’s tendency toward a George W. Bush-style crusading idealism.

.. His tax plan, which would raise the cost of living significantly for seniors, is vulnerable to potentially devastating attacks. If it came down to a two-man race, he would probably lose big in the late, blue, winner-take-all states, potentially overwhelming whatever delegate lead he’d accumulated up to that point.