A month ago I
predicted a Cruz-Rubio ticket. Now
that Cruz has overtaken Carson to run neck-and-neck with Trump in the Iowa Quinnipiac University
poll, Cruz is looking a lot like a winner. Here are my top 10
reasons to back him.
10. He really
knows economics--not the ideologically driven pablum dished out at universities,
but the real battlefield of entrenched monopolies against entrepreneurial
upstarts. As Asheesh Agarwal and John
Delacourt reported in this space, he did a brilliant job at
the Federal Trade Commission: "Cruz promoted economic liberty and fought
government efforts to rig the marketplace in favor of special interests. Most
notably, Cruz launched an initiative to study the government’s role in
conspiring with established businesses to suppress e-commerce. This initiative
ultimately led the U.S. Supreme Court to open up an entire industry to small
e-tailers." Anyone can propose tax cuts. It takes real know-how to cut through
the regulatory kudzu that is strangling America enterprise.
9. He really
knows foreign policy. He is a hardline defender of American interests, but wants
to keep American politics out of the export business. That's why
neo-conservatives like Jennifer
Rubin at the Washington Post and Kimberly
Strassel at the Wall Street Journal keep sliming him.
The Bushies started attacking Cruz a year ago,
when he stated the obvious about the Bush administration's great adventure in
"democratic globalism": "I think we stayed too long, and we got far too involved
in nation-building….We should not be trying to turn Iraq into Switzerland." He's
not beholden to the bunglers of the Bush administration, unlike the hapless Marco
Rubio.
8. He really
knows the political system. As Texas solicitor general, he argued nine cases
before the U.S. Supreme Court and won five of them. How many other lawyers in
the United States have gone to the Supreme Court nine times on points of
Constitutional law? The best write-up I've seen on his brilliance as a
Constitutional lawyer came from the liberal New
Yorker--grudging praise, but praise nevertheless. Some of
his legal work was brilliant, displaying a refined understanding of separation
of powers and federalism. If you want a president who knows the mechanism of
American governance from the inside, there's no-one else who comes close to
Cruz.
7. He's an
outsider, and America needs an outsider. The public thinks that Washington is
corrupt, and it IS corrupt. The banks are corrupt, the defense industries (with
their $1.5 trillion budget for a new fighter plane that won't fly) are corrupt,
the tech companies (run by patent trolls rather than engineers) are corrupt, the
public utilities are corrupt. The American people want a new broom. But it helps
to put it in the hands of someone who knows his way around the broom closet.
6. Trump and
Carson aren't serious candidates. Carson is an endearing fellow who has no
business running for president: apart from his medical specialty, his knowledge
of the world is an autodidact's jumble of fact and fantasy. Donald Trump
inherited money and ran a family business: never in his life did he have to
persuade shareholders, investors, directors, or anyone else to work with him. At
best, he knew how to cajole and threaten. It's been his way or the highway since
he was a kid, and that's the worst possible training for a U.S. president.
5. Cruz is in
but not of the system. The distinguished conservative scholar Robert P. George
mentored him at Princeton and the flamboyant (but effective) liberal Alan
Dershowitz taught him at Harvard Law School. Both agree he was the smartest
student they ever had. An Ivy League education isn't important unless, of
course, you don't have one: to run the United States, it helps to have dwelt in
the belly of the beast. Cruz came through the elite university mill with his
principles intact, and a keen understanding of the liberal mentality.
4. He's got
real grit--call it fire in the belly, but Cruz wants to be president and wants
us to want him to be president. Determination is a lot more important than
charm, where Cruz won't win first prize. When it comes down to it, Americans
don't want a charming president, but a smart, tough and decent one. Marco Rubio,
the Establishment's last hope after Jeb Bush's belly-flop, is instantly
recognizable as the tough-guy hero's cute younger brother. Either Cruz or
Fiorina would fill out the ticket.
3. He knows
how to run a real campaign as opposed to a flash-in-the-pan media event. Cruz
has boots on the ground, an organization of people who believe in him and raise
money at twice the rate of Rubio--with an averge $66 donation.
2. He's a
true believer in the United States of America. His love for his country and
belief in its prospects are impassioned and unfeigned. He's ambitious, but his
ambition stems from a desire to serve, where he believes that he is uniquely
qualified to serve.
And the top
reason to vote for Ted Cruz is:
He can beat
Hillary Clinton. Not just beat her, but beat her by a landslide. Mrs. Clinton
isn't that smart. She looks sort of smart when the media toss her softballs, but
in a series of one-to-one, nowhere-to-hide presidential debates, Cruz would
shred her. Cruz was the top college debater in the country. He knows how to
assemble facts, stay on message, anticipate his opponent's moves and neutralize
them. He's a quarter-century younger than Mrs. Clinton, smarter, sharper, and
better prepared. He's also clean as a whistle in personal life and finances,
while the Clintons could reasonably be understood to constitute a criminal
enterprise.
###
Happy Thanksgiving!
Dan Friedman
NYC
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