As some in the fractured Republican party concede the Texas senator may be the candidate to beat Trump, liberals fear he would reverse decades of change

Many Democrats fear the prospect of a Donald Trump in the Oval Office because they don’t know what the bombastic businessman would do there. But the prospect of his top rival, Ted Cruz, in the White House frightens many far more because they know exactly what he would do there.

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The Texas senator is running second to Trump in the race for the Republican nomination: seven states to Trump’s 15, roughly 29% of the votes to 35%, and about 100 delegates behind the self-proclaimed billionaire in the race to 1,237, which would give either man the nomination outright. Cruz is the underdog but, in this most unpredictable of election years, he still has a fighting chance.

Could he save the Republican party, and the many Americans horrified at the prospect of the brash Trump in the White House? Not quite. Cruz is a hardline conservative despised within his own party, and many Democrats and establishment Republicans find the ideologue even more distasteful than Trump, whom they say lacks any principles beyond making deals.

Cruz’s dedication to conservative principles, regardless of consequences, has alienated many in Washington who see him as inflexible. In return, the Texas senator, a devotee of Ronald Reagan, has disdained every Republican nominee since the 40th president, saying each failed to be a true “Reagan conservative”.

In Washington, Republican senator Lindsey Graham, a vocal Cruz critic and former presidential rival, has voiced the anxieties in his party, saying it had gone “batshit crazy”. He even joked darkly: “If you killed Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody would convict you.”

But even Graham has started to concede Cruz is a lesser evil to Trump. He told reporters this week it is “increasingly more clear to me that Ted Cruz is the most viable alternative to Donald Trump”.

Across the aisle, many liberals and Democratic voters have similar anxieties about the Texas senator. Although Trump is seen as an offensive opportunist who has stoked racially charged violence, Cruz is regarded as a true believer who is ready to reverse decades of liberal initiatives.

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“It’s not as if there’s a massive difference between Mr Trump’s position on immigration and Mr Cruz’s position on immigration,” Barack Obama observed this week. “Mr Trump might just be more provocative in terms of how he says it, but the actual positions aren’t that different.”

More bluntly, Neil Sroka, spokesman for the activist group Democracy for America, called them both “awful”, though “it’s a different kind of awful.”

The principle of electing Trump is worse, he added, but the end result might actually be better. “If Trump wins, America has really gone to hell, but he’s more malleable and such a narcissist that he might get deals done in any way he can,” he said.

“Cruz, armed with a Republican House and Senate, could be like a rightwing demagogue we’ve never seen, worse than Ronald Reagan. He could be way more dangerous than Trump.”



But it’s this ideological consistency that appeals to his supporters as well. Congressman Mark Meadows, who has endorsed Cruz, described him to the Guardian as “the same guy in private as he is in public”. He noted some of his colleagues will be “the ultimate conservative” in public but, in private, they will behave much differently. Cruz does not change, Meadows said. He “talks the talk and walks the walk”.

It’s a different kind of awful Neil Sroka, Democracy for America

In contrast to Trump, Meadows enthused that a potential Cruz administration would reduce the power of the executive branch and have a “more balanced foreign policy”.

A New Yorker, Trump has struggled to convince Republicans that he is a true conservative. Critics have pointed to his disdain for limited government, liberal positions that he has once held on issues such as abortion and gun control and his past donations to Democrats – including Hillary Clinton, the likely nominee, who also attended his third wedding. Those three marriages – and boasts of promiscuity – similarly make him an incongruous match for many evangelical voters.

To a secular European, meanwhile, a Cruz speech roils with the puritanical fire and brimstone of 17th century New England, a world divided between angelic good and satanic evil. A preacher’s son and a measured public speaker who drops his voice for raw effect, Cruz is fond of quoting Reagan’s “banner of bold colors, no pastel shades”, and claims that he will restore American leadership in the world after Obama, just as Reagan did after Jimmy Carter.

Cruz first became a national figure by leading a 2013 government shutdown as a fight against Obama’s healthcare reforms. On the campaign trail he revels, like Trump, in his role as an anti-establishment candidate railing against special interests in Washington and uses the disdain with which many in the nation’s capital view him as a selling point.



A former supreme court clerk who argued a number of cases before the nation’s highest court as solicitor general of Texas, Cruz treats rhetoric like a master tailor: everything is precise and deliberate, measured twice and cut once.

In Thursday’s Republican debate, he delivered a neat closing statement at Trump’s expense: “What an incredible nation we have that the son of a bartender [Marco Rubio], and the son of a mailman [John Kasich], and the son of a dishwasher [Cruz] and a successful businessman can all stand on this stage competing and asking for your support.”

He received a further boost as a number of party figures have consolidated behind him in the belief that he is the GOP’s best chance to stop Trump. In the past week, Neil Bush, a brother and son of former presidents, endorsed him, as did former rival Carly Fiorina. Further, Utah’s Mike Lee became the first senator to endorse him. “It’s time for the party to unite behind Ted Cruz,” Lee told CNN on Friday. “I think he’s the only candidate who is not Donald Trump who can get the nomination at this point.”

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Cruz is currently the only candidate besides Trump who has a mathematical possibility of obtaining a majority of delegates on the first ballot at July’s Republican convention. But the odds are against him, as many of Cruz’s best states, like his home of Texas have already cast their ballots. If no one gets the necessary 1,237 delegates, the nomination will go to a contested convention in July, where Cruz would perhaps have the strongest delegate operation of any Republican campaign.

Democrats are watching the contest closely, unsure whether Cruz, the devil they know, would be better to face than Trump, a wild card who could scramble the normal dynamics of blue and red states. “Many Democrats would rather face Cruz than Trump in November because he seems easier to beat,” said Blake Zeff, a veteran Democratic strategist and now editor-in-chief of the media network Cafe.

“Republicans have had huge problems winning national elections the last few decades, and a far-right candidate lacking personal appeal does not seem like the way to fix that problem,” Zeff continued.

“Trump, on the other hand, is a bit more unpredictable, because of his propensity to say anything, ability to withstand political damage,” – Zeff alluded to the billionaire’s spat with the pope – his “appeal to atypical Republican constituencies, and willingness to tailor his political positions to any given moment.

Cruz, in contrast to Trump’s improvisational campaign, has built a formidable political operation modeled on Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008, and would provide his own set of challenges for Hillary Clinton in November.