Doyle McManus: 'Calculating Zealot' Cruz Should Be GOP Voters' Choice

Smiley face
Ted Cruz (Photo by Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Thursday, 28 April 2016 01:48 PM EDT ET

Veteran journalist Doyle McManus says Republicans should pick Ted Cruz over Donald Trump, for president even though it's like choosing between a "calculating zealot" and a "buffoonish megalomaniac."

"Cruz isn't an easy candidate to love. He's capable of breathtaking opportunism and demagoguery," McManus writes in the Los Angeles Times.

But, he adds, there are two reasons voters should go with the Texas senator.

"First, unlike Trump, Cruz has thought seriously about the job. He's issued coherent — if bracingly conservative — proposals on tax policy, healthcare, defense spending and foreign policy. In most of those areas, Trump is still improvising," McManus writes.

And Cruz, a Harvard-trained lawyer, is a serious student of the Constitution … He's a devotee of limited government. He even has a libertarian streak, and briefly allied with Rand Paul in criticizing government surveillance programs …

"Second, a Cruz candidacy would be a useful experiment in American politics: It would test the conservative argument that Republicans would win more elections if they only nominated unambiguously right-wing candidates."

© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.


Politics
Veteran journalist Doyle McManus says Republicans should pick Ted Cruz over Donald Trump, for president even though it's like choosing between a "calculating zealot" and a "buffoonish megalomaniac."
cruz, gop, voters, choice, doyle mcmanus
168
2016-48-28
Thursday, 28 April 2016 01:48 PM
Newsmax Media, Inc.

View on Newsmax