Ted Cruz: The Champion You May Need

The Federalist ^ | January 14, 2016 | Hunter Baker


Matthew Anderson explains "why I cannot support Ted Cruz." There have been other critiques, some aggressive, some concealed (but clever like a shiv), that aim to paint Cruz as an evangelical, but not the right kind of evangelical. These efforts may become more urgent as people I admire and have as friends seek to undercut Cruz for the sake of Marco Rubio.

I get it. The Trump train is freaking people out. They need to see him derailed, but too many people are dividing the vote, denying Bush or Rubio (depending on your preference) from rightly vanquishing the Donald. Cruz could vanquish Trump, but that, too, seems to be unacceptable. Why is it unacceptable?

What's Wrong with Ted Cruz

First of all, Cruz is unacceptable to many of my friends because he is too ambitious, too much of a grandstander, not a team player, etc. He got to the Senate and pushed to the edge of a government shutdown (notably reading "Green Eggs and Ham"). The reading may be that he thinks he's Jimmy Stewart in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington."

Second, Cruz comes off much less as a Christian who brings a holistic view of the faith to politics and much more as a pure Reaganite conservative. He isn't going to use government to bring about the eschaton at all (unless the eschaton means the American constitutional design). He'll preserve traditions, and many of those traditions are built on Christianity.

That's the link. It's not the one many evangelicals want. Only some will understand this, but Cruz is not a conservative version of Mark Hatfield. Rubio may be that. Cruz is really just a conservative who is also a Bible-believing Christian....

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