Jonathan Chait on why Ted Cruz would be a terrible, terrible president.
The one good thing I can think of if he were the Republican nominee is this: Right-wing folks have always believed that they lose presidential elections because their party nominates squishy, insufficiently-conservative candidates; that if they ever gave America the chance to vote for a True Conservative (as defined by the right-wingiest fringe), enough voters would flock to the polls to not only elect that person but to prove that's the way most of this country wants this country run from now on. Having Cruz there to pull a Barry Goldwater would forever snuff that fantasy.
Of course, the trade-off for that is that many of us would have months of wondering, "But what if by some fluke, he does get elected?" What if suddenly, there was a new 9/11-style terrorist attack and a lot of scared Americans rushed to vote for the candidate most likely to nuke the rest of the world? What if someone suddenly found a Snapchat video of the Democratic nominee sexually molesting farm animals at a Nazi Bund Meeting? What if…?
Well, we can all think of something that's unlikely but not utterly impossible.
Frankly, forced to make a pick, I'd rather have Trump. We know Cruz will do everything wrong. Trump, because no one can be sure just what he'll do, might at least do a few things right.