Isn't it obvious?:
While several of his competitors run in the opposite direction, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz says he won't attack primary rival Donald Trump for his comments on Mexican immigrants. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“I salute Donald Trump for focusing on the need to address illegal immigration,” the Texas senator said on NBC's Meet the Press in an interview that aired Sunday.
Perhaps that's what Trump did. I tend to think that he was simply trying to make a big cannonball splash into the deep end of the GOP nominating pool and chose illegal immigration with which to do it, and he doesn't really harbor any strong, principled opposition to it. Or, in other words, Senator Cruz is being played.
But giving The Donald the benefit of the doubt for a moment, there are certainly better, more politic and statesman-like ways of "addressing illegal immigration," as, for example, former Texas Governor Rick Perry has been not only doing but also implementing for years, while Ted Cruz has only talked about it, along with everything else, which is a senator's primary job description.
That Senator Cruz refuses to recognize this, and also that it's very easy for an unserious candidate who doesn't have a prayer of winning and isn't in the race for any purpose other than ego-tripping, but is tempermentally handicapped towards the "Fight! Fight! Fight!" mentality to the exclusion of any rational PR strategizing, redundantly underscores his lack of leadership skills and his unsuitability for the office he purports to seek.
Something about which he cannot even be honest, as this outrageous whopper illustrates:
“The Washington cartel doesn't want to address that. The Washington cartel doesn't believe we need to secure the borders. The Washington cartel supports amnesty and I think amnesty's wrong, and I salute Donald Trump for focusing on it."
A vast and ill-concealedly insulting overgeneralization that again makes one want to remind him that he's running for the Republican presidential nomination, which means he's going to need Republican votes to attain it. Which suggests that that's not actually his ultimate objective.
"He has a colorful way of speaking. It's not the way I speak, but I'm not going to engage in the media's game of throwing rocks and attacking other Republicans. I'm just not going to do it.” [Emphasis added]
Please, Senator Cruz. That IS the way you speak, and throwing rocks at and attacking other Republicans has been your mission in life for the past two and a half years. And now you're rather flagrantly lying about it, further insulting our intelligence. Which goes to show that you're almost as unserious a candidate as Trump.
And that's what leads me to believe that Cruz is angling to be Trump's running mate, if only because it may actually be possible the the Texas Senator thinks the reality TV star and real estate mogul has a measurable, even favorable chance of winning. And if not, it's no less clear that Cruz is running for vice president more than president - a hatchetman role for which he is much better suited.
Too well-suited, in fact, for any nominee's political good.
Better not let that back bench get too cold, Ted, because that's precisely back to which you're heading.
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