So much for the Vaunted GOP Stewardship of our Economy

Except for Rand Paul, the Republican candidates, Democrats neither but its a given, don't care about the national debt.  Carpet bombing is expensive! If you are for carpet bombing or any other overwhelming show of military force you are for blowing the debt and accepting the same poor result as George W Bush's invasion of Iraq.  

Alliances costing our Blood, Treasure and Moral Standing

If we are to ever balance our budget then its imperative that our Foreign Policy be one that pacifies rather than inflames.  Ted Cruz' suggestion we carpet bomb ISIS shows no regard for the blow-back of martyrs for recruiting, propagandizing and most importantly vengeance seeking, for example the loner radicalized by American bombs wiping out his family and taking revenge here in the U.S. Blow-back as originally explained by Ron Paul, father of Rand, was our CIA ousting of an elected administration in Iran and placing the young Shah in its place.  The outcome was twenty years of stability and then thirty five years and counting dealing with an implacable enemy.  Perilous Partners by Cato's Ted Galen Carpenter and Malou Innocent exposes Alliances which cost us our blood and treasure and, most damning, diminish our moral standing.  

Democrats are Authoritarian so Republican answer to their Ying is more?

The GOP is reaping the grains of philosophical discord sowed these past few years where Mitch McConnell determined that the party’s one and only mandate was to make Barack Obama a one term President. The National Review’s rejection of Trump because of his opportunism and lack of an ideology is priceless when one can say the same of Conservatism.  William F. Buckley, the magazine’s founder, broke out into intellectual and political circles in 1951 with his God and Man at Yale written just after his graduation and where he decried the collectivist perspective forced upon his individual one at college. With his publication he drew American Conservatism out of it’s John Birch Society hole and redirected it toward a Libertarian, Classical Liberal, political movement of liberty and individual freedom which moved to nominate Barry Goldwater as a Presidential candidate and culminated with the election of Ronald Reagan.  Conservatism and The Republican Party got off track, however, when with their adulation of Reagan they encouraged activist Evangelicals to politicize their values.  It’s curious that this happened under Reagan because there is no evidence that he was much of a church goer especially when compared to the Baptist sunday school teacher Jimmy Carter, but single issue pro lifers found a welcome in the GOP’s tent and party ideologues thereafter did not understand that these additional neutrons could cause the party to split. It’s a process called fission and in its nuclear form lets loose an awful lot undirected energy.

Evangelical authoritarian capture has redirected the party’s economic narrative to a crony capitalism worthy of the previous Gilded Age. Reagan swept into office after Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose market based celebration of the individual and freedom. Now the party pulse has ossified to the elitist strictures of Ludwig von Mises, a relic of the Austro Hungarian Empire and the ideological Laissez Faire orthodoxy of the previous Gilded Age.  That Theodore Roosevelt as described by Doris Kearns Goodwin in The Bully Pulpit, broke free of his class with a Trust Busting break up of the concentration of power is the greatness of his presidency which The Republican Party as presently constituted is completely blind to. The point of distinction between Von Mises and Friedman is that one has no respect for anyone less than an elite while the other is an egalitarian admirer of the little man and the swarm of individuals described in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations as working in their own self interest to create society's greatest good.  

The current Republican Orthodoxy is blind to its conspicuous celebrities doling out a cynical message of an equal opportunity ticket to the lottery of life. It supports along with Democrats the concentration of power in Washington because it morphed government largesse under their watch to the benefit of a few who coincidentally, or maybe not, are lead by the same name, J. P. Morgan.  The crux of the Republican problem is if Democrats are authoritarian, Barack Obama being a prime example of FDR authoritarianism, then what is their yang to the others ying; more authoritarianism?  The National Review is horrified by Trump because he his ideologically unhinged but so are they with their support for Ted Cruz.  He is the facile embodiment of a debater who can defend any proposition, even the impossible Conservative one that embraces free market matter and evangelical antimatter who will lead them to an empty annihilating mandate.

Ted Cruz Strict Constructionist or Fair Weather Constitutionalist?

David Brooks' "The Brutalism of Ted Cruz" hits on what his Harvard Law professor, Laurence Tribe, described as his core ideology, a strict construction interpretation of the Constitution. How ironic that the facile champion college debater now has to argue the "living Constitution" to defend his Canadian birth.

Ted Cruz - Hoisted by one's Own Petard

The original birther movement against Obama was a defensive move instigated by John McCain supporters who went off the deep end trying to explain their candidate not having been born in the United States.  That the issue continued on  its wayward course with Trump still questioning Barack Obama's legitimacy in the 2012 Presidential race now puts Ted Cruz in the cross hairs to debate a very questionable birth right to serve as President of the United States. He claims its settled law.  He is going to need a lot friends in the Senate to prove it which makes the fact that he has so many GOP enemies in the Senate priceless. Its a skirmish that could light the fuse on a party ready to explode with its contradictions.

Trump's Appeal is to Losers

According to Nate Cohn's article in the New York Times: "Trump's Strongest Supporter: A Certain Kind of Democrat" fits a familiar pattern of a map of the tendency toward racism by region, according to measures like the prevalence of Google searches for racial slurs and racist jokes, or scores on implicit association tests. But it’s not racism that is the defining characteristic of Trump's appeal, it’s losers in life.  Losers tend to shortcut analyses of circumstance with easy answers based on distrust, of which racism is a particularly virulent form. That Ted Cruz another winner in life, seeks this support is the height of hypocrisy.

G.O.P.: The Cake Eater's Party

From The Atlantic "Great Republican Revolt" by David Frum:  White Middle Americans express heavy mistrust of every institution in American society: not only government, but corporations, unions, even the political party they typically vote for—the Republican Party of Romney, Ryan, and McConnell, which they despise as a sad crew of weaklings and sellouts. They are pissed off.  Actually pissed off more because they are lied to about opportunity and being better off while the G.O.P. establishment is run by self serving tax dodgers worthy of Marie Antoinette's comment about the poor, "let them eat cake."

Ted Cruz's Carpet Bombing Campaign Incites More Jihadi Lone Wolves

Carpet bombing risks to population comes from ISIS's tactic to purposely mingle in urban areas so there will be collateral damage.  Indiscriminate bombing inflames the surviving innocents to seek and ask for vengeance against America.  On the other hand a dull back page strategy of containment and degradation draws less attention.

See "Utopia" for a break up of Syria and Iraq perspective

Republican's Anti Obama Stance Destroyed the Party

Ted Cruz is intelligent enough to understand that carpet bombing ISIS out of existence is not a foreign policy but to keep up with Donald Trump's bombast he says it anyway.  The G.O.P. promoted the lie despite all evidence to the contrary that Barack Obama is a failed Presidency and so it lost control of the narrative to the liars.