Cynthia M. Allen: Getting ready to lose with Cruz

I recently saw a political cartoon that quite accurately portrays the way many Americans seem to feel about the 2016 election cycle.

The cartoon depicts a voter poking his head out of the voting booth to question an election official passing by.

“I don’t see my candidate,” he says. “I call him ‘Lesser of Two Evils.’ ”

For many voters in both parties, the trip to the voting booth this primary season is becoming an exercise in self-control – as in keeping one’s stomach from lurching when beginning to select a presidential candidate.

At this stage in the game, there are no good choices – there are just choices that induce varying degrees of disgust.

On the Democratic side, we have an aging socialist and a woman under FBI investigation.

The Republicans offer a vulgar reality TV star who plays to our basest impulses and a self-absorbed climber who is almost universally disliked by his peers.

For Republicans who find the two leading GOP contenders – Donald Trump and Ted Cruz – equally distasteful, determining exactly who might serve as the lesser evil is a maddening decision, especially when considering the likelihood of that candidate winning the general election.

I, for one, even have been considering for the first time in my voting life the possibility of voting down ballot in the general election, contingent on the outcome of the primary season.

Sometimes abstinence feels like the least of the available evils.

But there is still time for new twists and turns in this most unusual of election cycles.

While conventional thinking might suggest that Trump will be crowned the GOP primary victor before the party’s July convention, there is still a possibility he does not earn the 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination on the first ballot.

A contested convention leaves open the chance that Cruz or even another candidate – although that’s improbable – could garner the support needed to take the prize.

And so, like many of my fellow conservatives, I am slowly and begrudgingly arriving at the conclusion that, assuming it is still possible, Cruz as the GOP nominee would be the lesser of the two evils.

To be sure, Texas’ junior senator has more than earned his terrible reputation as an arrogant self-promoter who will stop at nothing to ensure his own victory.

His performance on the campaign trail, particularly his attacks on Sen. Marco Rubio and his campaign’s alleged mischief in Iowa, illustrates that.

His “fight the establishment” mantra and his refusal to cooperate in any real way with his congressional colleagues – even those in his party – have deservedly engendered the kind of disdain seldom seen in Washington.

Former House Speaker John Boehner told a California audience this week that Cruz is “Lucifer in the flesh.”

Of course that’s an exaggeration. But then again.

Still, like the sitting president, Cruz is a constitutional lawyer – and a brilliant one at that.

He has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court nine times, and depending on your perspective, has been victorious more often than not.

His love for the Constitution and his commitment to it are difficult to dispute, and his promise to nominate conservative justices to the high court is reassuring.

Unlike his primary contender, Cruz has been a stalwart conservative – sometimes to his own detriment or that of his party – unwavering in his devotion to the causes and principles the Republican Party purports to value and seeks to uphold.

And while his long-winded speech introducing Carly Fiorina as his would-be running mate was at times a nauseating and counterproductive display of self-importance, his vice presidential selection is laudable and smart.

Indeed, Cruz may have few attributes to recommend him, but that’s a few more than his primary opponent. And in the most bizarre election cycle in recent history, that tips the scale.

So, count me in as someone who is prepared to lose with Cruz.

And, who knows, if lightning strikes and the email scandal produces charges against Hillary Clinton or her inner circle, maybe we end up with Cruz in the White House despite the GOP’s best efforts to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Cynthia M. Allen is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.