MY VIEW: It's Cruz, or the Second Amendment Is Toast (Part 3)

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Let me be very clear: Ted Cruz was not my first, second, or even third choice to be the Republican nominee for the 2016 Presidential election. I was hoping that a proven governor with a solid track record of leadership and economic growth and a sterling record of support for gun rights would survive the primaries, and unfortunately, that simply did not pan out.

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We’re now left with three candidates*: businessman/reality television star Donald Trump, Senator Marco Rubio, and Senator Ted Cruz.

As the editor of Bearing Arms and the primary administrator of the 2nd Amendment Supporters Facebook page, I am necessarily driven to examine the track records and claims of the these three viable candidates before we get any further into the race, and note how the nomination of these three men could impact the core natural right of self defense for 320 million American citizens.

On Ted Cruz

Earlier in the primary season, we had a wealth of strong Second Amendment supporters running for the Presidency. One by one they dropped out, but of the three remaining, only Senator Ted Cruz comes close to having the Second Amendment credentials of a true “gun nut” like Rick Perry or Rand Paul.

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It’s frankly odd to see so many people rallying around a big government-supporting crony capitalist like Donald Trump in the mistaken belief that he is the “anti-establishment candidate.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Trump is the face of everything people claim that they hate about politics in America, even bragging in debates about how he paid off candidates in both parties to get what he wanted in a naked proclamation of his belief in the corruption of “business as usual.”

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Ted Cruz, on the other hand, is hated by his peers in the establishment Senate GOP for refusing to be a “go along to get along” supporter of big government GOP policies.

Even noted milquetoast Lindsey Graham, who only recently joked about killing Cruz, is now admitting that backing Cruz is the best way to defeat an untrustworthy Trump and keep from losing the general election to Hillary Clinton.

For whatever animosity that Graham has against Cruz for being a maverick Senator unwilling to make nice with the establishment GOP, Graham is also an “gun nut” who knows that Cruz is the best option to defeat Trump in the GOP primaries, who can defeat Clinton in the general election, and who will be a rock-solid supporter of the Second Amendment when elected.

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Keep in mind that Trump is the only one of the three GOP candidates who loses to Clinton in the general election in November, and he will do so convincingly.

In comparison, Cruz has has closed with and overtaken anti-gun radical Democrat Hillary Clinton, and is poised to start pulling away if he can get to a head-to-head contest.

A small government conservative, Cruz and Cruz alone has the pedigree to make the longest lasting and most important decision our next President will make: selecting the replacement for recently passed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

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All the Marbles

The next President will likely have the opportunity to replace at least one more Justice beyond Scalia, and as many as three: Stephen Breyer (77), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (82), and moderate Anthony Kennedy (79) are all elderly and may be close to retiring, or passing on, as Justice Scalia recently did.

As Second Amendment supporters, it only makes sense to nominate a candidate that can win the general election in November (both Senator Rubio and Senator Cruz can; polls strongly suggest Trump cannot), and who is most likely to put a textualist judge on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Cruz is hands down the most qualified candidate to ever consider nominating a justice for the Supreme Court, having served a law clerk for Mike Luttig (a very influential textualist judge often compared to Justice Scalia) and Chief Justice William Rehnquist. He also authored 73 briefs and argued nine cases before the Supreme Court, all of those cases pushing for the textualist/constructionist views. He is also the author of the amicus brief 31 states signed on to in the landmark Heller case protecting our Second Amendment rights.

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We are unlikely to ever see a more pro-gun Presidential candidate in decades to come.

If Cruz is elected President, he would have the opportunity to appoint the strict constructionist judges we need to not just maintain our Second Amendment rights, but to roll back punitive gun laws that have gutted the right to bear arms in California, Connecticut, Maryland, New York, and elsewhere.

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If you have other interests driving your voting, then I’m not qualified to tell you how to vote.

It is crystal clear, however, that Senator Ted Cruz is our best bet for both defeating Hillary Clinton and rebuilding a Supreme Court that will help repeal many of this nation’s blatantly unconstitutional gun laws, and who most clearly has his heart and soul and record on the right to bear arms we can trust.

As a supporter of the right to bear arms, Ted Cruz is clearly our best option.

 

*With all due respect, John Kasich is not running for President, but for Vice President.

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