What happened in Indiana is not likely to stay in Indiana.
Presidential campaigns are a genre of nonfiction. Here is how Donald Trump beat Ted Cruz in Indiana and became the GOP nominee. To appropriate the words of editorial titan Sean Coyne, it was a Big Idea. Trump’s Big Idea: Make America Great Again! Doubling down, Trump declared in his recent first major foreign policy speech:Our goal is peace and prosperity, not war and destruction.
In contrast, Ted Cruz focused on what Coyne calls building blocks. He commandeered delegates, announced a VP appointment, criticized a Trump endorser, attempted to paint Trump as a member of the elite, and so forth.
I’ve often praised Cruz for offering the best equitable prosperity platform among the candidates. I’ve chided him for turning that winning hand into a footnote. Since prosperity (along with peace) is the key issue in presidential politics submerging it was a mistake.
Going to the homepage of the Cruz campaign website, we are invited to “join the movement of courageous conservatives.” To get to “Jobs and Opportunity,” one of seven issues featured by Cruz, one must click on “Issues” and scroll through to the second-to-last item of a drop down menu.
Trump’s campaign website delivers us directly to a home page proclaiming Make AMERICA Great Again! Trump’s positions are collected under “Positions,” a more assertive category than Cruz’s “Issues.” Three of Trump’s seven positions are economic. They include repeal of Obamacare, which is missing from Cruz’s.
Ralph Benko, internationally published weekly columnist, co-author of The 21st Century Gold Standard, lead co-editor of the Gerald Malsbary translation from Latin to English of Copernicus’s Essay on Money, is American Principles Project’s Senior Advisor, Economics.
