Newsletter: Why nominate Ted Cruz? Because he isn’t Donald Trump

Good morning. I'm Paul Thornton, The Times' letters editor, and it is Saturday, April 16. There are only 205 days until election day, so let's resume the conversation on presidential politics in earnest.

Neither you nor I am Donald Trump. The same can be said for almost everyone. Ted Cruz is not Donald Trump, but in his case, that might be enough for the Republican Party to nominate him for president.

In his most recent weekly L.A. Times column, Jonah Goldberg once again bears the #NeverTrump standard and writes of the GOP's growing acceptance of Cruz, so unloved as he is by members of his own party, as an alternative to delegate-leader Trump. Goldberg has this to say about the Republicans "falling in like" with Cruz:

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) used to say choosing between Donald Trump and Cruz was like choosing between being shot or poisoned. Graham chose his poison. He's out there raising money for Cruz. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), whose hatred for Cruz was the stuff of Sicilian blood feuds, seems to have reconciled himself to the fact that Cruz is the only person who can stop Trump. McConnell's definitely not in love, but he recognizes that these are the cards we've all been dealt.

Team Cruz fears that people like McConnell will use the convention in Cleveland this summer to reshuffle the deck and get a new deal — a new candidate more palatable to the establishment. “There is still distrust over whether or not the party is actually willing to accept Cruz as the nominee or if they're using him to shut down Trump only to then stab Cruz in the back come summer,” Erick Erickson, a conservative talk show host and Cruz backer, told the Washington Post.

The concern is understandable, but overblown. Although a contested election is likely, the “white knight” scenario is not. ...

The most likely scenario is that should Trump lose on the first ballot, Cruz will win on the second or third. In fact, some see a path where Cruz cobbles together his delegates, unbound delegates and, say, Marco Rubio's delegates and wins on the first ballot. He's that good at working the system.

There's some irony here, of course. Cruz spent years building his reputation as the guy who wants to tear down the system, and now it's the system, not necessarily the voters, that may put him over the top.

Nervous Republicans should find this reassuring. Yes, in a normal year, failure to win a majority of votes in the primaries would present a serious PR problem. But this isn't a normal year. Meanwhile, Cruz is demonstrating, yet again, his ability to do what is required to win. That's a skill set that will be much needed come the fall.

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If you don't eat at Applebee's, watch TV or drink cheap domestic beer, you're probably shocked by Trump's rise. That's because you might be living in a bubble, far away from the folks whose anger has buoyed the Republican front-runner, writes columnist Meghan Daum. She concludes: "As we're seeing in this campaign season, we lose touch with a wider reality at our peril. Finding a community of likeminded, forward-thinking enlightened souls is great. Never watching shows like 'Scandal' or 'The Voice' is perfectly acceptable. But forgetting there's a bigger world out there — one in which people feel so forgotten by the establishment that they'd vote for someone like Trump — is the opposite of enlightened." L.A. Times

On the other side, things don't look good delegate-wise for Bernie Sanders. But that's OK. Columnist Doyle McManus writes that defeat in the Democratic Party won't end the Sanders revolution, an outcome that the Vermont senator himself discusses openly: "If Clinton wins the nomination, Sanders has said he will endorse her and urge his supporters to vote for the Democratic ticket. But he will also try to turn his campaign into a more durable movement to move the Democratic Party to the left." L.A. Times

No sane judge would pass President Sanders' litmus test for the Supreme Court. Republicans who insist that potential justices commit to overturning Roe vs. Wade are wrong, and so is Sanders for pledging to vet court nominees based on their willingness to overturn the Citizens United case. Michael McGough writes: "There's a big difference between choosing a nominee you suspect might share your views about Roe vs. Wade or Citizens United and demanding a promise that the nominee would vote to reverse a ruling. The latter approach is not just politically stupid; it undermines the independence of the judiciary." L.A. Times

Be a good patriot and ask for a more powerful IRS. Tax day is right around the corner and now is probably not the time most of us would think to say thanks to the federal bureaucracy responsible for collecting a sizable portion of our income, among other things. But the reviled IRS has had an increasingly difficult time ensuring that all Americans are paying their citizenship dues, something Alexander Hamilton called the "vital principle of the body politic." L.A. Times

Rules that protect veteran teachers aren't optimal, but that doesn't make them unconstitutional. The laws on teacher tenure, which education reformers say illegally harm California's public school students, ought to be changed — but that's the job of state legislators, not the courts. That's why a state appeals court made the right call in overturning a lower court ruling in the Vergara case that had invalidated teacher tenure rules, says The Times' editorial board. L.A. Times

Send me feedback: paul.thornton@latimes.com