Cruz Control

An article in the LA Times this morning highlights the importance of Heidi Cruz to her husband's presidential campaign, and reading it made me curious about the woman who married Ted Cruz. Without a doubt, Heidi Cruz is an attractive, intelligent, and accomplished woman who would seem to be the ideal political spouse. And she has indeed been a huge asset, acting in the role of Ted's "better half". It almost goes without saying that convincing women to support Ted Cruz would be a very tough sell, and that is where Heidi comes in. The thinking being that if Ted could land a woman like Heidi Nelson, he can't be all that bad. Unfortunately, on issues that are important to women, he is indeed all that bad.

And, as Cruz has recently learned, utilizing his wife in his campaign has provided Donald Trump with an opening, and he didn't hesitate to exploit it. Heidi Cruz is an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, and her employer provided the no-interest loans that Ted used to finance his 2012 Senate run. It appears that Cruz took pains to hide the source of that money by not disclosing the loans as required by campaign laws. Trump immediately pounced by tweeting that Cruz is "in bed with Goldman Sachs". Heidi is currently taking a leave-of-absence from her job to work on her husband's presidential campaign.

Cruz's problem with this goes deeper than just a simple filing error, which is what his campaign has been trying to argue. He has been trying to run as a populist, but these Goldman Sachs revelations are making a mockery of his efforts. And the fact that Cruz's hypocrisy is being called out by a defiantly unapologetic billionaire does does not seem to be mitigating the damage to the Cruz brand. As we have seen time and again during this presidential campaign cycle, there are two sets of rules. One for Donald Trump, and another for everyone else. Over the course of his utterly bizarre campaign, Trump has managed to turn the conventional wisdom completely upside down.

 Like Ted Cruz, Donald Trump also has an attractive spouse and a photogenic family. However, the similarities end right there. Because while Heidi Cruz is a conventionally attractive women, Melania Trump could more accurately be described as perhaps "exotic". She also happens to be Trump's third wife, and his impressive brood of children are the products of those three marriages. Melania is a retired supermodel, who has left a rather extensive portfolio of photographs that show her practically naked. One could easily be forgiven for assuming that would be a deal-killer for evangelical voters. Why on earth would they vote for a thrice-married New Yorker, who cannot even plausibly fake being religious, over the son of an evangelical preacher? I simply don't have an answer for that.