• by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, April 12, 2016

Amid a raucous GOP primary co-opted by billionaire Donald Trump, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has impressively maneuvered his campaign into striking distance of the Republican nomination.

Considering Trump’s substantial disapproval numbers, even within the Republican party, Cruz is positioning himself as the candidate who can bring the party back together. While the Texas Sen. may be more palatable than Trump to some GOP voters, the extreme conservatism espoused by Cruz should be cause for pause.

Cruz’s candidacy toes the line between being more establishment than Trump, while remaining anti-establishment enough to keep true to his grassroots/Tea Party support. If he is the candidate mainstream GOP voters eventually pick, the Republican party will have jolted miles to the right.

Politico wrote that if Cruz were to win the nomination, he would fall further to the right than ultra-conservative Barry Goldwater, who argued against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, using the excuse of states’ rights. The reactionary tendency of Cruz must be taken seriously, as his party becomes more extreme.

Take abortion, for example.

George Bush 43, John McCain and Mitt Romney had conservative stances on abortion, but made exceptions in cases of rape and incest. Ted Cruz does not deem those situations important enough to override the rights of the unborn child.

Incredibly, Cruz is in favor of returning to the Gold Standard, a concept that was relegated to history books after the Great Depression. Doing so would have disastrous effects on the global economy and proponents of such a plan are considered completely beyond the mainstream.

Anil Kashyap of the University of Chicago explains, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, that “Love for the gold standard implies macroeconomic illiteracy.”

On the international front, Cruz said of ISIL: “We will carpet-bomb them into oblivion. I don’t know if sand can glow in the dark, but we’re going to find out!”

For a former U.S. Supreme Court clerk, Cruz is strangely more ideologically than factually inclined.

To round out the conservative extremism embraced by the Cruz campaign, and by association a significant portion of the GOP establishment, the Texas Sen. has called climate change “pseudoscientific theory.”

Adding in his positions on tax policy, civil liberties and foreign policy, Cruz is a potential nominee as dangerous to the country, and to the Republican party, as Donald Trump.

Veteran Republican policy expert Peter Wehner explains that the real question we should be asking about Cruz is whether “he [is] creative enough to adjust to the changing times and changing demographics?”

As of yet, he sounds unwilling to do so. Moreover, his central electability argument revolves around the assumption that GOP failures over the past decade were caused by nominees who were not conservative enough.

That calculation may find success in the Republican primary contest. However, it’s doubtful such extreme conservative positions could win over sufficient Independents to succeed in a general election.