The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia shocked Ted Cruz into a sudden realization: It's even more important than before that Ted Cruz be our next president.
Because of the vacancy, he says, "the Second Amendment, life, marriage, religious liberty, every one of those hangs in the balance." He warns that "we cannot trust Donald Trump" with this responsibility.
We don't know what sort of person Trump would like for the court. But we do know what sort of person Cruz likes. And based on that knowledge, we can't trust Cruz — by Cruz's own standards.
Consider two judicial records that have elicited strong opinions from him. The first belongs to someone whose appointment he regards as "a mistake," who in one landmark case "changed the law in order to force that failed law on millions of Americans for a political outcome." The second belongs to a "principled conservative" known for "faithfully applying the Constitution and legal precedent."
You may conclude that the Texas senator has a sharp eye for the right kind of justice and the wrong kind. Not quite. Both his praise and his condemnation were in reference to the same person: John Roberts.
When Roberts was nominated in 2005, Cruz gushed. Today, he regards the chief justice, who had the gall to uphold Obamacare, as part of "an out-of-control court." Either Cruz was wrong before, or he's wrong now.
It could be that Cruz is not very good at detecting which Supreme Court prospects are principled conservatives. Or it could mean that he is good at picking them out — but clueless on what their approach will produce.
Maybe Roberts is not a conservative, or maybe a conservative path doesn't always lead where Cruz wants to go. It's hard to argue he's not a conservative: During the court's last term, Roberts voted with Scalia 90 percent of the time — almost as often as Clarence Thomas did.