You support conservatism, But the most conservative candidate of the entire list was Cruz, and he was the bottom of choices?. Hmmmmm.....
Cruz lost me with his tactical and strategic incompetence in the 2013 Obamacare shutdown fight.
It was a fight at the wrong time, on the wrong issue, and with insufficient resources.
How many times did Harry Reid circular-file legislation when Democrats had the Senate majority? Did anyone seriously think he was going to allow a vote to defund Obamacare?
You can talk your principles all you want, but Cruz would have lost in a landslide with his proven tactical and strategic incompetence. The wages of that would have been an army of Lois Lerners suppressing conservative speech while a Merrick Garland Supreme Court invented "constitutional rights" for every left-wing agenda item under the sun. The wages Barry Goldwater's tactical and strategic incompetence was mere bankruptcy from an entitlement state that LBJ had the popular mandate for.
Sorry if I wasn't eager to join your quest to commit suicide.