The time has come for even the most cynical of political observers to acknowledge that the overwhelming probability is that Donald Trump or Ted Cruz will be the GOP nominee this cycle. Twenty-six primaries and caucuses have been held, and Trump and Cruz combined have won all but three of them. They are both far ahead of Marco Rubio and John Kasich in the delegate count, as well as in most public opinion polls. The question now is what this means for the Republican Party and the nation as a whole.

First of all, some readers may be surprised that I’m treating Cruz as though he’s in the top tier right alongside his billionaire rival. After all, Trump has won fourteen states to Cruz’s nine and is approximately a hundred delegates ahead of the Texan. However, these numbers tell only half the story. Trump has the highest negatives of any candidate in the race, meaning that the more the race narrows the worse he will do. The business mogul loves to talk about how he will gain votes as other candidates drop out, but the numbers say that Cruz will benefit much more. Barring an upset in Florida on Tuesday, Rubio will soon be out of the race. John Kasich is already mostly an afterthought, and losing his home state of Ohio on Tuesday would spell the end of his campaign (although I do think he has a better chance of winning there than the polls show). Ted Cruz will scoop up most of Rubio’s and Kasich’s supporters when they exit the race. That is why Cruz should be taken so seriously despite his current deficit in the delegate count.

This analysis may sound like a wishful attempt to dismiss Trump’s dominant lead thus far, but it is not. In an article published more than seven months ago, I wrote that “unlike most political observers in this country, I believe that the real estate mogul’s support within the GOP is both real and sustainable.” Long before most political analysts even entertained the possibility that Trump could actually win, I acknowledged that he could. So this analysis is not some desperate attempt to explain how Trump could possibly lose. The fact is that it’s entirely possible that Cruz will defeat him.

That said, the real question right now is whether either of these candidates is worth voting for in the primary- or even in the general. Trump and Cruz are the only two candidates whom I wrote articles against when they first declared their campaigns, and that’s out of the seventeen Republicans who ran for president this cycle. My perspective has not changed. Cruz is still inexperienced, unpresidential, and unwilling or unable to work with others to get things done. He has flip-flopped on issues ranging from immigration to ethanol subsidies and has failed at literally every crusade he has waged while in the Senate. In addition, he struggles against Hillary Clinton in general election matchup polls, while Rubio and Kasich handily defeat her on a consistent basis. He is a weak legislator and a weak candidate, and in all likelihood be would be just as ineffective in the Oval Office as he’s been in the Senate.

But none of this is news. Cruz has always been far from the first choice of anyone who is serious about electing a stable, successful conservative president. Likewise, he is not the candidate of choice for those who are serious about defeating Hillary in November. However, electing Cruz would be better than putting another liberal Democrat in the Oval Office. An ineffective and somewhat clownish conservative obstructionist is better than a liberal who can get (the wrong) things done. Are some of his foreign policy statements ridiculous and uninformed? Yes, “carpet bombing” in the Middle East is immoral and would not destroy ISIS. But it’s also something that a President Cruz would not actually be able to do, because it’s illegal. On judicial issues as well, Cruz’s calls to disregard certain Supreme Court decisions are just political hot air. Fortunately, there is nothing Cruz can do as president to undermine the Supreme Court’s authority as the final say on matters of constitutionality. Regardless of whether you agree with any given Supreme Court decision, it is a good thing that the president’s power is checked by the judicial system. So despite some of Cruz’s unprofessional and ill-informed rhetoric, ultimately the damage he could do is severely limited. As a conservative, I would definitely rather see him in the Oval Office than Hillary Clinton.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. If he is the nominee, it will not be a case of an unqualified conservative squaring off against a somewhat competent liberal. That’s because Donald Trump is the very farthest thing from a conservative. Ted Cruz frequently references the “mushy middle,” a derogatory title for fellow conservatives who don’t always agree with his tactics. But it is Donald Trump who is actually in the mushy middle of politics on issue after issue. First of all, Trump is the only candidate in the Republican primary who has donated money to Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He helped cause the passage of Obamacare by donating to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2008. Donald Trump has called for an assault weapons ban, an unconstitutional infringement on the Second Amendment. He has written in favor of Partial Birth Abortions, a horrid procedure to terminate late-term pregnancies which was outlawed in 2003 with bipartisan support. The billionaire has also spoken and written in the support of single-payer health care, a socialist concept which is the system of choice in communist countries. This is all not to mention his frequent abuse of eminent domain, including forcing a widow out of her home so he could build a private parking lot. In addition, Trump’s recent assertion that he will be a “neutral” arbiter between Israel and the sponsors of terrorism, and his subsequent refusal to back off of that statement, should scare anyone who cares about Israel’s security. Donald Trump is the farthest thing from a conservative.

In addition, The Donald is wholly unprepared to be president. Besides for his frequent use of profanity and his penchant for misogyny, Donald Trump simply lacks the experience necessary to occupy the highest office in the land. There is nothing- absolutely nothing- that makes Donald Trump more qualified to be president than any other seventy-year-old in the country. Running a business, as impressive as Trump’s is, does not prepare one to lead this country. It doesn’t prepare you for tough foreign policy decisions- or even simple ones. This lack of policy depth might lead one to praise maniacal dictators like Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, as Trump has done. Business experience also doesn’t teach you the inner workings of government. And it doesn’t prepare you to be the inspirer-in-chief of a nation, as evidenced by Trump’s schoolyard-bully temperament and his frequent hateful speech.

Finally, Donald Trump is simply dishonest. Putting aside all the lies he has spread about his past, trying to cover up his record of liberal advocacy, Donald Trump is quite simply a con man. The students at “Trump University,” a sham business school he set up to swindle middle-class people out of their hard-earned money, know this better than anyone. Just as Trump has manipulated and lied to others throughout his career, he is now trying to con his way to the presidency. He peddles a false narrative about a broken country and the need to “make America great again.” But I have news for Mr. Trump: America never stopped being great. We still have the bravest fighting forces in the world. Our resilient economy is slowly (granted, too slowly) healing from the Great Recession. And most importantly, the relationships between different communities are stronger than the media and pop culture would have you believe. America has always been great, and it remains so today. If we want to keep it that way, Donald Trump is the very last thing we need.

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