He was in the House of Representative for 18 years, six of them as chairman of the House Budget Committee.
Aha!
But this is the ‘sell me on Cruz’ thread.
Going by his wikipedia page, he doesn’t seem so bad to me (relative to most of the other candidates):
“Cruz opposes the legalization of marijuana, but believes it should be decided at the state level.”
Better than most, other than Bernie Sanders
“Cruz advocates for a 500% increase (from 65,000 to 325,000 annually) in skilled foreign workers entering the United States using H-1B visas.”
Possibly better than all other candidates.
“He believes that marriage should be legally defined as only “between one man and one woman,”[148] but believes that the legality of same-sex marriage should be left to each state to decide.”
Not great, but better than Obama in 2008.
“Cruz has been described by the Cato Institute’s Center for Trade Policy Studies as a “free trader”[162] and as a “free-trade advocate” by the Wall Street Journal.”
Better than most. (Assuming here that the hypothetical moderate agrees with economists that free-trade is good.)
“Cruz disagrees with scientific opinion on climate change.”
Not good.
"On abortion, Cruz is “strongly pro-life” and “would allow the procedure only when a pregnancy endangers the mother’s life”
Im not quite sure if he wants to leave it to the states, or support a federal ban. Both are not good, but a federal ban is definitely worse.
Fast forward four years:
“Man. I miss the days when I was worried about Donald Trump getting the nomination.”
Why do so many people take an instant dislike to Ted Cruz? Because it saves time: Opinion | Anyone but Ted Cruz - The New York Times
The optics aren’t good, either: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-vDks99H7nrI/Uh2iT-vua-I/AAAAAAAAEtM/oIZLI4G2Ulk/s1600/Cruz+Combined.jpg
I don’t know if he would immediately try to get gay marriage outlawed in the US, but I do know that he would do his best to chip away at gay rights in many other ways. He is one of the candidates who has pledged to pass the “First Amendment Defense Act” in his first 100 days as president, a bill that would allow businesses and individuals to discriminate against gay people (and basically anyone who has sex outside of a heterosexual marriage) because of religious liberty. Here’s what FADA says:
Here’s a good article summing up what could be the consequences of FADA:
Cruz has also been getting endorsements from anti-gay groups, like NOM and The FAMiLY Leader. And Cruz had a rally recently where Phil Robertson from Duck Dynasty called gay marriage evil and wicked, which Cruz didn’t comment on. So he’s definitely playing strongly to the anti-gay crowd.
[The Human Rights Campaign has a good summary of his views and history regarding gay rights, and it’s far from moderate](Pledged to introduce Federal Constitutional Amendment opposing marriage equality). He might be the most extreme in opposition to gay rights of the people still running, now that Huckabee has dropped out.
Cruz isn’t actually asking for moderate America to vote for him. He’s basically a Tea Party guy - who believes that a real conservative will win the Presidency because most Americans are really conservatives and didn’t bother to come out to vote when moderates like John McCain and Mitt Romney were the GOP standard bearers.
In addition, he’ll play up to the anti-Obama sentiment (Obama has a higher unfavorability to favorability rating, so it’s not all that crazy to try that tact).
It depends on who you ask 
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html
For the same time period as Gallup’s poll, Rasmussen had it at 47 approval, 52 disapproval.
I was listening to CSPAN (which IMHO is generally very good at being pretty impartial) and they were doing a post mortem of the Iowa caucuses. They spent a lot of time on Trump, Cruz, Rubio, and “the also rans” (specifically Kasich, Christie and Bush). No mention of the fourth place finisher Carson. The media seems determined to ignore him. I’m not a fan of his but ISTM that he and his supporters are getting shortchanged.
Cruz would be ok on a few things but probably pretty bad on war, government spending, and possibly even taxes (has proposed a VAT).
He’s the only free trade Republican with a shot at the nomination, and if he faces Hillary, which is likely, he would be the “peace” candidate.
Currently the biggest threats for a moderate American are the threats Trump and Sanders present to free trade. Hillary would be for managed trade like Obama. Which is a mixed bag.
I seem to remember something about carpet bombing and seeing if the sand will glow.
Any Pub but Paul would be, and Paul just dropped out.
One thing I’ve not seen mentioned in this thread attempting to persuade a moderate is any mention of Cruz’s tax plan. It’s pretty radical, and pretty conservative, but everything I’ve read about it has been positive. And if enacted, it will actually impact you, American taxpayer. You will have more after tax income.
Cruz definitely has views that I strongly disagree with, namely gay rights, but I don’t think he’ll do anything of consequence about it.
But that would come with an immediate rise in the cost of living. The Fortune article I read does a back of the envelope estimate of an increase in 12% for all goods. There’s also the fact that it decreases government revenue by quite a bit, so it would require immediate spending cuts to not exacerbate the deficit/debt. Maybe that’s ok for a moderate but I am not sure you can count on congress to make this all work.
We should always assume that any GOP plan that reduces government revenues is a part of their long-term strategy to run up the debt to the point we are forced to abandon Social Security and/or Medicare. I can’t see how that is good for Americans, except maybe the wealthiest.
Cruz policy fail.
I’m not a huge fan of Cruz’s, but he does have quite a few positives going for him:
Aside from Rand Paul, he’s probably the most libertarian-leaning of all the Republican candidates. He’s probably got a better chance of getting a handle on corporate cronyism, which he hates, than any other candidate on any either side of the aisle. Hillary is owned by Wall Street, Sanders would likely be ineffective, so if you want something done about corporations twisting the law and the government to their benefit, Cruz might be the guy (if anyone is, and that’s debatable).
He’s a strong constitutionalist, which means he won’t become the Republican version of Obama and try to expand the imperial presidency. With all the precedents Obama has been trying to set regarding Presidential power, moderates should be worried about someone like Donald Trump taking that ball and trying to move it even further down the field, except this time with right-wing policies.
He’s very smart. Undoubtedly the smartest person running for office on either side right now. He was a national debate champion, and would more than hold his own when negotiating with other leaders around the world.
He’s an excellent lawyer who has presented before the Supreme Court nine times. He was the Texas solicitor general. Interestingly, when Texas’s anti-sodomy laws were struck down, Cruz refused to defend them at the Supreme court. So maybe he’s not quite so harsh on gay rights as his current rhetoric in the bible belt would suggest. It’s always hard to know where people stand on this issue in a political season. Does anyone really believe that Obama and Hillary were against gay marriage in 2008, even though they said so on the campaign trail?
He has a pretty wide range of experience in government. Aside from being Solicitor General in Texas and a current Senator, he was a policy advisor in the Bush administration, and an associate deputy attorney general.
He’s pretty good but not perfect on civil liberties. He drafted a bill to stop extra-judicial killing of Americans with drones. He has opposed a lot of ‘big data’ surveillance, and wanted to amend the Patriot Act to strengthen civil liberty protections in it.
Where his beliefs conflict with civil liberty (gay marriage, pot legalization), he defers the issue back to the states, which IMO is acceptable.
And… other Republicans hate him. So you’ve got that going for you.
He’s probably not as repugnant and misanthropic as he seems; it’s just that his upper lip smells like a ripe restaurant dumpster.
Are you certain there’s no phrase you could have used that would be less clunky than ‘the Republican version of Obama’ regarding the concept of the Imperial Presidency?
https://www.google.com/search?q=bush+imperial+presidency&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8