Ted Cruz Is a Nightmare

[Content Note: Carcerality; anti-immigrant sentiment.]

Republican candidate Ted Cruz continues to be super awesome:

Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz likes the thought of Hillary Rodham Clinton behind bars.

That's what the Texas senator suggested Monday when one of his supporters at a rally in Elko, Nevada, shouted that he should "put Hillary in jail" if he's elected in November.

Cruz paused, then responded, "With any luck, she'll be there already."

The capacity crowd cheered at the suggestion that the former secretary of state who's been dogged by questions about her private email use at the State Department should be locked up.

Cruz later added, "I am told the Democrats are opening up a new polling place at Leavenworth," a reference to the federal prison in Kansas.

Fuck. Off.

Meanwhile, presumably after he's done "putting Hillary in jail," Cruz is fixing to deport 11 million immigrants:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is taking a sharp rightward shift on immigrant policy, affirming that he would send law enforcement agents to knock on undocumented immigrants' doors and round them up for deportation, even if that means arresting them in front of their children.

Appearing on Fox News on Monday night, Cruz told Bill O'Reilly that's exactly what Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is intended to do. "We have law enforcement that looks for people who are violating the laws that apprehends and deports them," Cruz said.

O'Reilly pressed Cruz on the issue, detailing a specific situation that often engenders sympathy for the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States: A parent who has overstayed their visa and now lives in the country with several U.S.-born children. O'Reilly asked Cruz whether he would "send the feds to his house, take him out and put him back on a plane."

"You better believe it," Cruz replied.

Apart from the fact that this is aggressively indecent, it is also just flatly unfeasible. But Cruz doesn't give a shit. Being aggressively indecent is the whole point, and whether his heinous policy proposals are feasible is beside the point.

Feasibility and reasonableness and decency aren't useful when one's entire campaign is predicated on ginning up maximum outrage and exploiting hatred.