If I could just take any candidate and make them president, I would choose Cruz. He is the smartest and most principled conservative on the stage.
what metric are you working with here? he definitely thinks he is smarter than you, me and everybody, but is there any data that supports this? i think he might be a dunning-kruger domer.
Dumb people don't clerk for the supreme court.
Correct. But smart people don't clerk for the Supreme Court, either.
Really smart people do.
The libtards will disagree with Cruz's ideology, just as I would disagree with that of the liberal SC Justices and their clerks, but I would not disagree that they are really, really smart people. Cruz was also a debate champion at Princeton. He then became the Solicitor General for the State of Texas (the guy who argues before the Supreme Court) before becoming a Senator at the age of 42.
So yes, he is the smartest person in the GOP field. That's doesn't make him likable or electable - his lack of warmth, physical appearance, and tone of voice when speechifying are major weaknesses - but it sure doesn't mean he's dumb or a sociopath. Good grief.