Trump and Cruz Reach New Lows

How repugnant is Donald Trump? Here's a quote about Trump from conservative pundit David Brooks from a discussion on PBS News Hour.  

It’s just mind-boggling. And we have sort of become acculturated, because this campaign has been so ugly. We have become acculturated to sleaze and unhappiness that you just want to shower from every 15 minutes.
The Trump comparison of the looks of the wives, he does have, over the course of his life, a consistent misogynistic view of women as arm candy, as pieces of meat. It’s a consistent attitude toward women which is the stuff of a diseased adolescent.
And so we have seen a bit of that show up again. But if you go back over his past, calling into radio shows bragging about his affairs, talking about his sex life in public, he is childish in his immaturity. And his — even his misogyny is a childish misogyny.
And that’s why I do not think Republicans, standard Republicans, can say, yes, I’m going to vote for this guy because he’s our nominee. He’s of a different order than your normal candidate. And this whole week is just another reminder of that.

And how feckless is Ted Cruz? Responding to Trump ridiculing the looks of his wife, Cruz said he was angry and told the Donald to "leave Heidi alone." He rightly called the mogul a "sniveling coward" and "sleazy Donald." So far, so good. But then when a reporter asked him if that meant he would not support or vote for Trump if he were the Republican nominee, Cruz dodged the question by saying he didn't think Trump would be the nominee. Asked again, he again dodged. That's been the central dilemma of the anti-Trumps all along. Even if they have the guts to call him a scumbag, they know they'll need his racist, misogynist, xenophobic supporters to win if they manage to wrest the GOP nomination from him, and they don't want to alienate them. That means, of course, that candidates like Cruz play into Trump's narrative (they're all weak) when they then don't stand up and say, no I won't vote for a sleazy, sniveling coward. Cruz is either admitting that his critique is hyperbole or that he doesn't have the guts to say no to a "diseased adolescent," as Brooks put it. The spectacle becomes tawdrier by the day. Does anyone really think either of these two is fit to be president or could win a national political election?