Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

When Ted Cruz first announced his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States, I was thrilled. At the time, all I really knew about Ted Cruz, is that he was a firebrand Senator from Texas, who had a very admirable resume. He had argued numerous cases before the Supreme Court of the United States, and been the law clerk for William Rehnquist, Chief Justice of the United States, and had served his home state as Solicitor General with distinction. I knew that he was a Christian and a Conservative.

So, Ted was my first choice as a candidate for the Republican Party. Then along came Donald J Trump. No, Trump did not automatically become my first choice. I was watching with great interest the impact that his candidacy was having on the entire political process, and was absolutely loving it. The self anointed political aristocracy was going stark raving mad. The GOP Establishment had betrayed their base (Which included me) over and over and over again for decades, and their betrayals were becoming more blatant and in our face with each passing betrayal. Trump was making them gnash their teeth and pee all over themselves.

Yet, despite how much I was enjoying watching the GOP Establishment set their hair on fire over Donald Trump, I was hoping that Trump was clearing a path for Ted Cruz.

Then came Iowa. Ted did something that shocked me to my core, something that revolted me. It wasn’t one thing, it was actually two. I found those two particular acts utterly revolting. First his campaign staff sent out a flier very specifically designed to look just like a Department of Elections notice that threatened to disqualify primary election voting right to individuals and expose their voting record, if they did not vote for Ted Cruz. Then his campaign staff wilfully and intentional spread the false rumour that Ben Carson was cancelling his campaign and withdrawing from the race.

In short, Ted Cruz made himself, or his campaign staff made him look like an amoral win at any cost sleazy lawyer. There is absolutely nothing even remotely either Conservative nor Christian about embracing and adhering to the ideology that “The End Justifies the Means”. The ideology that “The End Justifies the Means” is as diametrically opposed to the moral and ethical values of both Christianity and Conservatism as it is possible to be.

That is when I took my first step back from Ted Cruz. I still was considering that perhaps Ted Cruz as Donald Trump’s Vice President would be a good Conservative remedy to the current corruption that has engulfed Mordor on the Potomac. Perhaps, after all, it wasn’t Ted Cruz who had masterminded those two utterly repugnant acts. Perhaps those were unauthorized actions taken by members of his campaign staff.

Then came this.

Cruz says Drudge to blame for email claiming Rubio quitting

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz sought to explain away a supporter’s decision to spread rumours of Marco Rubio’s exit from the 2016 race by blaming the Drudge Report website.

In an interview with Fox News personality Megyn Kelly that aired on Wednesday, Cruz said an email casting doubt on Rubio’s viability came from a volunteer in Hawaii that is not affiliated with his presidential campaign. “Our legal counsel sent them a letter saying take that email down [that] one volunteer sent out. And by the way, they forwarded a CNN story that was the lead story on Drudge is what the volunteer did,” Cruz said.

“[We asked] them to take it down anyway, why? Because we knew that other campaigns would seek to try to attack my integrity because a volunteer forwards a story that’s the lead story on Drudge to other voters. And we knew that reporters would do what you’re doing, which is ask, ‘Doesn’t this prove you’re unethical that voters are forwarding links to news stories?'”

Kelly protested that she did not phrase the question in that way, and Cruz was shown replying that he has “no idea” if the news of Rubio’s demise is true or false.”This is the way politics is played. Where if you have a campaign, the Rubio campaign, they don’t want to focus on the issues, they want to talk about Donald’s hands,” Cruz continued. “How about focusing on how we solve the problems in this country?”

When his campaign staff knowingly and wilfully spread the exact same rumour about Ben Carson, Ted Cruz did the exact same thing, which is to say, instead of accepting responsibility for what his campaign staff had done, he tried to blame CNN.

Sorry Ted, do something once, and it might be considered an accident, do the exact same thing twice, and it is evidence of a pattern of behaviour. In this case, it is clearly an indication that you and your campaign staff 100 percent subscribe to the ideological maxim that “The End Justifies the Means”. The ideology that “The End Justifies the Means” is neither Christian nor Conservative, and I for one cannot support anyone who I believe subscribes to that ideology.