After reading once again that Ted Cruz is too extreme to be elected president, I went to his website to determine wherein lies this purported extremism.

The bottom line is that Cruz’s positions are merely good common sense. In fact, they represent the minimum that is required if the American Republic is to survive.

Here is an outline of Cruz’s positions, in the order that the website presents them:

• Restore the Constitution and roll back the federal government to the functions the Constitution sets out and return power to the states and the people
• Defend the Second Amendment
• Secure the border, enforce the immigration laws, prevent any increase in legal immigration while unemployment remains high, and restore state authority to cope with immigration problems
• Rebuild our military and defend our national interests, and exert leadership on the international stage
• Stand with Israel
• Defend religious liberty and resist the pressure to make to non-religion into a compulsory national faith (and, in indirect language, oppose gay marriage and abortion)
• On the economic front: adopt a flat tax, embrace regulatory reform (including reining in EPA power grabs), repeal ObamaCare, use all our energy resources, support a stable dollar and a rules-based monetary regime, and protect Internet freedom
• Eliminate large swathes of the Federal government, including the IRS and the Departments of Energy, Education, Commerce, and HUD, along with other special-interest-based governmental units, and undertake a broad program of governmental reforms

The website contains much more detail, and specific examples of Cruz’s actions in each area.

Personally, I question a couple of things. On gay marriage, government benefits available to married couples should be available to same-sex couples via civil contracts, but the rite of marriage should be left to the churches. Abortion is a such a difficult moral problem that I am reluctant to make the choice for anyone else, so it should remain a right, but I approve of measures to ensure that the right is responsibly exercised, and no taxpayer should be forced to pay for abortion. But I certainly do not regard someone who holds a different position as “extreme.”

On other issues, one can quibble here and there, and add a “yes, but”, but the overall vision is one of a strong and proud society that relies on its people, its culture, and its civilization. There is ample room in this vision for lean, competent government, but not for the bloated, incompetent, and corrupt bodies that now exist.

Since the latest polls indicate that trust in government and faith in its competence is at a historic low, this looks like a winning position.

As for those who call this extremism – what would they define as moderation? Pursuing current bankrupt policies to their inevitable bitter end is not moderation but insanity.

James V DeLong is the author of: Ending ‘Big SIS’ (The Special Interest State) & Renewing the American Republic.