How Smart is Ted Cruz?

 Map of districts of so-called "suicide caucus"

From GQ's recent profile of the Texas Senator:

That may be a problem for Republicans, but not necessarily for Cruz. "We're in a moment when the combination of being hard-core and intelligent is really at a premium," says National Review writer Ramesh Ponnuru, who's been friends with Cruz since they went to Princeton together. "Because the two things that conservatives are tired of are politicians who sell out and politicians who embarrass them by not being able to make an account of themselves." In this arithmetic, Mitt Romney is the sellout and Sarah Palin is the embarrassment—and Cruz is the great new hope who brings the virtues of both without the liabilities of either.
And yet when it comes to policy, the man hailed as the "Tea Party intellectual" has deployed that powerful intellect only sparingly since arriving in Washington. Cruz's most ambitious proposal to date has been his call to abolish the IRS—something that, as one Cruz admirer lamented to me, "he's smart enough to know is an entirely cynical thing to do." Meanwhile, his effort to shut down the federal government (remember how well that worked out for the GOP the last time they tried it?) unless Obamacare is defunded prompted North Carolina Republican senator Richard Burr to call it "the dumbest idea I've ever heard." In multiple conversations with people who know Cruz well, I kept hearing the same refrain: "He's smart enough to know better."
Then again, maybe Cruz does know better. For a party in the midst of some serious soul-searching, Cruz offers a simple, reassuring solution: Forget the blather about demographic tidal waves and pleas for modernization; all Republicans need to do is return to their small-government, anti-tax fundamentals.

This is what really bothers me about these intelligent, but crazily ideological conservatives.  They seem to have such simplistic views about an extremely complex society of over 300 million people when their ideas wouldn't hold up in a society of 100 people.  How can so many extremely smart people buy into utterly idiotic ideas?  How can somebody like John Roberts believe that it is good for giant corporations to be allowed unlimited spending to influence elections?  How can somebody like Ted Cruz attack pollution control laws?  How can Paul Ryan propose getting rid of all taxes on unearned income?  I'd like to believe they are acting in good faith, but I just can't understand how they could be.

Then there are what I would call the "true believers," like Jim Jordan and Tim Huelskamp.  I keep wondering if they are really that dumb, or if they are pretty intelligent and acting in bad faith.  I tend to fall on the side that they are really that dumb.

In other words, I see the Republican party as a combination of really smart folks acting in bad faith, and really dumb folks who just don't know any better.  At this point, most of the real bomb throwers are the really dumb folks (most of the suicide caucus), and Ted Cruz is one of the few intelligent bomb throwers.  I really, really don't trust that fucker.