The American mainstream media, the Republican Party establishment and the Democratic Party are determined that Ted Cruz not be sworn in as the 45th president.

Anyone with that opposition must be formidable.

That he is. Campaigning against Federal ethanol subsidies in Iowa, a major corn producing state, and against all poll predictions, Cruz defeated the media’s favourite, Donald Trump, receiving more votes than any Republican candidate ever had. Cruz is the candidate most motivated by his attachment to traditional American principles. For his opponents, these are principles to which lip service only should be accorded these days. But the principles under which a Cruz administration would operate are the very ones on which the American Republic was founded.

Cruz does not merely mouth the proposition that all men have been endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, he lives by this. As Texas Solicitor General he had been one of America’s most successful public constitutional lawyers, with a string of successes in the Supreme Court. Having memorised it while still a schoolboy, the Constitution remains his guide to the good governance of the Union. By this he means the Constitution according to the original intention of the Founding Fathers, not that fictional ‘living organism’ which is the tool of activist judges who claim it means whatever they want it to mean.

Under President Cruz, Washington will no longer be the feared leviathan, the states will be restored to their rightful place in the constellation, the nation’s Judeo-Christian values will again be respected and the people will regain the full array of economic and political rights to which they are entitled under the Constitution, without the burdens of socialist regulation, endlessly growing public debt and heavy taxation.

The leading conservative commentator Glenn Beck recently endorsed Ted Cruz through his influential conservative radio and TV network, TheBlaze. Declaring 2016 as one of the most important elections in US history, he puts this on a par with that in 1980 which put Ronald Reagan in the White House, allowing him to restore the US to the leadership of the West after years of decline and defeat. Beck is unusual among commentators and media moguls – he is a political philosopher of some considerable depth. Another prominent conservative commentator, thinker and prolific author, former Reagan lawyer, Mark Levin, also identifies the crucial need for the next president to restore America as a constitutional republic.

Australians should not underestimate this election − it is as important for us as it is to Americans. The USA is not only by far our most important ally, she is, with the United Kingdom (and of course New Zealand and Canada) the country closest to us politically, culturally and in the crucial area of defence, including the sharing of intelligence. In addition, America remains exceptional not only in her economic and military strength but for the example of the economic and political freedom she allows and encourages.

Until the takeover of the Democrats by the socialists − Obama merely led the way for Bernie Sanders − the US was distinguished by a bipartisan reluctance to follow the Europeans down their sterile paths of welfare dependence, state socialism, nanny state regulation and their latest and their most dangerous indulgence, open borders. A Cruz administration would be a shining example of how to set a people free from that suicidal spiral politicians everywhere seek to impose by dispensing welfare to those who do not need it, especially welfare immigrants, while simultaneously burdening an ever decreasing band of producers and workers with the twin evils of heavy taxation and out-of-control debt.

Unless reversed by exceptional statesmen like Cruz, these spirals are inevitably doomed to collapse under their own weight, followed by terrible breakdowns in civil society.

In the meantime, as the Americans proceed to select their presidential candidates, Australians should learn from seeing how they do this. The process is admittedly time consuming and slow, but it is above all commendably democratic. In comparison, Australian preselections are too often a shameful disgrace, determined by powerbrokers, including those with a serious financial conflict of interest, the lobbyists. Yet the fact that the American process is very democratic does not mean that Americans do not normally pay close attention to the views and recommendations of the party establishments. But that is not happening in 2016, with Democrats flirting with an elderly socialist, Sanders, as an alternative to the establishment candidate, Mrs Clinton, who consequently feels obliged to move further to the left.

There is a deep sense of betrayal on the other side, with Republican voters outraged at the way most Republican politicians− even those elected under the conservative Tea Party Banner − have surrendered to Obama over Obamacare, illegal immigration, the toleration of so-called ‘sanctuary cities’, the campaign against the state police, the lifting of sanctions against Iran and enabling the Mullahs to develop nuclear weapons and ICBMs. It is as if Obama and the Republican establishment think the Mullahs never seriously mean their oft repeated mantra ‘Death to America!’

The one significant exception to this Republican surrender and betrayal was a courageous first-term Texan senator who won his seat against an establishment candidate: Senator Cruz. Almost alone, he was prepared to denounce the Republican establishment for getting into bed with Obama, taking action when he could and where he could and thus gaining the respect and support of the Republican rank and file. The result has been that the Republican voters have abandoned all of the establishment candidates in favour of three perceived to be non-establishment− Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Mario Rubio. The Republican establishment soon realised that of these, two could be drafted and deals made. Trump, an opportunist and an inveterate deal-maker, is, as Jimmy Carter says, ‘malleable’. While conservative, Rubio did not withstand the establishment as Cruz did, so they recognise in him someone who could replace an imploding Trump as their candidate. Only Cruz will do what Reagan did − this election is indeed crucial. Australians will not be surprised to see the use of media tricks and treachery similar to those used against their conservative leader, Tony Abbott.