I’m no Cruz booster. I’ve called him, at various points, a modern-day McCarthy and a prolific fabulist who isn’t above using an anti-Semitic dog whistle when he condemns “New York values.” Many of Cruz’s policies — on gay rights, health care and Social Security, for example — are more objectionable than Trump’s.

But Trump isn’t dangerous because he’s conservative. He’s dangerous because he seems willing to govern outside our constitutional system, with his talk of torturing prisoners and targeting innocent civilians, with his winking at violence at his events and his plans to block entry to the United States on the basis of religion.

Clinton is well positioned to beat either man, but even if Trump is easier to defeat, his nomination alone would be a blow to U.S. standing, which has already suffered from his success. British Prime Minister David Cameron, who called Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims “divisive, stupid and wrong,” said of Trump: “If he came to visit our country, I think he would unite us all against him.”