I'll agree that Trump, Carson and Cruz are the worst of the very awful Republican lot. (Although I'll always have a great distaste for Jeb, but thankfully he's more or less done himself in at this point).
Carson's a complete loon but I don't see him in it for the long run. I'm not exactly sure why he's running for president but I don't see it sustaining him much longer. It's as though he randomly wandered up to microphone with his name on it and started spouting off stuff like a crazy man in Times Square. But as crazy as he is, the temperament's not there to keep him in long term. He's a low key kind of crazy (which might be scarier in the real world but not in a presidential race) and politics is all about high key and high energy. He just doesn't have that.
Cruz is the true believer conservative nut. But he's proven to be containable. He pushed for the shutdown of the government, and I think he thought he'd end up as some sort of folk hero in the process. But people more or less collectively shrugged at that, and he ended up alienating a good chunk of his own party along the way. So while he's scary and crazy, he's also politically mortal.
In terms of formidability as an opponent, Rubio bothers me the most. Not because he's solid but rather because he's the complete opposite of solid. He's pretty much the definition of an empty suit. So he's Mr. Generic GOP Candidate, except he's fairly young, with bland, political good looks, and he gives the GOP an diversity card they'd otherwise be denied that it could sell to gullible independents. True, he's basically the Ron Burgandy of candidates (who will read anything you put before him on the teleprompter....anything) but the GOP can use him to their maximum advantage.
But Trump....Trump. He comes with a built in cult of personality. He'll go off on anyone who even slightly criticizes him. He's convinced himself that he's a highly accomplished person even though his record speaks the opposite. He's obsessed about himself and only himself and "winning". And yet that type of behavior appeals to a significant chunk of people who somehow think it's admirable. But there's a long history of people like that who have ended up leaving countries in ruins. And I don't want to see that befall us.
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