“Trump is running to the right. Cruz has been consistently at the right.... he is not changing direction and having to run to the right.”
I forgot to add that there is a video of Oprah Winfrey interviewing Trump in 1988; he is saying the same thing on that video that he is saying now. I think that is being fairly consistent (28 years). Cruz was 18 years old at the time.
Enter the Donald, Take Two - 2011
How will the Trump 2012 presidential campaign explain the Trump 2000 presidential campaign?
"We must have universal healthcare," wrote Trump. "I'm a conservative on most issues but a liberal on this one. We should not hear so many stories of families ruined by healthcare expenses."
The goal of health care reform, wrote Trump, should be a system that looks a lot like Canada. "Doctors might be paid less than they are now, as is the case in Canada, but they would be able to treat more patients because of the reduction in their paperwork," he writes.
The Canadian plan also helps Canadians live longer and healthier than Americans. There are fewer medical lawsuits, less loss of labor to sickness, and lower costs to companies paying for the medical care of their employees. If the program were in place in Massachusetts in 1999 it would have reduced administrative costs by $2.5 million. We need, as a nation, to reexamine the single-payer plan, as many individual states are doing.
-snip-
In The America We Deserve, Trump proposed a one-time 14.25 percent tax on individuals and trusts "with a net worth of over $10 million." He predicted that it would raise $5.7 trillion, "which we would use to pay off the national debt" and pay for Social Security. (The first part of this seems quaint now.)
"By imposing a one-time 14.25 percent net-worth tax on the richest individuals and trusts," he explained, "we can put America on sound financial footing for the next century." Like basically every other Trump idea, this one came with a story of epiphany and self-sacrifice. "The plan would cost me $700 million personally in the short term, but it would be worth it.