I watched part of the Cruz-Fiorina town hall Friday and have to admit I was quite impressed with both of them. It once again reminded me what I felt and said early in the Republican primaries, namely that Carly Fiorina might just make the best president of all the candidates in the field.

Carly is smart, tough, and has a quick tongue that converts her thoughts into words at trip-hammer speed. And it’s not surprising when you think about it. After all, a female would have to be smart, tough, and quick-tongued to rise from a secretarial job to CEO of a giant, global corporation. It’s an impressive feat, to put it mildly.

Unfortunately, Carly is also caustic, snarky, and nasty to the point of turning people off. It’s no accident that Cruz picked her as his running mate, because her negative traits fit in perfectly with his equally dislikeable personality.

In any event, Fiorina isn’t running for president, so my focus is on Cruz. Notwithstanding his many foibles, I continue to believe that he would very quickly try to implement more small-government, pro-liberty policies than any other candidate. The problem is that he is so disliked — even hated — by so many members of the House and Senate that he would constantly be running into roadblocks.

Trump is a whole different story. Unlike Cruz, he has already indicated that he would go along with a lot of liberal policies, and he would probably have much more success than Cruz when it comes to taking strong action on such issues as immigration, crime, and a wide variety of secular-progressive insanities. That’s because Trump, notwithstanding his arrogance and his penchant for insults, has an odd sort of charm about him.

The bottom line is that no matter if Cruz or Trump wins the Republican nomination, the winner will annihilate Hillary (if she isn’t knocked out of the race by the FBI first). And once either of them are in office, many things will change for the better rather quickly, though the size of the national debt is not likely to be one of them.

The biggest challenge a President Trump or President Cruz would have is that even if Obama surrenders the keys to the White House voluntarily, he’s not going anywhere. That’s right, our Dear Leader has already said that he is staying put in Washington, and you can be certain that he will be actively engaged in trying to push his agenda forward. And just as certain that the media will be asking him to chime in regularly on government affairs as though he were still in office.

But first things first. The Indiana primary will give us a better idea of whether it’s going to be Cruz or Trump, so here’s a quick summary of the pluses Cruz and Trump have added to their resumes over the past few days:

Trump pluses:

1. The ignorant rioters that showed up at the two Trump events in California only succeeded in making his anti-illegal-immigrant case for him, which should give him a big lift.
2. The endorsement of Bobby Knight is a plus, but, as with most endorsements, it’s impossible to tell how much of an impact it will have on voters. It’s worth noting, however, that Knight’s endorsement was over-the-top strong.
3. Finally, I believe that Trump got a better endorsement from Gov. Mike Pence than Cruz did. In fact, it was probably the first time in history that a major endorser of a presidential candidate said such flattering things about a candidate he wasn’t even endorsing — and said them first. No doubt it made Cruz and his supporters gnash their teeth and curse as they watched Pence lavishly praise Trump.

Cruz pluses:

1. Even though I thought Trump got the better of the tepid Mike Pence endorsement, it’s still possible that it will give Cruz a slightly bigger boost in votes.
2. John Boehner’s calling Cruz “Lucifer in the flesh” and adding that he had “never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life” has to be a huge plus for Cruz, given that Boehner embodies everything voters hate about Washington. Ditto Peter King’s saying that he hates Ted Cruz and that he might take cyanide if Cruz gets the nomination.

I’m not listing Carly Fiorina as a plus for Cruz, because, as I said, she’s as dislikeable as he is, so I don’t know how many voters were turned off and how many voters were turned on by her addition to the Cruz ticket. Secondly, the video of Fiorina saying that Cruz is “just like any other politician” .. and that “he says whatever he needs to say to get elected” makes her value to him even more problematic.

Finally, I should add that I just finished watching Chris Wallace’s interviews with Trump and Cruz, and, as with a boxing match, I scored it blow by blow. Result? In all honesty, I thought the outcome was very lopsided — not even close. In favor of whom? I won’t say, because I don’t want to be accused of being biased, but I’d like to hear your opinion.

Now, it’s time to get on with Indiana’s biggest game since Milan High School won the Indiana State Championship in 1954. Gene Hackman and Bobby Plump must be loving the drama.