Posted on 04/10/2015 10:47:37 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Senator Ted Cruz’s announcement he’s running for president during a March 23 speech at Virginia’s Liberty University made him the first candidate to declare his candidacy official in the 2016 cycle. Here are five things to know about Cruz and his presidential run:
1. He wanted to be the first candidate to announce because he thought it would bring him attention.
Being first out of the gate, his campaign hopes, will catch the eyes of both high-engagement Republican primary voters and the media—and, in the process, might slow or stop Governor Scott Walker’s rapid rise. From The New York Times:
By becoming the first candidate to declare himself officially in the race, Republicans briefed on his strategy said, Mr. Cruz hopes to reclaim the affection and attention of those on the party’s right wing who have begun eyeing other contenders, particularly Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
“It’s the shiny object principle. He wants to be first, get in the conversation, not show any doubt or hesitation,” said Dave Carney, a longtime Republican strategist. “There’s an advantage to being first. He’s now the only one running for president, instead of engaging in this Kabuki dance that the others are.”
Of course there’s always a danger to being first, too, which is that by the time the big scrum gets going, you’re old news.
2. He’s targeting Tea Party conservatives first, social conservatives and libertarians second.
A Houston Chronicle report over the weekend sketched out the basic strategy: “Cruz will vie for the support of the Tea Party electorate, his advisers say, but will fare well enough with social conservative and libertarian voters to assemble a powerful coalition.”(continued)
(Excerpt) Read more at newsweek.com ...
BTTT
Uh...NO!
The first comment on the thread is some birther nut.
Here is a thread you could post.
Hillsdale College via Amazon offers Martin Gilbert / Randolph S. Churchill’s Winston S. Churchill 8-Volume Biography Kindle eBook for free. That’s $38 under the lowest price we could find for just one physical volume of this set. Deal ends April 11
http://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/winston-churchill-day
Actually, this caught my eye. That is still five quarters too many for that rag...
I might pay a bunch of epopel $1.25 to burn it.
The whole magazine itself sold for one dollar, so it is a leap, isn’t it?
Looks to me like honesty and leaning-into-it principle. Cruz has declared to his compatriots in America that he's not playing games. He's come right out and told us with ACTION that he's a serious warrior for limited government Constitutional Christian conservatism. He cuts to the chase. He speaks plainly. His early entry confirms it in every way. At this point, Walker can only serve as a spoiler.
"Shiny object" tells more about the strategist than it does about Cruz.
One of the five is Sen Cruz’ principled stance on ethanol subsidies.
There was an episode of the West Wing during the Presidential primary where democrat rock star and ultimate nominee Matt Santos is advised, against his better judgment, to endorse the subsidies. He grudgingly does, but the episode is about selling your soul to get elected. And then. The GOP nominee Arnold Vinick comes out and looks the ethanol crowd in the eye and says he has a record opposing the subsidies and he’d be a hypocrite to flip flop now, and he’s not a hypocrite: he’s sticking to his guns.
This episode was designed to make Vinick (Alan Alda) more personable and to show that Santos (Jimmy Smits) could learn something even from his opposing party nominee. It was an episode designed to show that the democrat could learn from his mistakes (endorsing ethanol against his better judgment).
I know it’s fiction. But. THIS is how progressives told a story about principles in a Presidential race. When truth matches fiction: “that guy doesn’t have a chance because his base of support is limited”.
Most people don’t vote ideological lines. That’s why Obama was elected twice. Enough people saw him as a likeable guy. People don’t vote for timidity. A republican candidate raising a bold flag will have support that transcends ideology. That is both the dems and the GOPe’s worst nightmare.
Well said.
West Wing Season 6 Episode 13: “King Corn”
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/TheWestWingS06E13KingCorn
“Vinick: I know what you want to hear. Telling people what they want to hear is the easiest thing you can do in politics. That’s not why I’m here. That’s not why I’m running for president. Now I know that the ethanol subsidies have been good for some of you. But mostly, it’s a windfall for huge conglomerates. I’m embarrassed by it, and I think you should be, too.”
It’s an interesting parallel especially since it’s a progressive storyteller’s play on principles.
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