Posted on 03/23/2015 8:35:06 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
There’s a reason Ted Cruz kept asking his Liberty University audience to “imagine” a conservative president: no one of normal college age has ever lived under one.
If Cruz wins the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, he will only be the third movement conservative to do so, after Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. (Liberals will count George W. Bush, but he wasn’t a product of the movement in the same sense as Reagan or Goldwater even if you think he was a conservative.)
Republican primary voters are starting to imagine a conservative president. In 1999, Dubya led the field by more than 50 points. Jeb Bush is tied with Scott Walker in the Real Clear Politics polling average.
That’s both the challenge and the opportunity for Cruz. He needs to get Republican primary voters to imagine him as their conservative president.
How does Cruz make that happen? First, the Texas senator announced his presidential campaign at Liberty University, a school founded by Jerry Falwell. Falwell, now deceased, was also one of the founders of the modern religious right.
There’s a crowded field vying for the conservative Christian vote, including Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson and Rick Santorum. Walker is himself the son of a Baptist minister.
Cruz is making his own play for this vote, which will be crucial in Iowa. He is the best speaker in this group of articulate social conservatives. Carson is gaffe-prone, Santorum comes across as preachy and humorless, Huckabee (the actual preacher) is perhaps too folksy and jokey.
Ted Cruz weaves together a lot of the strengths of all of the above candidates while mostly avoiding their weaknesses. He can talk about how Christianity changed his father’s life and he can serve up red meat on conservative issues.
Then there is the challenge of other Republicans hovering around a breakout point, most notably Rand Paul and Marco Rubio, but also potentially including Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal.
Cruz will have to hit Paul on foreign policy and Rubio on immigration, but not so hard that alienates either candidate’s base. Cruz particularly has to hope some libertarians will settle for him if Paul’s campaign fails to take off — both Ron and Rand Paul endorsed him for Senate in 2012 — as they never would the explicitly anti-libertarian Huckabee or Santorum.
If — and it’s a big if — Cruz can catapult himself to the top of this crowded field of activist conservatives, he will have to take on Walker.
On the one hand, this shouldn’t be too hard. While Walker impressed with his speech to the Iowa Freedom Summit, he is not in Cruz’s league as an orator. Neither is he as knowledgeable about national and international issues.
It is easy to imagine — always the key word for Cruz — the senator from Texas mopping the floor with Walker in a debate. The debates will be very important for Cruz.
Yet you can perform well in debates and be the social conservatives’ favorite speaker on the stump without winning the Republican presidential nomination. Just ask Alan Keyes.
Walker’s rejoinder to Cruz’s eloquent rhetoric is obvious: I’m a governor who has gotten conservative things done; you are a freshman senator who can talk a good game — a not too subtle way of comparing Cruz to Barack Obama.
Cruz will then have to make the case that efforts like his Obamacare defunding gambit (which rather noticeably concluded without Obamacare actually being defunded) moved the needle in some important way.
Barring that, perhaps Cruz can convince the base that the Obamacare battle demonstrated something about his character that conservatives should want in a president. Ronald Reagan didn’t stop the Panama Canal treaty from being ratified, but he did win a lot of hearts by opposing it.
If Cruz was only running against Jeb Bush, he could credibly contrast his conservatism with the former Florida governor’s Common Core competence as an executive. Walker offers Republican primary voters both executive experience and conservatism, and he’s already close to Bush in the polls.
Whether Cruz can close that sale or not, his presidential campaign will be an interesting test. He reportedly wants to raise $40 to $50 million, a hefty sum without many of the establishment bigwigs or Paulite libertarians inclined to give to him. He’ll have to fundraise largely off smaller grassroots donors who were galvanized by his Obamacare fight.
No matter how far Cruz makes it in the race, his presidential campaign will be a major test of grassroots conservative strength. These are the imaginations Cruz must capture first.
i sure hope so
First Latino President, and first Female vice President Sarah Palin.
works for me
Ted Cruz is the only potential candidate who has the very same principles as Our Founders, and he doesn’t drop any of them in order to cotton up to anybody.
....”Ted Cruz kept asking his Liberty University audience to “imagine” a conservative president: no one of normal college age has ever lived under one”... ( from the article)
Cruz knows and has determined where his audience is at in their thinking.....you’ll see him focused on particular groups he’s appealing to along the way...carefully planned for so there’s no mistake in what Cruz intends the people know and be aware of.
To put it one way...
Cruz is ‘turning’ the people so that he can win and turn the ship from the icebergs ahead.
.
Icebergs ahead?
We’re taking on water now...
“and he doesn’t drop any of them in order to cotton up to anybody.”
Dat’s Raycystsist
Gov Walker 3 wins in 4 years, Act 10 reducing taxpayer contributions to union health insurance and pensions, Right to Work and now Voter ID. Talk vs walk.
Absolutely! I listened to his speech and again on Hannity and found nothing on which to disagree with him.
We're gonna have to roll up our sleeves and show the GOPe just what the grassroots can do!
The question itself is depressing.
Reagan has been the exception, not the rule.
Cruz knows and has determined where his audience is at in their thinking.....you’ll see him focused on particular groups he’s appealing to along the way...carefully planned for so there’s no mistake in what Cruz intends the people know and be aware of.
That’s right. And it will all turn into one big “broad appeal”.
Cruz is extremely sharp and perceptive.
The media and businesses are very dependent upon government-subsidized consumer spending now.
The path for a conservative is incredibly difficult.
The media that controls the “public square” hates a conservative like an addict hates a cop, and will do and say anything to keep it’s drug coming.
“Gov Walker 3 wins in 4 years, Act 10 reducing taxpayer contributions to union health insurance and pensions, Right to Work and now Voter ID. Talk vs walk.”
I believe Cruz earned his “Talk & Walk” combat wings during his filibuster of the health care law, when every Democrat and many repubes went to the airwaves calling him names and besmirching his effort.
Nothing against Walker; I am down with a Cruz/Walker ticket!
I was speakin’ like a true Texan. Cotton is purdy big down these parts.
But that's what is causing some real panic in establishment quarters. They were in control of the thing, they thought, they were the gatekeepers, the framers, the people who controlled the narrative. They won't like being dispossessed of that power and they'll do their best to snatch it back.
“Reagan has been the exception, not the rule.”
American exceptionalism...Ted Cruz.
Yes, Cruz is exceptional.
I was trying to make the point that Presidents who are conservative
are rare in the history of our country.
Says more about the society we live in.
The problem with this is that the filibuster ultimately failed to stop Obama. Symbolism is worthless. Wins are the ONLY thing that matters and Walker has produced results.
Unfortunately the US senate is a place where one usually holds office and literally does next to nothing the entire time.
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