Posted on 03/24/2015 12:56:20 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Cruz's announcement signals the start of a messy primary contest that will let Clinton appear to be the adult in the room.
Hillary Clinton’s embattled pre-campaign team breathed a sigh of relief Monday as a central player in their grand strategy to win the White House strode boldly onto the 2016 battlefield.
His name? Rafael Edward Cruz, the Republican junior senator from Texas.
Democrats from both inside and outside the Clinton camp have groused for months that the all-but-certain candidate was moving too slowly in formulating and projecting a rationale for running for the White House outside of her gender and the dreaded “it’s my time” argument. She was relying too much on a platform of inevitability, they said — the same platform that doomed her bid in 2008. But those closest to the former secretary of state have counseled patience, arguing that a core element of Clinton’s plan was to get out of the way and let the dueling wings of the Republican Party savage each other while she floats above it all.
Cruz, they say, is Hillary’s wrecking ball.
People close to Clinton smiled at the sight of the first-term senator wandering alone on stage at Liberty University, implicitly threatening a civil war with the “mushy” establishment of his party that he loves to decry — while at the exact same time Clinton sat comfortably alongside heavyweights from her own party’s progressive and labor elements, who have thus far entirely declined to challenge her.
“Imagine repealing every word of Common Core,” Cruz implored his audience while announcing his presidential campaign in Lynchburg, Va., in the morning, implicitly previewing a fight over education policy that he intends to pick with Republican establishment favorite Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor. It was just one line of many Cruz has delivered since joining the Senate in 2013 that highlights his appetite for combat even within his own party — an appetite that flared up famously when he helped spearhead the government shutdown in October of that year.
Meanwhile the clamoring of some liberal groups to recruit Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the progressive darling, was entirely unheard in downtown Washington as Clinton spent her morning discussing domestic policy at the headquarters of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank run by her allies. The presumptive Democratic front-runner sat near a pair of union bosses and current and former urban mayors, making sure to throw in some love for liberal hero Bill de Blasio, the New York City mayor, as she previewed pieces of her likely domestic policy platform.
She touched all corners of the Democratic Party in the morning performance before meeting with President Barack Obama in the White House and speaking at an award ceremony for political reporters in the evening, dogged only by barbs from her Republican critics.
So for Clinton, Monday was smooth sailing. For Republicans, her camp figures, it signaled the beginning of a wild and messy primary contest that will let Clinton appear to be the adult in the room before she takes on a bloodied GOP nominee.
Cruz “could go a very long way in the Republican primary, and give whoever emerges as the Republican establishment candidate a fight,” said Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist and senior adviser to Clinton during her 2008 run. “That is going to be something Republicans will focus on while Hillary is going to be talking about fighting income inequality and expanding opportunity, like she did today.”
“While Ted Cruz and other Republican politicians are fighting to outdo each others’ Tea Party bona fides and score political points with the conservative right wing, Hillary Clinton is continuing, as she always has, to spread her vision of opportunity and success for all Americans,” added Adrienne Watson of Correct the Record, the pro-Clinton group that has recently started mounting attacks on her possible opponents in the Republican field, including Jeb Bush today.
As publicly excited as Clinton allies profess to be, the Democratic exuberance is not universal, and the Republican National Committee hit Clinton in eight separate emails to reporters on Monday, including criticizing her for her notoriously high speaking fees and her history of a bad relations with journalists — her “pathological aversion to transparency,” in spokesman Michael Short’s words.
But most members of Clinton’s circles looked beyond that and the still-lingering controversy over Clinton’s use of a private email address as secretary of state, happy on Monday that this particular Texan was the first contender to throw his hat in the ring. They recalled the divisive Republican primary battles of 2008 and 2012, and pointed to the continued tension between the establishment, Tea Party, and libertarian wings of the party.
“Even if an establishment candidate wins, there is no question that Ted Cruz being in the race is going to pull the Republican Party much more to the right, and we know how that turns out,” Cardona added. “Just ask Mitt Romney.”
Clinton previewed her model of weighing in on policy while Republicans scuffle over politics in early February, when her late-night tweet about mandatory vaccinations after a day of GOP struggles aimed to paint her as above the squabbling. Her recent rhetoric about bipartisan compromise is similarly calibrated to portray her as apolitical, even as she has unleashed a stream of tweets aimed at congressional Republicans rather than her likely 2016 opponents.
On Monday night, at a journalism award ceremony in Washington, she spoke of the importance of embracing, but improving, Obamacare — anathema to congressional conservatives, and to Cruz in particular.
Still, some Clinton allies urged their fellow Democrats to be cautious, looking back on 2008’s Democratic primary between Clinton and then-Senator Obama as a model for how a lively primary could strengthen a party. But they also see Cruz’s ideological positioning on the far right of the conservative spectrum as an indication that Republicans are in for a fight, and that Clinton could benefit from the lack of her own drawn-out battle.
“The Hillary-Barack death-match was the best thing that ever happened to the Democratic Party, but that’s because they kept it between the ditches,” said longtime Clinton ally and Democratic operative Paul Begala, drawing a contrast between the Obama-Clinton disagreements and Cruz’s testy policy fights with his colleagues. “They didn’t run on radical, crazy stuff. They both ran on progressive, moderate sets of ideas.”
But as the primary season begins in earnest, liberals have not coalesced behind any likely candidate aside from Clinton, even as a Sunday Boston Globe editorial urged Warren to jump into the race and former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley has been speaking out about bank regulation, ever-so-slightly drawing a contrast with the Clintons. Instead, Clinton has been able to consolidate the party’s influential forces, which her allies see as the starkest contrast with Cruz’s Republicans.
That contrast, Cardona said, is a particular powerful one as Cruz — who 2008 GOP nominee John McCain once called a “wacko bird” — launches his first withering criticisms on fellow Republicans.
“I’m sure she’s happy he’s running,” Cardona said.
Gabriel Debenedetti. Can he even drink alcohol legally?
He reminds me of that litte d-bag Ronan Farrow who made the incredible claim on MSLSD one night last year that “Hillary Clinton represents a level of honesty the public craves” LOL! I almost fell out of my chair when I heard that one. Honesty? Clinton? That’s like saying “Hitler represents a level of tolerance the Jewish people crave”
Talk about barf and a spin job. Hillary is personally more corrupt than the entire presumptive GOP field combined but there’s the MSM making her invincible and smelling like a rose.
Income equality and not repealing but strengthing Obama care campaign issues that Hillary will run on in 2016 ?
That dog don’t hunt.
A failure right there right from the gate.
As like Rush Limbaugh said about Obama after he was elected, so to ( hope your listening Rush )
I HOPE SHE ( HILLARY ) DESPERATELY FAILS BIG TIME !!!
Problem for Hillary is now she has to say something. Compared to Cruz her ammunition is small caliber.
He he he
You keep thinking, kid. That's what you're good at, right?
LOL
Hillary will use the billions in the Clinton Global Initiative to get started on her campaign. Funded by foreign governments of which many have civil and gender rights issues, Hillary will use money that came from the backs of slave labor involving women and children. She will drown out the human rights activists calling them “radicals” while charging out millions on vacations from the Fund. She will block all IRS and DOJ investigations into how she got the funds. he server that carries evidence of her wrongdoing will wind up on the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. Once in office she will use all the power of the NSA and DHS to suppress her opposition, and will destroy millions of lives all in the name of Patriotism and Justice. Remember, although I do not subscribe to David Koresh’s theology, the slaughter of 80 people by the federal government is nothing less than what China, Russia, Iran, ISIS, and PolPot did to their opposition. Hillary knows her husband got away with it once, and se will surely do it again, more than once. I expect to see several “Waco style” attacks in the first year of a Hillary dictatorship.
Just wait she has to deal with a candidate what Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz called one of the most intelligent students he’s ever taught. And Hillary is notorious for not taking criticism well and has a bad temper, too.
I’d love to see Cruz debate Clinton.
They also sighed and then chuckled to themselves in smug relief when Reagan was nominated in 1980. None of their usual epithets, dumb, ignorant, uneducated, inarticulate, WASP clique member, etc. apply to Cruz. Oh, they’ll still try. They’re already trying. It’s all they’ve got. But if they’re honest with themselves the thought of Cruz squaring off in debate with the Sea Hag should give them cold sweats.
Talk about barf and a spin job. Hillary is personally more corrupt than the entire presumptive GOP field combined but there’s the MSM making her invincible and smelling like a rose.
A starving Hyena has more integrity than Hitlery Clinton.
Or they are mentally retarded and/or insane. Remember, lefistism is either a mental illness or a power grab. Always.
Or any of their possible candidates. Elizabeth Warren got her Harvard gig on false affirmative action. She’s not a Harvard alumna.
Yeah, watch her try to evade answering anything, with her arrogant little cackly laugh. That will only work a couple times, no matter how biased the moderator is.
I think what has them in a real sweat is Ted Cruz and his father taking their case for legal immigration to the Hispanic community in *Spanish*.
Cruz just cost the Democrats the Hispanic vote. And they don’t dare say so.
“”while charging out millions on vacations from the Fund””
Hillary can be faulted for an awful lot of things but this wouldn’t be one of them. The Clintons were pikers where vacations are concerned compared to the squatters in the WH now..
“The presumptive Democratic front-runner sat near a pair of union bosses and current and former urban mayors, making sure to throw in some love for liberal hero Bill de Blasio, the New York City mayor, as she previewed pieces of her likely domestic policy platform.”
Liberal hero Bill de Blasio who just today told kiddies about hold old they need to be to drink juice and how much they can drink.
Bottom line is Hillary has never been ready for primetime.
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