Posted on 09/30/2014 7:52:05 AM PDT by SoConPubbie
While there is not yet a front-runner in the early race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is quickly becoming the favored contender of social conservatives, riding a recent wave of fiery speeches and standing ovations at right-wing conferences.
Cruzs core supporters on the right are the activists and high-powered interest groups determined to keep faith-infused positions at the center of the Republican Party, regardless of a push by some in the GOP to seek distance from socially conservative stands on marriage and abortion.
Greg Mueller, a conservative strategist who has worked on three Republican presidential campaigns, said whats fueling Cruzs rise is a fierce determination by social conservatives not to be dictated to in 2016, as he believes they were in the past two elections and told to rally around more centrist nominees.
Many social conservatives feel their issues have been kicked to the side and they are frustrated. Someone like Cruz taking the nomination in 2016 would give them a voice again, he said. Its still early, and there are many potential candidates that could appeal to this base, but there is no question Senator Cruz has some early momentum with them. He hits all of the main themes the conservative base want to hear.
Conservatives see an opening in the disarray in the GOP establishment, which has yet to settle on its preferred candidate amid former Florida governor Jeb Bushs indecision about running and the troubles of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who has seen his administration embroiled by a scandal over last years politically motivated closure of traffic lanes near the George Washington Bridge.
There is a brewing sense on the right that if a well-financed establishment Republican isnt surging ahead, conservative Republicans could capture the nomination, with a consensus candidate eventually
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Clinton / Bush 2016!
I believe so too.
First, the Republicans must retake the Senate in November. If not, then there will be no possible way to stop Obama from doing whatever he wants during the rest of his term. That will also mean that Obama will be able to pack the courts with liberal judges who will be legislating from the bench for the next 30 years.
Will a Republican controlled Senate stand up to Obama? Maybe, maybe not. There are a lot of RINOs in the Senate. All I know for a fact is that a Democrat controlled Senate will continue to allow Obama to do whatever he wants.
Keep in mind that in a Republican controlled Senate, it will only take 40 Republicans to filibuster. In a Democrat controlled Senate, there is no filibuster unless Reid wants to allow one.
After the November election, we need focus on doing whatever we can to get a conservative presidential nominee in 2016. If we can get a conservative President elected in 2016 and the Republicans can hold the Senate and the House, then we have a chance of reversing nearly everything that Obama has done.
If we get another RINO nominee in 2016, then we can fight over whether we are better off with President RINO or President Hillary. At that point, it is pretty much a question of whether you prefer to prolong the agony and stay on life support a little while longer or pull the plug.
It’s time for all the wannabe presidents with conservative credentials to split the conservative vote. A strong conservative candidate who won’t have to fight his or her way through the circus act may have a chance of beating the Republican left.
It could be worse than that. Jeb might get elected.
Go Cruz!
My favorite analogy:
You are in a car at 70 mph going all "Thelma and Louise" toward the cliff and certain death. (Obama/Hillary)
Or you are in a car doing a slow and steady 25 mph. But you are still headed towards that same Grand Canyon. (RINO/Libertarian)
Which car would you rather be in?
I want Cruz as the nominee. I just hope we won’t repeat people falling in love with fringe candidates and when they drop out, swear they won’t vote for Cruz or any other real conservative candidates.
So, the people who are causing the disjoint in the Republican Party are the Fiscal-only "conservatives" who think that kicking out anyone who supports pro-life issues will help their cause.
Truth is our Founders did not separate the two and neither should we.
The GOPe seems to be in “if you can’t beat him, join him” mode. They’ll try to co-opt him as Jebs “extreme right wing” competition. Ya know, make Jeb look more reeeeeeasonable.
Waiting patiently for Senator Cruz to declare. I’ll be all in.
They want me to support a Repub who favors abortion, gay marriage, and open borders.
Thanks, no, its Cruz or nobody. If Jeb and Christie are the best they can do, I have to get my personal affairs in order.
I can easily see myself not voting this time out, for the first time in my adult life.
Ditto.
But there will of course be some Freepers who will refuse to support Cruz because they do not believe that he is a "natural born Citizen" under Article II, Section 1, of the Constitution.
Is it possible to be a ‘fiscal only’ Conservative?
Wasn’t Cruz born in Canada? Doesn’t that make him ineligible? At least according to some?
Nobody?? What about Palin?
Even if it were, why would fiscal conservatives support the GOP establishment? Debt ceiling increases, more continuing resolutions, refusal to use the purse strings as an advantage, funding Obamacare, more government waste. Fiscal conservatives have no home in the GOP either.
Our Founders wrote about the following:
Life - which is human life and includes family and social issues.
Liberty - which one of the contexts of what our Founders meant was the freedom to ply an honest trade in order to support the family.
Pursuit of Happiness - is the ability to pursue the end for which God created you which is within a virtuous context.
Now, these are the fundamentals given to us by God and recognized by our Founders and stipulated as the foundation of all our liberty.
They cannot be separated without harming our freedom in general.
When a "fiscal-only" conservative works to kick out a "social" conservative, he is only serving the people who want to destroy our God-given liberty.
They become the devil's tool by working to divide and conquer.
Life and Liberty, or social and fiscal, cannot be separated without harming the entire structure of freedom.
Yes, in the Federal arena, at least.
You see, if the federal government were to stick to the Constitution there'd only be like five or six federal agencies (Army, Navy, Post Office, State dept., Dept. of Transportation, and the IRS.)
Virtually all the social issues
are properly the purview of the States under the 9th and 10th Amendments.
If Hillary gets in and she replaces any one of the justices between Kennedy on the left and Scalia on the right, the social conservative movement goes onto life support at best.
Any law that local/state conservatives pass will be challenged, and the libs’ robed thugs on the bench will “take care of it.”
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