Free Republic

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the darling of the Tea Party who is well known for standing strong on principle, is on the verge of getting into the 2016 race for president, according to an adviser. "At this point it's 90/10 he's in," the advisor told National Journal. "And honestly, 90 is lowballing it." In an interview with the weekly, the first term senator joined those in the conservative movement who are comparing the 2016 race to 1980, when Ronald Reagan and former President Jimmy Carter squared off with radically different agendas. Reagan won in a landslide. “I have been very...

Ted Cruz is running for president. The only thing left for him to do is say so. According to sources close to the Texas senator, Cruz could be preparing for an end-of-year announcement and is now dedicating considerable time and effort to cultivating a foreign-policy foundation that might help his candidacy stand out in what is guaranteed to be a crowded field. "At this point it's 90/10 he's in," one Cruz adviser said. "And honestly, 90 is lowballing it."

Three Republicans rumored to be considering presidential runs for 2016 headed to an Iowa religious banquet to push conservatives to vote in this year’s midterm electionsAs they courted voters in the first state to hold a formal presidential electoral event every four years, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Rep. Paul Ryan (Wis.) made slightly different cases for voting, The Associated Press reported.The three spoke at a Saturday fundraiser for the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition.Cruz railed against ObamaCare and Democratic proposals to allow some undocumented immigrants to stay in the country legally, promising that a Republican-controlled...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told Breitbart News on Friday that he supports a plan by Senate Budget Committee ranking member Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to require the candidate to replace Attorney General Eric Holder to publicly disavow President Obama's planned executive amnesty. “I’ll give you three answers to that, yes, yes, and absolutely yes,” Cruz said in an interview at the Value Voters Summit hosted by the Family Research Council, when asked if he agrees with what Sessions laid out in a Breitbart News exclusive Friday morning. “One of the most troubling aspects of the Obama administration has been its consistent...

Texas Senator Ted Cruz easily outdistanced his rivals to win the straw poll at the annual Values Voter Summit. Cruz's victory was no surprise, given the response to his rousing speech to delegates on Friday. He garnered 25% of the vote to Ben Carson's 20%. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) came in third, with 12 percent of the vote. As a signal of Carson’s popularity at the summit, the former Johns Hopkins University neurosurgeon came in first in the polling for vice president, winning 22 percent of the votes. Cruz was the runner up in that contest, with 14...

At the Values Voter Summit, the Texan highlights his strong beliefs on conservative issues.In an already crowded field of likely contenders for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Ted Cruz has found his way to stand out against potential primary opponent Rand Paul: championing the most fundamental planks of the conservative base. In a passionate speech Friday morning to conservatives at the Values Voter Summit, Cruz left no room for doubt about where he stands on the social issues that—albeit amid party conflict—still define the GOP. "How do we win? We defend the values that are American values," he boomed. "We...

Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz won the Value Voters Summit presidential straw poll on Saturday. The crowd burst onto applause on Saturday, as Family Research Council President Tony Perkins announced that Cruz won 25 percent of votes at the annual Washington conference. The victory is a big victory to the Republican firebrand and Tea Party icon, coming just a day after he drew standing ovations with a religious and emotional speech that blasted ObamaCare, congressional Democrats and called for Republicans to take over the White House in 2016. Cruz also won the straw poll in 2013. Coming in second was...

Speaking at the Values Voters Summit in Washington D.C., Sen. Ted Cruz began his speech with a confession. “Neither of my parents were people of faith at the time. Neither of them had a relationship with Christ. Both of my parents drank far too much; both of them had serious problems with alcohol,” he said. “And when I was three years old, my father decided he didn’t want to be married anymore. And he didn’t want a 3-year-old son. So he got on a plane and left.” The audience was dumbfounded by the revelation – a rare moment in a conference...

With a clarion call to preserve religious liberty, Sen. Ted Cruz solidified his support from evangelical Republicans at the annual Value Voters Summit Friday in Washington, a connection that could pay off if he decides to join the hunt for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. [READ: Why Ted Cruz Matters in the House of Representatives] “There are people in Washington who say that in order to win we have to abandon our values,” Cruz, of Texas, said during his 30-minute address. “Our values are who we are. Our values are why we are here.”While shifting demographics, including a projected boom in Latino...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s speech to hundreds of conservative activists on Friday amounted to a dare to other potential Republican candidates in 2016: Just try to get to the right of me. Just try it.Mr. Cruz called for abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, getting rid of the Common Core educational standards and repealing the Affordable Care Act. He defined himself as staunchly anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage and pro-Israel.“There are people in Washington who say Republicans to win have to abandon our values,” he said, as members of the audience shouted “No way!” and “It’s a lie!”While polls last year showed that last...

It was Ted Cruz's party at the Values Voters Summit in Washington on Friday.The Texas Republican senator began the event with a deeply religious and emotional speech, pacing the stage and speaking with the cadence of a preacher, repeatedly rallying the crowd to its feet and jumping into an eager throng of supporters after his address. ADVERTISEMENT But Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal emerged as a surprising star of the conference with an alternately fiery and funny address to the crowd Friday evening, which brought them to their feet for a standing ovation with his closing declaration that “we are ready...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) on Thursday ripped U.S. Senate Democrats for blocking his bill that would revoke the U.S. citizenship of those who join the ISIS terrorist organization, noting that they are abandoning something Hillary Clinton supported when she was Secretary of State. The Democrats blocked Cruz’s bill on Thursday, a bill that would revoke citizenship from Americans who join ISIS. Cruz’s bill is very similar to one that then Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA)—who is now running in New Hampshire against Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH)—and then Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) offered a couple of years ago.“As then-Secretary of State Hillary...

Texas senator says Israel’s actions in Gaza were justified, and US would have done the same US Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Saturday called Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s accusations of an Israel “genocide” against the Palestinians “slanderous” and urged him to speak out against Hamas rather than Israel. “Israel’s action in Gaza was the just self-defense of a sovereign nation against relentless attacks by radical Islamic terrorists,” Cruz said in a statement. “The United States would and should do the same under those circumstances.” In Abbas’s address to the UN General Assembly on Friday, he demanded an end to...

Rand Paul talked foreign policy. Rick Santorum decried flagging family values. Michele Bachmann called for war on radical Islam. But it was Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas who captivated the crowd of social conservatives in Washington Friday, again showcasing his appeal with that critical part of the GOP should he run in 2016. The Values Voter conference offered an early glimpse of what’s sure to be a spirited battle for the allegiance of Christian conservatives in 2016. In a half-hour speech, the Lone Star State Republican quoted “Amazing Grace” and cited Psalms; Cruz shared a personal story about how his...

Two potential presidential candidates come to a conservative Christian cattle call.Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, two Tea Party senators in the hunt for the White House, find themselves in a nearly identical position these days. Both sons of celebrated conservative leaders, they regularly speak at the same events, criticize the same Democratic President with a similar message of back-to-basics constitutionalism, and poll nationally at about 10% among Republicans in the way-too-early 2016 polls. But on Friday, as conservative Christians gathered in Washington for the Values Voter Summit, their differences were far more apparent than their similarities. Paul stood behind the...

HOUSTON, Texas -- Speaking at the  Values Voters Summit, put on by the Family Research Council, Texas Senator Ted Cruz gave a passionate speech about religious liberty and faith. Invoking personal stories from his own life, the senator highlighted the power of hope in the darkest of times.  "Our values are fundamentally American," Cruz told the audience. "This country remains a country built on...Christian values. And anyone who tells you differently is lying to you."Cruz spoke about his own father, whose life was drastically changed by the power of faith. Cruz's father, Rafael Cruz, was taken captive in Cuba as a teenager. He was wearing a...

Former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum on Thursday criticized comments in US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) made earlier this month i n a speech that critics have said was unnecessarily confrontational toward a Middle Eastern Christian group. "We have a responsibility to stand by people who are being persecuted," Santorum told Business Insider in a wide-ranging interview in New York. "This shouldn't be an ideological test — well, you have to agree with us on all of these things, or else we won't be with you. No, we're going to be with you if you are a religious minority that's...

We know how you slime operate, yet constitutionally-principled conservatives are only rallied to the cause when your evil monkeys toss false canards at Ted Cruz, attempting to Palinize him... and so very early, how telling. Hey Reince-wash-repeat Preibus, there's a reason I don't answer your sad-sounding emails (ever), with titles like 'Hope You Can Join Us for Lunch!', 'What's Your T-Shirt Size?', OR my personal favorite "..., did you abandon the RNC?'-  Something like that-- we'll just forget you've been trying to kill us, no hard feelings, I guess- lol. Of course, I almost never even open their relentless spam, and...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) defended his recent pro-Israel speech that was shouted down by audience members at a Middle Eastern Christian conference, in an interview published Tuesday.Critics have accused Cruz of intentionally provoking the audience–which included some prominent supporters of Hezbollah and the Syrian regime–by praising Israel during his speech to the In Defense of Christians conference in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 10.Others have applauded the senator for telling the conference, which was organized to bring attention to the persecution of Middle Eastern Christians, that “Christians have no greater ally than Israel,” before he was drowned out by shouts...

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) praised the resignation of Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday in a statement provided exclusively to Breitbart News. "It is good news that Eric Holder has announced his resignation,” Cruz said, adding:Sadly, he has proven to be the most partisan attorney general in our history, repeatedly defying and refusing to enforce the law. It did not have to be this way, but Holder’s leadership has grievously undermined the Department of Justice’s long bipartisan tradition of independence and fidelity to law. Cruz, who called for Holder’s resignation in an interview at CPAC as he campaigned for U.S. Senate in 2012, said...