Free Republic

Latinos likely haven't made up their minds about Republican Sen. Ted Cruz's newly announced candidacy for President. So in a selfless gesture, a whole slew of non-Latinos have quickly stepped forward to spare us the trouble of thinking for ourselves about whether Cruz stands a chance of winning and whether he can get the votes of fellow Latinos. The answers were "No" and "No." Here's the conventional wisdom, courtesy of the liberal media and other critics of the junior senator from Texas: Cruz doesn't have the slimmest chance to win the Republican nomination, let alone to eventually become President. Which...

I have a confession to make: I’m a Democrat and a progressive, and I’m rooting for Ted Cruz to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2016. It’s not because I think he will win or because I agree with anything he stands for. It’s because Cruz represents the best hope of returning sanity to American politics. Cruz is perhaps the quintessential example of Republican politics, circa 2015. He’s uncompromising, ideologically inflexible, and doesn’t appear to be very interested in appealing to non-conservatives. His views are perhaps the most radical and extreme in a political party increasingly defined by rising levels...

<>Politico writes that Rand Paul is losing support among key followers. One of the most prominent defectors is Drew Ivers, chairman of Ron Paul’s 2012 Iowa campaign, who says he will not endorse Rand Paul for president. On Tuesday, three members of Iowa’s Ron Paul-aligned Liberty movement — state Sen. Jason Shultz and former Iowa Republican Party central committee members Chad Steenhoek and Joel Kurtinitis — announced the same, adding that they will support Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. Ivers, who had dinner with Rand Paul in August, said the Kentucky senator has abandoned many of the stances that made Ivers...

Exclusive: Doug Wead says 1 candidate represents the past, the other the future. So what’s the difference between Republican presidential candidates Rand Paul and Ted Cruz? Ted Cruz is running against Barack Obama. Rand Paul is running against Hillary Clinton. One represents the past. The other represents the future. Both men are U.S. senators running for president in 2016. Rand Paul is from Kentucky, Ted Cruz from Texas. (Rand Paul is expected to announce his candidacy April 9.) Both men are conservatives whose careers were launched during rise of the tea party. Both are born-again Christians. And both signed the...

As Ted Cruz announced his 2016 presidential campaign Monday, BuzzFeed had three reporters scour the records for everything and anything they could find to throw at Cruz—that is, Rafael Cruz, Ted’s father. BuzzFeed reporters Ilan Ben-Meir, Andrew Kaczynski, and Megan Apper just can’t seem to get enough of the Texas senator’s dad. Let’s just skip this bit of actual history, although they felt compelled to at least give it a passing nod: “The story of Rafael Cruz — growing up in Cuba, joining a revolution to overthrow Batista at age 17, jailed and tortured, and fleeing to the United States...

Rep. Peter D. King (R-N.Y.) is not a fan of Sen. Ted Cruz, the Texas senator, newly announced presidential candidate, and fellow Republican. "To me, he's just a guy with a big mouth and no results," he told CNN this week. Well, Cruz supporters aren't much fans of King, a moderate representing Long Island who has long been critical of hard-line conservatives in his own party. And, King said Friday, they have called his congressional office to let him know how they felt, prompting him to issue a statement slamming those Cruz backers as suffering "from severe cases of arrested...

When Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) launched his U.S. Senate bid, he was the preferred choice of a mere 3 percent of Texas Republican primary voters in a field of a half-dozen credible candidates. Chief among his rivals was a powerful three-term lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, who possessed a net worth of $200 million, enjoyed the near-unanimous support of the Texas GOP establishment and began the 2012 election cycle with a commanding lead in the polls. A year-and-a-half later, Cruz soundly defeated Dewhurst in a primary runoff with 57 percent of the vote and was on his way to the U.S....

Ted Cruz received almost 4.5 million votes in the 2012 Texas Senate election, which he won in a landslide. Millions more Americans, outside Texas, agree with his aggressive brand of conservatism. He has been one of the most influential figures in Congress lately, and this week he became the first major candidate to announce an official 2016 presidential campaign. He also has virtually no chance of winning the Republican nomination, let alone of becoming president. So what are we in the media supposed to do about Mr. Cruz’s candidacy? He is, on the one hand, a major figure in American...

Shmuley Boteach may have just dropped a major clue in one of the biggest mysteries of the 2016 Republican primary: Who does Sheldon Adelson like? In an email yesterday, Boteach’s charity, This World Values Network, announced that Texas senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz would be a guest of honor at its May 28 gala. Also being honored? Sheldon Adelson… and Newt Gingrich. The winner of the Jewish Las Vegas casino mogul’s political favor will profit mightily from his blessing. Adelson spent nearly $100 million in the 2012 election, singlehandedly buoying Gingrich in his doomed primary run and throwing...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s newly minted presidential campaign is the media equivalent of a juicy rib-eye that robbers use to distract a guard dog during a heist. He’ll get a ton of media attention, and he’ll get to spread his message — which may be all that Cruz is after — but Cruz almost certainly has no shot of winning the nomination, according to every indicator that predicts success in presidential primaries. First, Cruz doesn’t have enough support from party bigwigs. To win the Republican or Democratic nomination, you need the backing of at least some of the party apparatus....

A Republican congressman believes Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, would be as great of a president as Ronald Reagan. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., made the comparison while talking to Yellowhammer Radio with Cliff Sims. “I believe Ted Cruz would be an excellent president. The parallels between Ted Cruz and the way he conducts himself, his belief system, and Ronald Reagan are uncanny,” Brooks said....

The Wall Street Journal’s Reid Epstein is up with a report that, if true — and it is well sourced — will prove very troubling for Scott Walker on the campaign trail. Epstein writes that Walker “told a private dinner of New Hampshire Republicans this month that he backed the idea of allowing undocumented immigrants to stay in the country and to eventually become eligible for citizenship.” That conflicts with statements the governor made as recently as three weeks ago that, in a reversal of his previously held position, he no longer supports comprehensive immigration reform that includes a path...

“To me, he’s just a guy with a big mouth and no results…” By now, you’ve heard that Ted Cruz thinks he’s running for president in 2016. Ted Cruz’s entire political career has been marked by opposing progress. He has no significant legislative or leadership record to speak of. But let’s be clear: Ted Cruz is not a serious candidate. He is not a serious politician. He is a serious pain in the ass. His own party rejects him, and that rejection highlights the schism inside the Republican party. In an interview with CNN, Rep. Peter King said that Senator...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Just a couple of more sound bites here related to Ted Cruz. Now, this is interesting, too. Two sound bites here from Jeffrey Toobin, who is the legal analyst at CNN. He was on Fresh Air, a program on NPR yesterday, the host Terry Gross, and said to Toobin, "For your New Yorker profile of Ted Cruz, you interviewed him several times. Tell us more about your conversations with Ted Cruz and what you learned about him through these conversations."TOOBIN: He's just a very smart guy. He is a very polished speaker. I think people who watched...

Earlier this week, a friend of mine told me that if Republican Ted Cruz became president of the United States, she’d have to move to Canada. In case you haven’t heard, the conservative Senator from Texas recently decided to make a run for the highest office in the country. When he made his announcement, Cruz said, “I believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to re-ignite the promise of America.” He also talked to his audience about repealing the Affordable Care Act and getting rid of the IRS. But while his run for president may give...

Would you vote for a man who openly says he would repeal ObamaCare? Would you vote for a man who openly says he favors a fair tax and wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service? Would you vote for a man who opposes Obama’s efforts to offer illegal aliens amnesty and promises to secure the borders? Would you vote for a man who decries a federal government “that wages an assault on our religious liberty”? Would you vote for a man who wants a federal government that “works to defend the sanctity of human life” and would “uphold the sacrament...

Last June, CNN’s senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin profiled Ted Cruz for The New Yorker under the headline “The Absolutist.” Now that Cruz has made his 2016 presidential campaign official, Toobin discussed the senator/candidate at length with Fresh Air’s Terry Gross on Wednesday’s show. Towards the end of their conversation, Toobin discussed what it was like to spend time with Cruz last year for a series of interviews. “Well, first of all, he’s just a very smart guy,” Toobin said, calling the former Supreme Court clerk a “law nerd” at heart. Toobin also called Cruz a “very polished speaker,” noting,...

Sen. Ted Cruz is a decided underdog for the Republican presidential nomination, but he understands where his opening lies. And this, in turn, tells us a lot about the shape of the contest and the fight the GOP is about to have. It is no accident that Cruz began his campaign at Liberty University — founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell — by asking evangelical conservatives to consolidate their support behind him. The most important sentence in his speech was this one: “Today, roughly half of born-again Christians aren’t voting,” Cruz said. “They’re staying home. Imagine instead millions of...

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2015/03/25/ted-cruz-gop-presidential-hopeful-your-say/70461558/

Charles Krauthammer articulated a major hurdle that Ted Cruz will face as he runs for the presidency: First term Senators, we already tried a first-term Senator. … Cruz talks about you have to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk. You have to have done something but that's not his record in the Senate. He's a good rhetorician, but when Walker says I ran the state, I took on the unions, I took on liberals and I won I think it is going to be a strong argument. The same applies to Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. Erick...