Free Republic

There's no official Sen. Ted Cruz presidential team — yet. But the Texas Republican is already surrounding himself with key strategists and advisers that could make his transparent White House ambitions a reality. The tea party firebrand relies on a small circle of advisers to inform his views and amplify his ultraconservative message. The inner circle breaks down into two groups: his chief advisers in the Senate office, and the chiefs of his nationally-focused political operation, which he beefed up in the summer of 2014 by hiring a crop of seasoned Republican campaign operatives. These are the key players that...

Cold cash, together with control of institutions, is what makes the Establishment the Establishment. But in the current Republican civil war, the insurgents have secured their own money pipelines, and they control their own institutions – which means the GOP leadership and its allies in the business lobby have a hard fight in front of them. The firing and hiring of conservative staffer Paul Teller makes it clear that the anti-establishment has built its own establishment. Teller was a House staffer for more than a decade, and was longtime executive director of the conservative Republican Study Committee. The RSC always...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz on Monday announced the hiring of Paul Teller, the veteran Hill staffer who conservative activists rallied around after his high-profile ouster as the lead staffer on a prominent Republican committee last month. Teller, the former executive director of the House Republican Study Committee, will serve as Cruz’s new deputy chief of staff, starting this week. “Paul’s many years of experience working in Congress and his tireless work to advance conservative principles make him a tremendous addition to our team,” Cruz said. “I look forward to working with him to keep making Texans’ voices heard in Washington...

House Republicans on Wednesday morning were calling for the firing of the Republican Study Committee top staffer after he was caught sending e-mails to conservative groups urging them to pressure GOP lawmakers to vote against a debt proposal from Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). Infuriated by the e-mails from Paul Teller, the executive director of the RSC, members started chanting “Fire him, fire him!” while Teller stood silently at a closed-door meetings of House Republicans. “It was an unbelievable moment,” said one GOP insider. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” Teller and other RSC aides sent a Tuesday e-mail to outside...