Posted on 04/22/2015 11:36:58 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Todays official announcement that Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is running for president changes everything in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Ted Cruz isnt running for Vice President or Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Jeb Bush administration.
Every Republican candidate for president will have to move to significantly to the right, starting with Jeb Bush and Scott Walker, and define their position on amnesty for illegal aliens, on fighting and winning the war radical Islam has declared on America, on spending, the deficit and the debt, and on repealing Obamacare, against the positions Ted Cruz will talk about and campaign on in the coming months.
They will all have to move right to respond to Cruz, or be left behind by a grassroots conservative electorate fed-up with Republican candidates who are merely principle-free messengers for an out of touch Washington elite.
Ted Cruzs base is the conservative movement, and although other Republican presidential candidates since Ronald Reagan, such as Gary Bauer and Michelle Bachmann, looked to movement conservatives for their support, they were never able to expand beyond their starting base of support into the top-tier of candidates.
Ted Cruz is the first top-tier movement conservative candidate since Reagan for three reasons that separate him immediately from the rest of the Republican pack.
First, is his ability to unite all three elements of the old Reagan coalition; national defense conservatives, economic conservatives and social conservatives with the new fourth leg of the 21st centurys winning conservative coalition the constitutional conservatives of the Tea Party movement.
Others, such as Scott Walker, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal and Rand Paul may have some appeal to elements of that coalition, but no one unites it the way Ted Cruz does.
Second, is Ted Cruzs understanding of and almost spiritual bond with Americas country class the voters outside the Beltway who have looked with alarm at Obamas fundamental transformation of America and seen not a spending bill to be negotiated or a deal to be cut, as the Republican establishment does, but an existential threat to American exceptionalism and the future of constitutional government that must be resisted at every turn.
Finally and perhaps most importantly, are Ted Cruzs zest for the battle of ideas between conservatives and progressives in both political parties and his intellectual gifts for fighting it.
The Ted Cruz campaign is planned as a great conservative crusade to, as he put it in his compelling announcement speech at Liberty University, reignite the promise of America.
And this means with Ted Cruz in the race voters will have a clear choice between policy grounded in the thought of the modern conservative movement and the Washington deal-making that has often corrupted Republican campaigns of the recent past.
Today, everything in American politics changed, and that tremor you felt at midday was the shiver in the DC establishment as millions of conservatives across America respond to Ted Cruz and said in unison, weve found our leader and We demand our Liberty.
I agree...but he will face attacks from the moderate moderates.
He has my vote right now....the others do not.
Well, I hope we're fed up with claimed movements and pivots as well.
Scum hate true leaders like Cruz.
Always watch what candidates have DONE, not what they say. It’s why Cruz’s rhetoric matches his actions in office.
I do not want a candidate who moves to the right for the duration of the primaries. I want a candidate who can articulate why the right is correct for minorities, for the poor, for the working class, for parents and their children, for small businesses, and basically for everyone except the influence peddlers and crony capitalists who benefit from corruption among the insiders of both big government parties.
+1 for Cruz!
Cruz has already won—He will force the GOP to the right. He has bought the Tea party to the Table—They must recognize the contribution of the hard right Conservative base—and see its power (just as Reagan did) —He has won even if he never gets the nod to lead the GOP-—there will be other elections—but this one —taking place now— is for the heart and soul of the Grand Old Party.
The idea of the "movement" is a socialist one, historically.
The only movement I want out of candidates, whether they're running for president or for anything else, is back to the sworn obligations of the sacred oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. And then they need to stop moving, permanently.
Exactly. We are tired of candidates who sound conservative until they get the nomination and then become “moderates” in hopes of picking up enough independents to win. Reagan never wavered from his position and beat the stuffing out of his opponents both times.
I hope this article is right, I desperately want Cruz to get the nod. But with the MSM blackout of his campaign and fake conservatives like Rubio rising, I don’t know if Ted can get much traction in this race.
Good article!
He's my guy!!!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.