Posted on 04/16/2012 4:24:38 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
Many Republicans view Ted Cruz as the Texas version of Marco Rubio, the Hispanic U.S. senator from Florida whose conservative philosophy and strong oratory skills helped make him a national tea party force seemingly overnight.
But unlike Rubio, who served several years in the Florida Statehouse before winning his Senate seat, Cruz has never appeared on a ballot. The son of a Cuban immigrant got most of his seasoning for next month's Senate primary by arguing in front of the state Supreme Court as the longest-serving Texas solicitor general.
Cruz systematically argues his case to voters as if standing in front of a jury. He jokes about politicians being "blood-sucking parasites" and proof that "invertebrates can walk upright."
"I confess, I'm a TV yeller," Cruz says, laughing about how he reacts to television news. But the joke reinforces his self-image as a conservative fighter, which happens to be what polls say Texas Republicans want.
To tea party leaders, and he has been endorsed by several in his race against Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, Cruz has the conservative background to match the rhetoric. The self-professed child of the Reagan revolution made college money in the 1980s by reciting the Constitution from memory to Houston-area Rotary Clubs and giving speeches advocating free-market economics.
Cruz brags about how his Cuban father fought with rebels supporting Fidel Castro against dictator Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s, before Castro announced that he was a communist. Rafael Cruz fled the country and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, then moved to Canada to work in the oil fields near Alberta, where Ted Cruz was born. The family eventually moved to Houston, and his father became a U.S. citizen in 2005.
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
So what nationality is Cruz?
This is a good question: What nationality is Ted Cruz?
Another: Why didn’t he support Gov. Perry? Is he brave enough to declare his choice for President?
So what nationality is Cruz?
Cruz was born and spend the first four years of his life in Calgary, Alberta, Canada before his parents returned to Houston, Texas. His father, after fighting for Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution and being jailed and tortured by the Batista regime,[25] moved to Austin in 1957 to study at the University of Texas. He spoke no English and had $100 sewn into his underwear.[26] The elder Cruz worked his way through school as a dishwasher making 50 cents an hour. Cruz’s mother, who was from Houston, was the first person in her family ever to go to college. She earned a math degree at Rice University in the 1950s, working summers at Foley’s and Shell. “I’m Cuban, Irish, and Italian, and yet somehow I ended up Southern Baptist.”[2] Cruz is married to Heidi Suzanne Cruz. They have two daughters, Caroline Camille and Catherine Christiane.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Cruz
$100 was a month’s salary in 1957 - maybe more. How did Cruz, Sr. manage to get into and afford UT Austin? Why did he leave Cuba in the middle of the revolution?
Dewhurst,a classic “citizen legislator,” has only been in politics for about dozen years. He ran for office for the first time when he was in his 50’s, winning his race for Land Commissioner in 1998 before he was elected Lieutenant Governor in 2002. Because he’s 65 years old, he will naturally be “term limited.”
Compare these two men:
— Dewhurst was born in Houston, Texas; Cruz in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. (Dual or triple citizenship?)
— Dewhurst’s father fought the Nazis for the US; Cruz’ father fought Batista with Castro.
— Both grew up in the Houston area, but Dewhurst, whose father was killed by a drunk driver when David was only 3, worked while attending Lamar High School, while Cruz attended private schools.
— Both joined the debate teams at their high schools, but Dewhurst did it in an attempt to overcome his stuttering.
— Dewhurst played basketball for Arizona to put himself through college; Cruz went to Princeton and Harvard.
— Dewhurst proved himself in the Air Force and then the CIA.
— Dewhurst is a private businessman who built his company from scratch, surviving the slump in the ‘80’s, and has succeeded outside of politics. Cruz has never run a company and worked in government jobs until the last couple of years.
Leave it to you to back another damn RINO phony. What is your major malfunction, lady ? Wasn’t pimping La Raza Rick enough for you ?
Obviously, Ted Cruz’s dad must have had his studies funded by Communists. Or maybe Canadians.
And, let’s see, he was a young Cuban who fought against Batista’s dictatorship . . . why would he prefer to move to America in 1957 and go to college at UT-Austin instead of staying behind and facing a government crackdown? He must have been a Soviet mole, I tell ya.
Ted Cruz is a brilliant guy (should he have turned down Princeton University and Harvard Law?), a phenomenal appellate lawyer with ample experience (including arguing cases before SCOTUS) and a principled conservative. So what if he isn’t a private businessman—he was too busy making sure that Texas laws were executed and that Texas’s rights were respected by the judiciary.
David Dewhurst is a go-along-to-get-along, moderate-to-conservative establishment Republican in the Kay Bailey Hutchison mode; certainly less conservative than Rick Perry or John Cornyn (neither of whom is the all-around conservative that Ted Cruz is). And, true, Dewhurst is 25 years older than Ted Cruz (66 versus 41), but why on Earth would we prefer an old moderate instead of a young conservative?
As for Dewhurst’s age providing “natural term limits,” I would posit that Ted Cruz’s talents would provide “natural term limits” as well, since I have no doubt that Cruz will be a candidate for SCOTUS after one or two terms in the Senate (and perhaps even earlier).
I get it, Dewhurst is worth $200 million and thinks that he can buy whichever office on which he lays his eyes. But I’m not impressed. I’ll go with the young, principled conservative whose odds of winning the general are the same 99.99% as for Dewhurst.
Oh, and I forgot to mention, Ted Cruz’s maternal grandfather must have been the drunk driver who killed Dewhurst’s father. I mean, he was Irish-American and raised a daughter who studied math at Rice University, married a Cuban and moved to Canada for a few years while she and her husband were working in the oil industry, so we know he must have been a drinker (and since he married an Italian-American, he probably fought *for* the Nazis). I tell you, that Ted Cruz is bad news, while David Dewhurst could be the next Lamar! Alexander.
Cruz is adamant that he doesn’t want to be on any Court. He says he wants to be “a policy maker, not a policy interpreter.” Which is just as well, he hasn’t demonstrated principles in his tactics during this race.
With all his brilliance, surely he could spend his time telling the truth about himself and his plans, but evidently decided that would win his race as well as lying and tearing down the Lt. Governor without a single concrete example.
Wait, you did give us one example, didn’t you? You tell us that Dewhurst has @200 million, reverting to reverse-class warfare.
You’re knocking a man who has his time to serve Texas and the US after serving in the Air Force and the CIA and founding a successful business that survived in the energy business in the ‘80’s.
Aren’t you giving Cruz credit for the work that Attorney General Abbott actually did?
You can't have trial lawyers without plaintiffs hiring them. :)
I don't know much about Dewhurst so I'm not going to comment on him one way or the other. I doubt any Texas senator would vote anti-gun, but I wouldn't expect senators to be gun grabbers in Indiana (Lugar) either.
I don’t think that having $200 million is bad at all; I just don’t think it’s enough of a reason to send someone to the U.S. Senate. You, on the other hand, seem to think that being smart enough to be admitted to Princeton University and Harvard Law School is somehow a bad thing, presumably because a lot of liberals attend those schools; but once we establish that Ted Cruz is a conservative (and there is no doubt about that fact), all that Cruz’s schooling says about him is that he is smart and didn’t let any of that Ivy League liberalism rub off on him.
As for Dewhurst’s milqutoast moderate-to-conservative ideology, I don’t think that it is truly necessary to go into detail, but since you insist, here are a few links that prove where Dewhurst stands in the ideologica spectrum:
http://madisonproject.com/2012/02/tx-senate-david-dewhurst-is-paling-around-with-democrats/
http://www.timothy-bladel.com/2012/03/us-senate-race-ted-cruz-v-david.html
In other words, Ted Cruz is American.
I’m gonna respond to your funny posts attacking Lt. Governor Dewhurst because I like your screen name.
Why do you feel it necessary to attack Dewhurst when you are supporting Cruz? Are you taking your cues from the Romney attack campaign? That is no way to behave when someone tells you why they support one conservative over another.
David Dewhurst is not a RINO. I trust him to represent the interests of the State of Texas more than I do Cruz at this time, one reason is, being told Cruz is a Romney supporter during the primaries is, I think, justifiably concerning. Is it not true?
As regards Cruz, I do like him very much, I just think the jump from where he is right now to Senator is just too big a leap. I just want more proof of his conservative elective office behavior before entrusting him at age 41 with one of Texas two US senate seats. And the senate is not the route to the Supreme Court anyway. That is projecting way too far ahead.
With his brilliant background and education he should be able to write some law that would be bulletproof while representing the Texas congressional district in which he makes his home first. We even have several open house seats due to redistricting this year.
People recognize it’s just not right to attack your own party opponents in the party primaries that way. Why do you think the GOP-e is having to resort to saying essentially VOTE ABO, YOU MUST VOTE ROMNEY to the conservative electorate or the country will fall? It’s a result of the scorched-earth tactics taken in the primaries!
For the past several years, my preferred replacement for Senator KBH was Commissioner Michael Williams, who declared for the Senate seat in 2009 (since KBH had pledged to resign by the end of that year to concentrate on her gubernatorial candidacy); I supported Ted Cruz for Attorney General, for which he was running because AG Abbott said that he would run for governor (if Gov. Perry didn’t run for reelection) or senator in 2010. Then KBH went back on her word and her seat did not open up in 2010, and Perry ran for reelection, causing Abbott to seek reelection as AG instead, Cruz to defer to Abbott and withdraw from the AG race, and Michael Williams to have to wait until 2012. When the 2012 Senate candidacies began to pop up, I still supported Michael Williams, but was disappointed that either he or Cruz would have to lose; I didn’t have a problem with both being in the race, though, since I figured that it would increase the odds of establishment choice David Dewhurst getting below 50% in the first round and go into a run-off against whichever conservative finished second (either Williams or Cruz), with the run-off’s low turnout favoring the movement conservative over Dewhurst. But Ted Cruz quickly garnered most of the big conservative endorsements, and Michael Williams was not getting any traction, so Williams switched to a House race and I, in turn, switched my support to Ted Cruz in the Senate race.
I have never attacked David Dewhurst; in fact, prior to today, I rarely mentioned his name, except to point out that he is an establishment candidate with a moderate-to-conservative record, as compared to conservative rock star Ted Cruz. I wouldn’t have even posted anything about Dewhurst on this thread had I not felt the need to respond to unwarranted attacks against Ted Cruz, in which he was accused of being a foreigner (while he was born and lived until the age of 4 in n oiltown in Alberta, Canada and his father is a native of Cuba, Cruz is a U.S. citizen from birth and has only had allegiance to one nation, the United States of America), criticized for having a Cuban father who didn’t fight for the U.S. during WWII (which would have been a neat trick, given the fact that he was a child in Cuba at the time), implying that his father was a Communist just because he fought against Batista’s dictatorship (Communists were a tiny minority among those who opposed Batista in the mid-1950s), ridiculing Cruz for having attended Baptist schools instead of public schools and Princeton and Harvard instead of a state school (in another state), dismissing Cruz’s debating ability (he was a national champion) because, unlike Dewhurst, he didn’t overcome a stutter, belittling Cruz’s remarkable success as an appellate lawyer (both for Texas and in private practice) because apparently only people who start oil companies are worthy of admiration, and claiming that Cruz’s relatively young age (he’s 41) made him a dangerous choice because he wouldn’t have to retire due to old age after two terms like Dewhurst. Given that outrageous post about Cruz (particularly the revolting insinuations that his father was loyal to Castro), I decided to reply with a post that was sarcastic at first but then turned serious, and pointed out why so many conservatives across the nation prefer Cruz to Dewhurst. If calling Dewhurst a moderate-to-conservative, go-along-to-get-along establishment Republican is an “atrack,” then I don’t know what to call what has been said about Cruz on this thread.
As for whether or when Ted Cruz endorsed Mitt Romney for president, I can’t answer that; I’ve lost count of the upstanding conservatives (Jim DeMint, Paul Ryan and Rob Portman are but three of them) who have endorsed the establishment moderate Romney because they thought it would help us beat Obama, and I don’t think that such an endorsement means that their conservative record is a façade. Similarly, I wouldn’t say that if a Texas conservative endorsed the moderate-to-conservative establishment choice in the Senate race, David Dewhurst, that it would make such person less conservative.
So that’s the story behind my support for Ted Cruz over David Dewhurst. I have a feeling that the primary will be close and, given other candidates being on the ballot, no one will get 50%+1 and Dewhurst and Cruz will go on to a run-off a few weeks later. May the best (and most conservative) man win.
Your links are more of the lies.
The first is a classic example of “lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Jones, a complete liberal quack published in a liberal Soros-funded rag, decided to make a wild guess about Dewhurst.
Note that he doesn’t call Dewhurst a moderate — he says he’s more moderate than the top 3 that Jones deems to be Conservatives.
Jones *guesses* that Dewhurst must be moderate — only in comparison to the top 3 Conservative Senate Republicans -— because of who casts votes that agree with the winning side on “Final Votes to Passage.
But get this: The way that your source measures “Liberal/Conservative” for the Senate is so skewed that Wentworth comes out in the top half/ middle third on Conservative Republicans. http://www.texastribune.org/texas-legislature/texas-legislature/guest-columnist-how-partisan-are-texas-state-senat/
If the man can’t tell that Wentworth is a RINO in spite of actual votes on the floor, he certainly can’t tell anything about Dewhurst who doesn’t cast votes.
That second story is one of the catalysts for my switch from Cruz to Dewhurst. The Cruz team spread what they knew were falsehoods from the beginning — and Breitbart.com was forced to sheepishly withdrawn the day after it was filed: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/02/24/update-dewhurst-campaign-says-podesta-group-meeting-was-no-fundraiser There was no fundraiser, Republican staffers of a PR firm hosted the meet and greet for Republicans, no Dems, in a building that is often used for similar events — with no Podesta in sight.
This sort of tactic makes me ashamed that I supported Cruz in the first place. That was why I sent money to Dewhurst and blogged on the race: http://www.texastribune.org/texas-legislature/texas-legislature/guest-columnist-how-partisan-are-texas-state-senat/
The third refers to Dick Army’s endorsement. Army is the one who said that Dewhurst relied on “daddy’s money.”
I posted whole, careful truths. No implications, except in your mind. I simply said “compare.” can’t help it if you don’t like the comparison.
Cruz is the one who uses his father.
Odd how a man who became a politician at 51, has served well as a conservative, became “establishment.
Here’s that first post on Dewhurst:
http://wp.me/p1FiCk-yW
Unless we can get Gingrich nominated, I bet you’ll be wishing that you only had one “La Raza” disagreement with the nominees and winner on November 6th.
Have you ever followed even one bill through the House and Senate in Austin? Did you go to the Capitol to testify? Have you spent days in the Galleries or watching debates on line?
I’ve had several one on one conversations with Cruz. He would probably have to answer “no” to the above questions. He’s clueless about the process. He has no background except debating and arguing. He has no clue what a Legislator does.
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