Why don't we judge candidates on their merits?
Ted Cruz is absolutely brilliant, and easily the best expositor of conservatism since Reagan.
Posted on 11/13/2014 8:56:56 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Politics may be stressful, but that doesn’t mean anyone in politics loses weight accidentally. When they begin looking trim in better-cut suits, then you know something’s afoot.
Ted Cruz is looking trim these days.
And while he has kept a relatively low profile during this year’s elections, his new look, along with his numerous trips to early-voting states like Iowa and South Carolina, means it’s safe to conclude that he’s seriously considering a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. If so, he’ll have a long road ahead to build the type of national organization and national stature necessary for a presidential run. But he’ll be in a better position to do so than his critics might think. His insurrectionist ethos in the Senate, especially during his 2013 campaign to defund the Affordable Care Act, made a lasting impression on primary voters around the country; in September, he won the straw poll at the Values Voters Summit, for the second year in a row. Cruz’s support among the base should be enough to give him a hearing in a crowded primary field.
As his team begins to consider the road ahead and other contenders size up what he would be like on the campaign trail, it’s clear that he has serious weaknesses—but his greatest weakness is not his most obvious one.
The most obvious one is that he’s unpopular and divisive. Polls show him as one of the least well-liked prospects in the Republican field, and he trails Hillary Clinton in hypothetical matchups. It’s far too early for the polls to have predictive value, but they do point to the fact that there’s nothing about Cruz that overtly says “big tent” or “broad coalition,” two hallmarks of most successful bids to win more than 270 electoral votes in a nation of 330 million people. Even before he was elected to the Senate in 2012, he had been typed as a Tea Party firebrand, having won the Republican nomination after a ferociously contested primary runoff against Texas’s incumbent lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst. During his first months in the Senate, he did nothing to dispel that impression. And by the end of 2013, his campaign to defund the Affordable Care Act seemingly triggered a government shutdown and nearly led the country to default on its debt. Plenty of people, on both sides, saw him as reckless, a demagogue and a bully, and his favorability ratings reflect that.
As obvious as this problem is, Cruz will probably be able to overcome it. As the hubbub over the shutdown has subsided, so too has the rhetoric over its ringleaders. The record will show that the formal cause of the shutdown was the House, and Cruz, as a senator, has an alibi for that. Meanwhile, having led the defunding campaign, he can reasonably argue that he led the Republican opposition to stop Obamacare. That’s impressive, considering that he wasn’t even in public office when the law was passed, and it’s not a bad campaign credential; if you’re going to demagogue, you might as well demagogue on the only issue that unites and animates the entire Republican coalition, an issue that remains, as the vice-president once put it, “a big f-ing deal.” As for the idea that Cruz is a bully—well, let’s get the guy on a stage with Chris Christie and see which one flips out first.
Cruz’s greater liability—and the one that might be hardest to overcome on the trail—is his inexperience. This is his greatest liability, in fact, because it’s real. He’s about to turn 44, meaning that he’d be one of the youngest presidents ever elected if he won in 2016, and nearly an entire generation younger than, say, a Hillary Clinton or most of the other likely Democratic candidates. He was only elected to the Senate in 2012; he never even ran for office before that, though he served as Texas’s solicitor general under attorney general Greg Abbott. Since arriving in Washington, he has made an outsized impression in his role as a low-ranking member of the Senate’s Republican minority, but his ability to wield power, rather than simply making trouble for those who do, is as yet untested. He has never weathered the unforgiving spotlight of a national campaign, never even really faced the barrage of opposition researchers, negative ads and whisper campaigns that would inevitably come with a presidential bid.
He faces a long, uphill battle to be president, especially because of where he sits today. Widespread frustration with Washington bodes well for Republican governors who might be eyeing the nomination—including, perhaps, Cruz's own governor, Rick Perry. Setting that aside, there’s not much history of U.S. Senators rising directly to the presidency. While 16 senators have eventually become president, only three have moved directly from the Senate to the White House. The good news for Cruz is that all three did it in their first term as senator, including Warren Harding in 1920 and John F. Kennedy in 1960.
It’s the third senator-turned-president who represents perhaps the clearest precedent for Cruz, but it’s not exactly an example that Cruz can point to easily on the campaign trail—or even whisper to potential donors behind closed doors.
In fact, the best analogue for the race Cruz may hope to run is another young senator with little managerial experience who had never faced a negative campaign before running for president.
Back when he was the junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama sometimes invoked Martin Luther King Jr.’s comments about “the fierce urgency of now” to explain why he was running for president. “I believe that there's such a thing as being too late,” Obama added on one such occasion, “And that hour is almost upon us.” That was at the Democratic National Committee’s fall meeting in Washington, in November 2007. His point was that the country couldn’t afford four more years under a Republican president. But the Iowa caucus was as yet six weeks away, and that being the case, the comment carried an additional implication. A number of Democrats, not only his rivals, had questioned whether Obama had the experience to serve as president. He had only been elected to the U.S. Senate in 2004, and his public profile far exceeded his legislative record. The candidate himself, it seemed, had anticipated this line of criticism and decided to dismiss it. After all, there was a lot at stake, perhaps even the survival of the republic.
********
Erica Grieder is a senior editor at Texas Monthly, a former correspondent for the Economist and the author of Big, Hot, Cheap, and Right: What America Can Learn from the Strange Genius of Texas.
Why don't we judge candidates on their merits?
Ted Cruz is absolutely brilliant, and easily the best expositor of conservatism since Reagan.
What is exciting is that for the first time in FR history there may be an early near consensus for a POTUS candidate.
Reagan's numbers in 1979 were just as bleak. I remember.
That would be "President Cruz" in the absence of actual leadership in this nation.
I’m 100% all for Cruz.
However I just have this to say to Cruz:
BRING BACK AMERICAN JOBS.
Then I’m all on board. But Americans need jobs.
Not China. America.
I believe that to be a serious error, a dangerous failure to understand 0bama.
Yes, he was "inexperienced".
That's not the problem.
He's neither stupid nor incompetent nor ineffective.
0bama is EVIL. He is willfully dishonest and destructive, deliberately embracing and implementing policies which damage America at home and abroad. He rewards his friends, and punishes his enemies ... his friends are America's enemies, his enemies are primarily We the People.
Obama voted 'present' when he showed up for state votes, began campaigning for President upon election to US Senate.
So are they admitting here that Baraq Obama is a fraud with serious weaknesses, since Ted Cruz is just like him?
That's very telling, and a very positive sign.
There may even be more than one GOPe candidate, for the first time since I can't remember when.
Maybe God is being merciful to us. I'm praying for a miracle.
American woman writers and pundits and voters and soccer moms...
I do try to be fair about them and their views, but it’s gotten so very difficult over these decades...
Just saying.
The most important thing to me is that a conservative candidate win this next election. I’ll leave it up to Ted Cruz to decide whether things have fallen in place for him. I think his honor is such that he, TOO, values a conservative victory above all else. If for whatever reason, he sees a better avenue for a different conservative candidate, I don’t think he will waste time in stepping out and endorsing someone else. That is honor and it’s the type of concern for the nation we didn’t see last election in Gingrich or Santorum
I would concede that as a Senator neither of them likely has the administrative experience that is clearly required for this job.
The difference being I am confident that Cruz is bright enough to pick that up.
A true believer in freedom would campaign on the idea of dissolving most of the federal government since most of it exists in violation of the constitution regardless of what court decisions may say. That would go over like a lead balloon.
Cruz is the real deal. He knows the Constitution better than these other yahoos and will fight to restore our constitutional rights and the American way of life. He is a real patriot and a conservative.
Screw the GOPe “can’t we all get along” retreaded candidates and RINOs, let’s examine what they’ve accomplished while Obama and the liberal democrats have destroyed the Constitution and our nation. Not much to show for them in the last six years except silence and appeasement. The GOPe is no longer an opposition party, but a moderate wing of the Democratic party. What have Jeb Bush, McCain, Romney, and other retreads said or done to even oppose the Obamamites on constitutional issues.
His adversaries, both GOPe and Democratic, know they must “Palenize” him and that is what this is all about. To be patriotic and conservative presents opposition to both parties and the values they share. They must work to ensure none get out of line before the 2016 elections. Time to unleash the media to lie and destroy his character and creditability as one who would lead the effort to restore America and the Constitution.
The policy of appeasement must end and the real issues resolved in a constitutional manner. Ted Cruz is the man to lead and unite all patriotic Americans.
If we do not restore America through the electoral process and constitutional rule of law, then we are headed toward secession and another civil war. I think Ted Cruz would make a very good President if given the opportunity to serve.
G_D bless Texas and Ted Cruz!
” any day now we will start hearing “He’s unelectable” from the usual suspects”
Wait for the MSM to declare WAR on Cruz
Just a minor point, but JFK was in his second term as senator in 1960.
Things move quicker these days, I suppose. President Kennedy also had some leadership experience with a small crew on a patrol torpedo boat, but I’ve led squads, much less platoons larger than that, by far, and I was only a specialist, not an officer. Kennedy’s father was near the top of the social strata, whereas Senator Cruz’s father was a refugee from a small communist country. That means that most of what Ted has accomplished so far has been by his own initiative, not helped along by power, money and influence.
Solicitor General of the state of Texas, 2003-2008 (longest-serving in history), associate deputy attorney general in the U.S. Justice Department and the director of policy planning at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Bet no one has mentioned those.
...and fearless.
The last Republican President who was previously a Senator:NIXON 13 posted on November 14, 2014 at 12:12:30 AM EST by bigbob
The last Republican President who was previously a governor:- St_Thomas_Aquinas
You know, it’s interesting: no senator has ever defeated a sitting president, but - since 1920 at least - governors running against sitting presidents are about a 50-50 proposition. And yet, since 1920, only one governor has been nominated when the opposition party did not have a sitting president running for reelection. And that was in the Republican wave year of 1920, when the Democrats were in bad odor after WWI, and resorted to nominating the governor of Ohio - but got skunked anyway.
All due respect to Sen. Cruz’s fine qualities, but IMHO we should act like we need the ’16 election and nominate a solid governor who can put the Midwest in play and put the Democrats on the Electoral College map defensive.I would highly favor Sen. Cruz for VP, to provide good campaigning and debating against the Democrat ticket. And then to elevate him to SCOTUS at the first opportunity.
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