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What history says about Ted Cruz' chances (First Joe McCarthy, now Barry Goldwater)
CNN ^ | March 22, 2015 | Julian Zelizer

Posted on 03/22/2015 11:44:26 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will announce Monday that he is launching his campaign to become the 2016 Republican nominee for president. Cruz has been positioning for this nomination almost since he entered the upper chamber in 2012. His announcement takes place at a bastion of conservatism, Liberty University, the institution founded by evangelical leader Jerry Falwell.

Cruz is going to run from the right. He has spent much of his short career in Washington blasting the "mushy middle" of his party (which might be news to most Democrats) which he dismisses as a "failed electoral strategy."

During a recent visit to New Hampshire, where he vowed to eliminate the Department of Education and the Internal Revenue Service, Cruz said that "I'm pretty sure, here in New Hampshire, y'all define gun control like we do in Texas: gun control is when you hit at what you aim at."

Fifty years ago another Republican senator ran this kind of campaign, Arizona's Barry Goldwater, who took on President Lyndon Johnson. Cruz will test the conventional wisdom that Goldwater's strategy was and remains a failure.

When Republicans voted to nominate him in 1964, Goldwater told the delegates that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice no virtue." When the icon of moderate Republicans, New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, spoke to the convention the delegates hissed and booed.

The outcome was far from great for the GOP. Johnson defeated Goldwater in a landslide election that brought in huge liberal Democratic majorities which passed the exact programs that conservatives abhorred....

(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Philosophy; Politics/Elections; US: Texas
KEYWORDS: 2016; 2016election; barrygoldwater; cruz; election2016; tedcruz; texas
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Which incumbent president with a martyred predecessor will Senator Cruz be running against in 2016? Does Julian know something we don't?
1 posted on 03/22/2015 11:44:26 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Interesting that the author talks about Barry Goldwater, but neglects to mention Ronald Reagan...


2 posted on 03/22/2015 11:47:11 PM PDT by Cowboy Bob (Isn't it funny that Socialists never want to share their own money?)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

I would hope that the liberal media do its usual overkill that exposes how far left they are so that ordinary Americans can see that Cruz is a good man who deserves a chance to be heard.


3 posted on 03/22/2015 11:52:45 PM PDT by elhombrelibre (Against Obama. Against Putin. Pro-freedom. Pro-US Constitution.)
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To: Cowboy Bob

Abraham Lincoln or George Washington would’ve had a hard time against LBJ in 1964.


4 posted on 03/22/2015 11:53:17 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

You’d think the media would be ecstatic about a Conservative running since the memo is non-Socialist Republicans are “unelectable.” Of course, we know they’re worried not because he’ll lose, but because he can win.


5 posted on 03/23/2015 12:04:15 AM PDT by fieldmarshaldj (Resist We Much)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

“Which incumbent president with a martyred predecessor will Senator Cruz be running against in 2016? Does Julian know something we don’t?”

Excellent point. In this article we have the problem of getting a “history lesson” from someone too young to know the mood of the American people during the election of 1964.

Goldwater ran for President the year after John Kennedy was assassinated. He was running against Kennedy’s memory as much as he was running against Lyndon Johnson and in that atmosphere no Republican had much of a chance.

And as liberal as the mainstream media is today, it was just as bad if not worse then. And you didn’t have any alternative to ABC, NBC, and CBS’s version of what was news.


6 posted on 03/23/2015 12:12:16 AM PDT by Pelham (The refusal to deport is defacto amnesty)
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To: elhombrelibre

Left is already going ape.


7 posted on 03/23/2015 12:29:11 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper (Ted Cruz 2016!)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

This article doesn’t take into account the lies Johnson told about his intentions in Vietnam. I do note,however, he makes the point Cruz is an extremist several times. This is the type of hit piece Ted can expect to see time and again in the coming months and this is from a “news” source which protected Obama without fail.

Incidentally it is stated Rockefeller was booed when he spoke at the 64 Repub convention. But what the author fails to tell you the booing was a set-up, and was done by Rockefeller activist to embarrass Goldwater.

That campaign of 64 was a particularly nasty one from the get go


8 posted on 03/23/2015 12:53:27 AM PDT by Robwin
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

If a radical leftist, socialist, probably communist, constitution usurping, dog and grasshopper eating, almost certainly non-American, Muslim, Kenyan can get elected as POTUS, I think Ted Cruz has a shot.


9 posted on 03/23/2015 1:41:48 AM PDT by RC one (Militarized law enforcement is just a politically correct way of saying martial law enforcement.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Cruz is probably the most articulate of all the GOP likely candidates. That is what scares the mainstream media and some of his opponents. He may not win, but he will tear the other size to shreds in the process.

When the guy is in a debate (former national debate champion), he is brilliant. Like to see him go far if for not other reason to have one on one debates with Hillary.

Just not sure he has enough to win over those that already have a negative opinion of him.


10 posted on 03/23/2015 2:40:56 AM PDT by dan on the right
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To: Cowboy Bob

Ted Cruz is no Barry Goldwater.


11 posted on 03/23/2015 2:52:25 AM PDT by lucky american (Progressives are attacking our rights and y'all will sit there and take it.)
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To: Robwin

“That campaign of 64 was a particularly nasty one from the get go.”

But the 1964 Republican convention introduced to the country the POLITICAL Ronald Reagan, and he hit a grand slam with the speech he gave. It set the stage for him to run and win the California governorship two years later against the incumbent Democrat (the current Moonbeam’s rabid father, Edmund “Pat” Brown).


12 posted on 03/23/2015 4:19:50 AM PDT by ought-six ( Multiculturalism is national suicide, and political correctness is the cyanide capsule.)
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To: Cowboy Bob

Exactly,the Republican establishment feels the same as she does,they forget Reagan as well,they are embarrassed by Conservatives


13 posted on 03/23/2015 4:26:58 AM PDT by ballplayer
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To: ought-six

Goldwater had the GOPe,the media and the Democrats against him. Cruz will be facing the same enemies.


14 posted on 03/23/2015 4:37:09 AM PDT by Russ (Repeal the '17th amendment.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Every major media outlet in TX was campaigning against Ted Cruz, but he won handily in his first campaign for office. When the media attacks him, he prevails because he tells the truth, and the people know it. That’s why they are scared of him.


15 posted on 03/23/2015 4:40:51 AM PDT by txrefugee
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To: Cowboy Bob

I was thinking the same thing.


16 posted on 03/23/2015 4:46:53 AM PDT by hawkaw
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To: Cowboy Bob

Because it doesn’t fit their “a conservative can’t win” narrative.


17 posted on 03/23/2015 5:06:01 AM PDT by SmokingJoe
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To: SmokingJoe

“Cruz is going to run from the right.”

No. Cruz is running from within the confines of the Constitution. Someone anyone to the left of Cruz will not do.


18 posted on 03/23/2015 5:40:32 AM PDT by EQAndyBuzz (Islam is the military wing of the Communist party.)
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To: Russ
Goldwater had the GOPe,the media and the Democrats against him.

Reagan did as well. It was amazing to see—and I was on the other side then. Personality and leadership instincts make a huge difference. Goldwater needed a personality transplant. He had clarity, but not much warmth. This missing element showed up in the fact that he was no social conservative.

Lefties in my college dorm were making up hate songs against a potential President Reagan five years before he was elected. I was anti-Communist, but I wasn't pro-Reagan yet. It seems incredible now, since I saw the Communists and wimps lined up against him. I didn't realize that Carter was on the other side, and that his respectability was pure camouflage. It took me till 1984 to vote for Reagan. Thank God most Americans weren't so thick.

The job of a good candidate and his political organization is to draw connections in the voters' minds, to show which ideas have what consequences.

19 posted on 03/23/2015 6:00:04 AM PDT by SamuraiScot
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To: lucky american
Ted Cruz is no Barry Goldwater.

Too bad.

20 posted on 03/23/2015 6:28:55 AM PDT by JimRed (Excise the cancer before it kills us; feed & Ifwater the Tree of Liberty! TERM LIMITS NOW & FOREVER!)
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