Posted on 01/28/2015 4:39:36 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
The field will be crowded. The stakes could not be any higher. So how will Ted Cruz fare in 2016? Jim Antle looks into his crystal ball...
Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz all went to Iowa. This is not the set-up of a joke, but the beginning of the 2016 presidential race.
All three are conservative celebrities; the first two are celebrities even in the broader sense. Having any of them at your conservative gathering excites attendees and generates media attention. All three say they are mulling runs for the White House.
Cruz is obviously different from Trump and Palin in many important ways. The senator from Texas is a current officeholder. Trump has never been elected dog catcher, and Palin is a long way from her days as governor of Alaska.
Cruz's appearance at the Iowa Freedom Summit received rave reviews, while Palin's was widely panned. In fact, the 2008 vice-presidential nominee is being criticized in conservative circles in ways that once seemed unthinkable.
Obviously, Cruz is much smarter than either Trump or Palin. And he's far likelier to actually run for president than either of them. Virtually no one takes Trump or Palin 2016 talk seriously anymore.
But Cruz does share one problem with Palin and Trump. Mama Grizzly and the eccentric billionaire are able to exert some influence over the process by threatening to run, but if either of them took the plunge and did poorly, it would hurt their reputations as people who represent grassroots conservatives.
Michele Bachmann was a Tea Party superstar until her presidential campaign fizzled. Now she's not even in Congress. Bob Dornan was always more of a gadfly, but something similar happened to him after his even more disastrous 1996 presidential campaign.
George W. Bush was quoted dismissing the conservative movement by saying, "I whupped Gary Bauer's ass in 2000." Bauer is still an important conservative activist, but his ill-fated presidential campaign definitely made him seem less representative of the religious right.
Cruz is still a freshman senator. A lot of his influence in that chamber stems from the perception that he speaks for a lot of conservatives. But he clearly doesn't want to stick around as long as past conservative boat-rockers like Jesse Helms, nor does he want to drop out of electoral politics like Jim DeMint or Tom Coburn.
Lots of Republicans, and even many conservatives, disagreed with Cruz's defund-Obamacare strategy. This was especially the case after the government shutdown briefly turned public opinion against the GOP. But large segments of the conservative base appreciated that Cruz was fighting for them at a time when so many other GOP leaders seemed ready to fold.
When Cruz looks at 2016, he likely thinks of two other presidential elections. One is 1980. Ronald Reagan bonded with conservative activists during the fight against the Panama Canal treaty. Republican leaders like Howard Baker and even eminent conservatives like William F. Buckley, Jr. thought Reagan was wrong. He also failed to stop the treaty.
Reagan was nevertheless the conservative movement's choice and a two-term Republican president of the United States. He is still revered on the right to this day and is now grudgingly accepted by some liberals in the pantheon of great 20th-century presidents.
The other election Cruz is looking at is 2004. Bush's reelection campaign team concentrated on turning out the conservative base, rather than fighting John Kerry for a small slice of independent voters. The election was close, but their bet paid off.
Cruz is a purer conservative than Bush, a president whose legacy included the Medicare prescription-drug benefit and No Child Left Behind. But he has to get to the general election before he can try to replicate Karl Rove's fall campaign strategy.
The big question for Cruz is whether he has the state-by-state organization to go the distance. Currently, most observers suspect the answer is no. But perhaps he can build one on the fly.
To win the nomination, Cruz will not only have to battle establishment heavyweights like Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and Mitt Romney (should they all run), but he's also likely going to have to emerge from a crowded field of conservatives that may include Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Mike Pence, Bobby Jindal, Ben Carson and who knows how many other people as the year progresses.
Some of those potential candidates have supporters and donors that will overlap with Cruz's. Can the Texas senator not only bring crowds in Iowa to their feet, but also win over the financial backers and campaign professionals he'll need to help him translate the applause into votes? What happens to Cruz's reputation as a conservative dynamo if he can't?
Ted Cruz may be willing to take that risk.
Of course not.
Obama won due to election fraud, good speech writers and being able to bring the message of communism to the masses.
McCain and Romney lost because of the above.
Cruz could win because he’s intelligent, won’t need all those speech writers, won’t need election fraud, could probably get enough to run a good election, whatever etc.
If he was VP for Palin, well...
Palin, bless her heart, is a good Conservative, however she is slightly off the wall. Trump is a narcissistic clown. Not only is Cruz intellectually sharper than Trump or Palin, he is far more articulate, balanced and has the gravitas needed to handle the problems we face.
Dream team
Cruz for President
Walker for VP so he can give executive experience backup and to groom him for President
Palin for EPA head just to hear the liberals scream
Carson for Surgeon General
For Secretary of State Bolton
For Secretary of Defense Allen West
Secretary of Education Ward Connerly
Commerce should be Thomas Sowell or Rick Perry
Energy should be Palin or another pro Fracker
Justice should be Christie
Homeland Security should be Jindal
My $0.02
Hmmm... Let’s follow that line of thought...
Some Presidents that were first governors:
George W. Bush.
Bill Clinton.
Jimmy Carter.
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Woodrow Wilson.
Ronald Reagan is the only governor that became President since Calvin Coolidge that wasn’t a disaster...
I’m not so sure being governor first is such a big positive indicator you think it is.
McCain lost because, despite what the voters of Arizona think, he is an idiot; an idiot of a very low character who had no idea of how to be in front of a national campaign.
Romney threw away his chance to win with a failure of nerve and no clear-cut ideology or belief system, which left him at the mercy of ridiculous consultants that led to an ineffectual campaign. "Mitt, The Mormon Milquetoast" says it all.
McCain and Romney did share one characteristic: fear. They were afraid to openly confront a fraud because he claimed to be a Negro. They were afraid the MSM would paint them as "racists," so they let the Magic Marxist Mulatto play the only card he has ever had: The Race Card. Racists are not nice people. Republicans think that they can win by being nice.
If this kind of match-up happens again, play The Race Card back in their face. Where was the bumper sticker that said "Obama: Half-Black, All Bad?"
Not surprised at this comment but I've never heard this before - any link to the story?
But the "Is Cruz Eligible" threads will continue on a regular basis right up until the election.
Cruz can play the race card.
I have a Hispanic name, but I don’t claim to be. I’m an American first, second and third (with New Yorker a very distant last).
Cruz is also partly of Irish and Italian stock, and from the look of those high cheekbones, I’d say Cherokee Indian.
OK.
Now list all the Senators who became President. Here, I’ve even drawn you some blank lines for your list:
__________________
__________________
__________________
There, I think that should about cover it, give or take 1 or 2 more.
Now.
Make the comment that senators becoming President is all that.
The point is, we’ve had 44 presidents.
Of that number, probably around 40 of them have been governors.
The fact that you can list 5 of them that you don’t like and that, therefore, governors don’t make good presidents either, is disingenuous to the max.
Why, in fact, you’re taking a page right out of the progressive playbook.
To wit, making a point, that in full context is meaningless. And running with it as if it’s a valid point.
I could do the best job ever as president much better than any of these evil goon politicians with “experience”.
1.domestic policy: repeal 16th an 17 th amendments and repeal all laws to 1900; that will get rid of the IRS and most government agencies and government
2. border ; put the Army on the border and deport all illegals.
3. Foreign policy : declare “Any organization or country attacking the USA will be instantly vaporized even if you use a proxy (The Bush Doctrine modified) like a terrorist group
I have no experience in government . What I am is a Republican and an American from Louisiana.Long live Dixie
Why, in fact, you’re taking a page right out of the progressive playbook.:
To date, sixteen senators have also served as president of the United States. Three senators, Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, and Barack Obama moved directly from the U.S. Senate to the White House.
(Photo: Warren G. Harding. Senate Historical Office)
-----------------------------------------------------
Senator, 1790-1794
President, 1817-1825
-----------------------------------------------------
Senator, 1803-1808
President, 1825-1829
-----------------------------------------------------
Andrew Jackson
Senator, 1797-1798; 1823-1825
President, 1829-1837
-----------------------------------------------------
Martin Van Buren
Senator, 1821-1828
President, 1837-1841
-----------------------------------------------------
William Henry Harrison
Senator, 1825-1828
President, 1841
-----------------------------------------------------
John Tyler
Senator, 1827-1836
President, 1841-1845
-----------------------------------------------------
Franklin Pierce
Senator, 1837-1842
President, 1853-1857
-----------------------------------------------------
James Buchanan
Senator, 1834-1845
President, 1857-1861
-----------------------------------------------------
Andrew Johnson
Senator, 1857-1862; 1875
President, 1865-1869
-----------------------------------------------------
Benjamin Harrison
Senator, 1881-1887
President, 1889-1893
-----------------------------------------------------
Warren G. Harding
Senator, 1915-1921
President, 1921-1923
-----------------------------------------------------
Harry S. Truman
Senator, 1935-1945
President, 1945-1953
-----------------------------------------------------
John F. Kennedy
Senator, 1953-1960
President, 1961-1963
-----------------------------------------------------
Lyndon B. Johnson
Senator, 1949-1961
President, 1963-1969
-----------------------------------------------------
Richard M. Nixon
Senator, 1950-1953
President, 1969-1974
-----------------------------------------------------
Barack Obama
Senator, 2005-2008
President, 2009- present
Hey genius,
First, I didn’t pick and choose. Those are ALL the governors that became President going back to Coolidge which goes back to the early 1900s.
Second, as pointed out elsewhere, there have been 16 senators that have become President. Since Coolidge there’s been 5 senators that became President and 6 governors that became President. Pretty equal mix.
Third, I was replying to another poster that said being a governor before becoming President was very important to him. I was pointing out that it wasn’t such a great indicator of quality.
Forth, you look like an arrogant ignorant ass when you post crap like that. With your “right out of the progressive playbook” and “To wit, making a point, that in full context is meaningless. And running with it as if it’s a valid point.” is in your face - go look in the mirror.
And I can’t spell...
Cruz wins the nomination I look for him to get Walker or another Governor on the ticket with him.
Good choice, But I would have Mark Levin at Justice. Liberal heads would explode and everyone in this administration would be fearing Federal corruption charges!
Mail Levin is brilliant but I think he would be better at rousing the troops and they just extended his contact to 2020...
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