Tea Party hero Cruz announces presidential bid
Print Edition
Texas Senator Ted Cruz, one of the Republican Party’s most conservative members, launched his presidential campaign yesterday in a crammed auditorium at the country’s biggest Christian university, becoming the first among what is expected to be a crowded field of White House hopefuls to officially enter the race.
Cruz, 44, touted his family’s story as the embodiment of the American dream of overcoming adversity to reach success. He is the child of an American mother and a father who fled Cuba in 1957. When Cruz was 3 years old, his father left him and his mother in Canada, where he was born. His father, now an evangelical preacher, went back to the United States where he eventually found a deep Christian faith, returned to his wife and child and brought them to the US.
Elected to the Senate in 2012, Cruz established himself as an uncompromising conservative willing to take on Democrats and fellow Republicans alike. At times he has been scorned at times by leading members of his own party, with fellow senator and former presidential candidate John McCain once labeling him a “wacko bird.”
Cruz’s popularity within the right-wing base could give him shine in the primary, a state-by-state process dominated by the most conservative Republican voters. But his tense relationship with the Republican Party establishment complicates his path to the nomination. And if he makes it to the general election, he would have a hard time winning over moderates and independents.
In his speech, the Harvard Law School graduate spoke of the promise of America, saying: “We demand our liberty.” And laid out positions antithetical to most Democrats, including the repeal of President Barack Obama’s overhaul of the nation’s health care system.
Cruz will not be the only official 2016 candidate for long.
Several other Republicans are expected to enter the race in the coming weeks, including former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and two Senate colleagues, Kentucky’s Rand Paul and Florida’s Marco Rubio.
Whoever wins the Republican nomination would likely face former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic nod.
Cruz won praise from ultraconservative Tea Party activists in 2013 for leading a 16-day government shutdown in an unsuccessful drive to repeal the health law, a key achievement of the Obama presidency.
While the senator was born in Canada, two lawyers who represented presidents from both parties at the Supreme Court recently wrote in the Harvard Law Review that Cruz meets the constitutional requirement to run.
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