Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) leads the only way he knows how: by yelling to far-right activists.
Amazingly enough, Ted Cruz
doesn't think it's an advantage to be a governor—which he is not—over a senator—which he is—when it comes to running for president:
“It’s an advantage only if you think that the American people are looking for someone who is not standing up and leading on the great challenges of the day,” Cruz said Monday in an appearance on the “Mark Levin Show.”
That's an interesting definition of both "leading" and "the great challenges of the day."
It's true that Ted Cruz has been a leader, of sorts, if you count successful obstruction as leadership. If so, Cruz is certainly a leader. Shoot, he led obstruction all the way into a government shutdown in 2013, and led obstruction of the spending bill into additional time for confirmation votes just days ago.
As for "the great challenges of the day" ... I mean, sure, if the challenges you want to rise to are taking health care away from millions of people and blocking constructive action on immigration. Although while Cruz has stood up and led on those issues, he hasn't exactly—what's the word I'm looking for?—succeeded.
Ted Cruz is in the Senate, a body that specializes in getting nothing done, ever. By contrast, several of the governors he is likely to face in a 2016 Republican presidential primary have gotten a lot of stuff done. They're far-right Republicans, so it's evil stuff, but Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Texas' Rick Perry have signed their names to actual laws making life worse for their constituents, as opposed to Cruz, who has accomplished little beyond standing in the way of a functional federal government in order to make sure everyone knows he's angry. And now Cruz has served them up a juicy quote to use in contrasting what they've accomplished with what he has.