They love him for his charisma
Even as Sen. Ted Cruz was
denying a
report that he had all but made up his mind to launch a 2016 presidential campaign,
The Washington Post profiled his appearance at last weekend's so-called Values Voters Summit and found overwhelming support for the freshman senator.
While there is not yet a front-runner in the early race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) is quickly becoming the favored contender of social conservatives, riding a recent wave of fiery speeches and standing ovations at right-wing conferences.
Until the campaign begins and votes are cast, sweeping statements like that aren't worth the pixels they're displayed on, but Cruz does appear to have some real support, winning his second consecutive presidential straw poll of conference attendees. According to
The Post, Cruz's core supporters on the right think he could capture the nomination because the GOP establishment hasn't been able to settle on a favored candidate like they did in 2012 with Mitt Romney, leaving an opening for Cruz who they see as ...
... a charismatic, youthful and unrepentant champion who also holds traditional GOP views on foreign and economic policy.
Yeah, I can see your eyes rolling at the notion of Ted Cruz being charismatic, but the key thing is that Cruz's social conservative supporters see him as someone who shares their views on cultural and religious issues but is aligned with the GOP establishment on foreign policy and economic issues, which leads them to believe that Cruz could actually build a coalition between the establishment and social conservatives.
Crazy though a Cruz candidacy may sound, that actually seems like a plausible theory—assuming Cruz can convince the GOP's big money people that he wouldn't sound like a lunatic on the campaign trail. Hopefully he can, because by taking their most unpopular positions and packaging them into one convenient target for Democratic candidates from Hillary Clinton on down in 2016, a Ted Cruz presidential campaign would be a dream come true.
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