Republican Senator Ted Cruz announced his 2016 bid, and pundits have been quick to point out that Cruz is too extreme to be a serious candidate for president.
First up, The New York Times editorial board:
[I]f you know Mr. Cruz, or are familiar with how government is supposed to work, or with reality in general, you’ll find some of his imaginaries problematic, like abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, sealing the border, or “repealing every word of Obamacare.”
“Imagine a federal government that works to defend the sanctity of human life and to uphold the sacrament of marriage,” he said. But Mr. Cruz says he is a champion of personal liberty, too, and gay people who love each other are demanding their liberty to marry, just not in a way he finds acceptable. No data support Mr. Cruz’s claim that insurance premiums are “skyrocketing” under Obamacare. Immigrants, legal and otherwise, are building this country, and efforts to vacuum-seal the border would continue to fail, and the country would suffer from its hostility to its immigrants no matter what Mr. Cruz says. The rest of the world, of course, is indifferent to one Republican’s oratorical dog whistles. The global climate will keep changing, and causing calamities, with or without the acknowledgment of Mr. Cruz and his fellow climate know-nothings.
Mr. Cruz’s speech was an exercise in crowd-pleasing dissonance; the contradictions slip by if you’re not paying attention. America is great but needs to be made great again. Privacy is sacrosanct, and government should not get between you and your doctor, unless you’re a woman who wants to avoid or end a pregnancy. Mr. Cruz wants to repeal programs that protect some immigrants from deportation, but he has also said in the past that Republicans need to do better with Hispanic voters or risk extinction as a national party. His federalist views are incoherent: he wants states to be free to experiment with marijuana legalization, but attacked Mr. Obama for not cracking down on states that do so.
Carl M. Cannon at Real Clear Politics:
[W]ith his ultra-thin résumé, Ted Cruz cannot afford to sound like a generic conservative. So then he added this: “Imagine abolishing the IRS.” At the risk of sounding ungenerous, this is just kooky. Cruz didn’t go anywhere with that idea, but where could he go, really? He prefaced his brief tax talk by characterizing the nation’s current tax code as one “that crushes innovation,” which assumes facts not in evidence, before adding: “Imagine a simple flat tax that lets every American fill out his or her taxes on a postcard.”
Not to sound pedantic, but if there’s no Internal Revenue Service, where should I send that post card? To whom do I pay my taxes? And if my neighbor, balking perhaps at President Cruz’s governing priorities, refuses to even pay his “simple flat tax,” which government agency persuades him to pony up? Won’t we need that tax money to fight radical Islamic terrorism?
There were other odd aspects to Cruz’s speech, starting with its untraditional setting. The candidate wasn’t in his home state of Texas, where other GOP officials view him with mistrust and voters must wonder why, after serving only two years as an elected official, Cruz thinks he deserves promotion to the highest office in the land.
Much more below the fold.
Tim Mak at The Daily Beast on Ted Cruz going "televangelist":
Cruz's speech was preceded by 25 minutes of worship music -- were it not for the lyrics, you might have felt like you were at a loud Jonas Brothers concert, pulsing bass and all. Attendance at convocation was mandatory for students, so Cruz was guaranteed a full house. [...] It was the cadence of a televangelist, all the way down to the mic hooked up to his ear and wrapped down the right side of his face, wandering to all eight sides of the stage to talk to different segments of the deeply Christian crowd. [...]
And at the end of his remarks he called for the crowd to text Cruz’s campaign so they have their contact information: text the word ‘constitution’ to 33733, the senator urged.
“God isn’t done with American yet,” Cruz said.
Mark Morford at The San Francisco Chronicle lists the 10 best things about Cruz running for president:
Cruz’ vehement refusal to accept the science of climate change – which was enough to make Jerry Brown call him “absolutely unfit” for the presidency – will bring out the worst in his own party’s already fractured, combative extremism; his opponents will either have to sigh heavily and agree with Cruz’ radicalism, or play the moderate card and risk alienating the wrath of the dumbed-down base to which Cruz, like Sarah Palin before him, is shamelessly appealing. Either way, the debates should be a clown car of lowest common-denominator, anti-intellectual delight.
And
The Onion chimes in:
Texas senator Ted Cruz announced Monday that he will run for president in 2016, becoming the first Republican politician to officially declare his candidacy. Here is what you should know about the first-term senator:
Political Positions: Deafening
Ethnicity: White enough
Supporters: Those people from high school who got married when they were 18
Speaks: Spanish, English, Tongues
Campaign Slogan: “I’m Ted Cruz”
Likelihood Of Becoming President: Huckabeesque
Over at Five Thirty Eight,
Harry Enten explains that Cruz is too extreme and too disliked to be a serious candidate:
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s newly minted presidential campaign is the media equivalent of a juicy rib-eye that robbers use to distract a guard dog during a heist. He’ll get a ton of media attention, and he’ll get to spread his message — which may be all that Cruz is after — but Cruz almost certainly has no shot of winning the nomination, according to every indicator that predicts success in presidential primaries.
The editors at
Bloomberg put an end to the myth that Cruz is a "courageous" politician:
A courageous conservative would be willing to stand up to the ideologues and zealots in the Republican Party and confront truths that they will not. That may be too much to ask of a presidential candidate -- but when one of them claims the mantle of courage, he or she asks to be judged by that standard.
A courageous conservative would dare to tell the Republican Party that the U.S. economy needs the 11 million immigrants who are here illegally, and many more besides; that they aren't going to be deported, and that it would tank the economy if they were; and that it is long past time for Republicans to put forward a comprehensive plan to fix the immigration system. Cruz, the son of a Cuban immigrant, has the background to make this argument, as other conservatives have done. Apparently he lacks the guts.
A courageous conservative wouldn't be afraid to tell Republican voters that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly indicates that human activity is contributing to climate change, which is creating serious economic risks, and that ignoring this danger isn't "conservative." Many Republicans are beginning to face this reality, but no thanks to Cruz. He's adopted the party’s new talking point of calling anyone who favors action on climate change an “alarmist.”
And, on a final note, Peter Weber at The Week points out that Cruz is the protest candidate nobody was asking for:
Cruz will run as the Obama-despising, hawkish, religious conservative candidate of a party already defined by its religious conservatism, enthusiasm for foreign entanglements, and opposition to Obama. His pitch to donors and voters will be that such a candidate can capture such a party's presidential nomination.
But the Republican Party, as it usually does, will try to pick a winner, not a martyr to conservative purity. [...]
Cruz has to pretend like he is going to win, or nobody will take his candidacy seriously. [...]
Jumping into the race first means that he will start off by making a splash in the press. But history hasn't been kind to early entrants. "The only first announcers to secure nominations since the midpoint of the 20th century," note Bloomberg's Margaret Talev, Jonathan, Allen, and David Weigel, "were Democrats Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and George McGovern in 1972." Ted Cruz almost certainly doesn't want to be part of that club, and unluckily for him, he probably won't be.
