2016 Presidential Election: Launching the Cruz Missile

Apparently, patience is not Ted Cruz’s favorite virtue. Sworn in as senator for Texas in January 2013, only a few days after celebrating his 43rd birthday, the tea party herald was already traveling around Iowa the next summer, assessing his support base in the event of an eventual bid for the presidency of the United States.

And today, he will confirm his reputation as a man in a hurry. Skipping a customary step, the formation of a presidential “exploratory committee,” Ted Cruz will become the first widely known politician to announce his candidacy to succeed Barack Obama. He will announce this during a speaking engagement at Liberty University; a Virginia institution founded by evangelical pastor Jerry Falwell, who died in 2007.

Ted Cruz has not selected this place at random. Already popular among activists of the populist and ultraconservative tea party movement, he will use the opportunity to court evangelical electors, whose votes will be crucial for the Republican nomination race. He will surely be joined by family members, like his father Rafael, who became a pastor.

Let’s be honest: Ted Cruz’s chances to become the Republican nominee in the 2016 presidential election remain relatively weak. The man has not made friends among his Republican colleagues in the Senate, particularly because of his futile crusade against Obamacare that resulted in a partial government shutdown in the fall of 2013. This action hasn’t impressed his party’s establishment either, who will be more inclined to support Jeb Bush, Scott Walker or Marco Rubio, the most serious virtual candidates in the Republican primaries.

However, there is a reason why the word “missile” often follows Ted Cruz’s name. The man likes to drop verbal bombs. Obviously, Barack Obama is his favorite target. According to him, the Democratic president is an “emperor” who tramples on the American Constitution and is an “apologist” for Islamic terrorism, among other things.

Nevertheless, Ted Cruz also attacks his people, including the leading Republicans in Congress and past party candidates to the presidency. “There are a lot of folks in Washington who argue that the way Republicans should win, is that we should nominate a candidate from the mushy middle,” he said to Fox News in January.

“Every single time we do that, whether it’s Gerald Ford or Bob Dole or John McCain or Mitt Romney, the result over and over again is we lose,” he added, positioning himself with Ronald Reagan’s legacy.

It’s easy to guess that Ted Cruz will soon add Jeb Bush to the list of candidates from the “mushy middle.” Indeed, he has already denounced the Florida ex-governor’s positions on the issues of immigration and education. A good number of conservative activists should be receptive to the criticism of the Texas senator who knows better than anyone how to express the conservatives’ contempt toward Washington and the Republican establishment.

Cruz Compared to Obama

Of course, Ted Cruz’s potential adversaries have already begun to fire back. The ex-governor of Texas, Rick Perry, who is thinking about putting forward another presidential bid, has recently attacked his state’s senator by comparing him to … Barack Obama!

“I think they’re [the American people] going to make a rather radical shift away from a young, untested United States senator whose policies have really failed,” he said to The Washington Post.

Rick Perry could also have brought up the fact that Cruz has a law degree from Harvard and was interested in constitutional law, just like Barack Obama.

It remains to be seen whether his opponents will try to question Cruz’s eligibility for the presidency, since he was born in Calgary, Canada. The senator has said that he is an American citizen by birth, as the Constitution says the president must be, since his mother was born in Delaware (his father is from Cuba). His place of birth does not affect his eligibility, according to the law to become president, which most experts admit.

Ted Cruz nonetheless renounced his Canadian citizenship in May 2014 so as not to leave any doubt as to his exclusive loyalty to the United States where he has lived since the age of four.

Stephen Harper, however, can count on his strong support in the Keystone XL issue.