Election 2016: Ted Cruz Announces Presidential Campaign

[Lizardo]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/24/us/politics/ted-cruz-2016-presidential-race.html?_r=0

Sen. Ted Cruz (R) has become the first person to announce his campaign for the office of President in 2016. It'll be a while before the upcoming 2016 Election becomes a constant, near-insufferable presence in our lives, but it all really starts here. In the upcoming weeks and months, we'll start seeing other candidates doing the same. For the Democratic Party, the frontrunner expected to follow Obama is clear: Hillary Clinton. But the GOP has quite a few interesting, high-profile candidates to choose from. In addition to Ted Cruz, other Republicans expected to throw their hat into the ring include Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, Chris Christie, Ben Carson, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, and Mike Huckabee.

Ted Cruz announced his candidacy at Liberty University (read a full transcript here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...c4011a-d168-11e4-a62f-ee745911a4ff_story.html) on Monday morning. After a story about his immigrant parents and a call for conservatives to "demand their liberty", Cruz criticized the president's healthcare law and suggested he would repeal it if elected into office. He also laid out other aims:

establishing a flat tax that "lets every American fill out his or her taxes on a postcard".
abolishing the IRS.
doing away with the president's executive amnesty and securing the borders.
working to preserve the "sanctity of human life" and to "uphold the sacrament of marriage".
repealing Common Core.
stand with Israel and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
and to defeat "radical Islamic terrorism".

How do you feel about Ted Cruz as a potential GOP candidate? How do you feel about his chances in the Republican primary?

Also: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/us/politics/2016-presidential-candidates.html?_r=0

 

[obZen]

He sounds like your typical southern Republican, which is a big "NO" in my book.
Common Core shouldn't be repealed, but it must be reformed. They injected far too much reading, and facing reality, many students just aren't on the same reading level as expected, and instead of doing math problems, they're learning how to read.
But I agree with the new method of teaching math, which is how I've always done math (breaking numbers into piece, ie. 46+27 is the same as 40+60 and 16+7).

I really hope Governor Christie comes forward on the Replublican side. I really don't want to vote for Hillary Clinton. I'm sure the third party candidates won't be allowed at the presidential debates, yet again!

 

[Lizardo]

I really don't want to vote for Hillary Clinton either. But I'd much rather she be President in 2017 than anyone in a party whose candidates will include Scott Walker, Jeb Bush (because apparently the last Bush wasn't bad enough), Rand Paul, and Ted Cruz.

There's nothing about the GOP in general that makes me want to see a Republican in the White House. The last Republican president was a disaster, the GOP has spent the last six years and counting doing everything it could to set back progress just to spite Obama, and I loathe the current GOP Congress with a passion. And in spite of that, things are still better now than they were by the end of the W. years, no thanks to the GOP.

As for Ted Cruz, he bills himself as a "courageous conservative". He rose to national prominence in 2013 as the most outspoken (read: obnoxious) voice in the Senate supporting the House Republicans' shutdown of the government. He's a climate change denier who opposes abortion rights and gay marriage. His approach to geopolitics is more sabre-ratting in place of diplomacy (particularly where Iran is concerned), and he wants to drive the nation closer to the current warmonger in Israel. His platform is built on pandering to the hardcore conservative base, primarily evangelicals. So, yeah, definitely a typical Southern Republican.

That said, I don't see Ted Cruz winning the GOP primary. One of the reasons Jeb Bush is the current frontrunner is because he's a Republican moderate - insofar as the current Republican Party, which has gone far to the right, even has one. Same as John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 (and, again, being a "moderate" in the GOP doesn't really say much). That makes him a much safer bet on the national stage, where votes from Independents and people otherwise undecided matter, for mainstream Republican donors and voters to bet on. And the field is so crowded that even amongst the extreme portions of the Party, Cruz will be competing with other candidates like Scott Walker. He's got an uphill battle in front of him.

Oh, and after Cruz announced that he was running for President, someone did this: http://www.tedcruz.com/

 

[Livewire]

Cruz is a demagogue who stands next to no chance in the general. He'll get everybody whipped up and eventually the GOP primary will be a circus like we had in 2012, with Cruz and Rand Paul going back and forth over who's the most batshit insane/possibly conservative. Walker's really the only one out of the hypothetical bunch so far who would perform well enough in the general election at this point. Christie has Bridgegate hanging over him still and that's almost too easy a target for a Dem challenger to hit, over and over in ad after ad.

 

[Pepperton]

He sounds like your typical southern Republican, which is a big "NO" in my book.

you and me both brotha

He has zero chance, his slogan already tells you his campaign is a joke, even the announcement event was laughable. Looking forward to seeing what happens purely for entertainment purposes.

 

[Pinkie-Dawn]

After reading a page of him from KYM, yeah, no. I really doubt he'll win the GOP. Is there anyone else from the Republicans whose worth voting for this year?