Meet Ted Cruz.
Why?
If the Republican presidential nomination goes to a less than conservative candidate, the conservative activists and Tea Party members will need to concentrate their considerable political assets on the capture of the US Senate in 2012.
Ted Cruz is an announced candidate for the Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison. He has already been publically endorsed by the Club for Growth PAC, FreedomWorks PAC and talk-radio host Mark Levin. And Cruz’s most conservative potential rival for the nomination decided to seek a House seat instead.
Cruz’s credentials are impressive. Before he earned a Harvard law degree magna cum laude (and helped found the Harvard Latino Law Review) and clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Cruz’s senior thesis at Princeton was on the Constitution’s Ninth and 10th amendments. In it, Cruz argued that these amendments support the principle that powers not enumerated are not possessed by the federal government.
There’s more.
By the time Ted Cruz was 13, he was winning speech contests. In his early teens he traveled around Texas and out of state giving speeches. At Princeton, he finished first in the 1992 U.S. National Debate Championship and North American Debate Championship.
As Texas’s solicitor general from 2003 to 2008, Cruz submitted 70 briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court, and he has, so far, argued nine cases there. He favors school choice and personal investment accounts for a portion of individuals’ Social Security taxes.
On immigration, Cruz demands secure borders and opposes amnesty for illegal immigrants but echoes Ronald Reagan’s praise of legal immigrants as “Americans by choice,” people who are “crazy enough” to risk everything to immigrate in America.
One in six Americans is Hispanic. And the Republican Party’s future is bright indeed with the emergence of some outstanding Hispanics who have been victorious recently. The three Hispanics recently elected to major offices in 2010 — Florida’s Senator Marco Rubio, Nevada’s Governor Brian Sandoval and New Mexico’s Governor Susana Martinez are Republicans.
“It took Jimmy Carter to give us Ronald Reagan,” says Cruz, who believes the reaction against Barack Obama will give the Republican Party a cadre of conservatives who take their principles and inspiration from the US Constitution. The cadre is arriving: Senators Lee (R-UT) and Rubio (R-FL) were born seven days apart, and Cruz six months earlier.
Keep Mr. Ted Cruz on your radar. We will be hearing more from him soon.
All that and a Texan Too?? Hold on to your hats America!!
But Ed, with a name like “Cruz,” we Tea Party racists could never support him. Guess we’ll have to look elsewhere for a candidate to support in Texas.
(Wink, wink)