Ted Cruz: I’ve Taken on the Republican Establishment, and I’ll do it Again

Ted Cruz is a conservative who’s willing to stand up not only to the Democratic insiders in the Washington Cartel, but also to the insiders from his own party. He’s willing to stand up to the media. And most important, Ted Cruz has a proven record of standing up and fighting for these conservative beliefs when others have turned and ran for the tall grass. This race isn’t about who can be the best campaign conservative, it’s about who can be the most consistent conservative. In response to a question about how he would work with Republican leadership, Sen. Cruz responded: “The American people are looking for someone to speak the truth… There is a reason that we have $18 trillion in debt because as Republicans, as conservatives, we keep winning elections – we got a Republican House, we got a Republican Senate – but we don’t have leaders who honor their commitments. I will always tell the truth and do what I said I would do.” As was noted in American Spectator:

In a conversation with The American Spectator, Cruz made it plain that he intends to pursue a 21st-century version of the insurgency strategy pioneered by the late Ronald Reagan. Bringing together the Reagan wing of the GOP that is composed of national security, social, pro-growth, and libertarian conservatives. The Reagan coalition broadened the base of the party to bring in everyone from evangelicals to women to union workers to Latinos. Reagan’s nomination battles in both 1976 (when he almost defeated GOP Establishment favorite and sitting president Gerald Ford) and 1980 (when he defeated Establishment favorite George H.W. Bush) summoned a virtual army of supporters who had previously never spent a day in politics. This would be well in keeping with Cruz’s record in the Senate, where Cruz has stood in decidedly Reagan-style against the Republican Washington Establishment, notably with his bold plan to defund Obamacare in 2013. That line-in-the-sand tactic, something Reagan used repeatedly as candidate and president to draw a bright red line between Republicans and Democrats, was furiously assaulted by many of Cruz’s Republican Senate colleagues and most of the Establishment GOP, with some GOP senators going out of their way to deliberately sabotage the Cruz effort to defund the highly unpopular mandatory health program. Cruz was also opposed at the time by other potential GOP presidential candidates Jeb Bush, Scott Walker, and Chris Christie, as well as the losing 2012 party nominees Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. Insisting Cruz was badly damaging the party’s 2014 chances was former Bush 43 top White House aide Karl Rove. In February 2014, when Cruz, in another line-in-the-sand moment insisted on holding Senate Republicans accountable in a vote to raise the debt limit, the Establishment GOP turned on him again. The Wall Street Journal editorialized that Cruz was “The Minority Maker.” In fact, the 2014 elections brought a tidal wave of support for the Republican Party, giving it the best showing since 1928 with a take-over of the Senate and more seats in its House majority. Republicans even won governorships in the bluest states of Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland.