Ranting On...Ted Cruz

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

Like I’ve said several times, this is largely a 2016-free zone, unless for some reason the media or a major politician has become such a part of the national conversation that it seems difficult to ignore.  This was the case last week with our Hillary Clinton rant, and I just couldn’t let the week pass without mentioning Ted Cruz as part of our Friday rant.

The first thing to address is just who is Sen. Ted Cruz?  He’s a Tea Party darling, obviously, and like I mentioned earlier this week in our primary article, he’s not beholden to the Republican Party.  In 2012, when Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison decided to retire, it appeared that her logical successor was Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.  Dewhurst was at the time the most powerful politician in Texas not named Rick Perry, and seemed destined for a major spot in the national conversation.  However, his conservative bona fides were questioned (not sure how-his record is about as conservative as you could get), and Ted Cruz waltzed in and won a runoff against Dewhurst by a landslide 13-points.

Cruz has since become a leading voice in the conservative movement, and has positioned himself in a place no Republican would have guessed a year ago: at the front of the party's presidential race.  While Chris Christie has become the choice of the moderate Republicans, and Marco Rubio/Paul Ryan continue to stay below-the-radar, Ted Cruz has come out blazing.  The primaries may not be for another few years, but don’t tell Cruz that-he’s already campaigning.

The thing about Cruz’s filibuster that was so stunning from a political standpoint was that it had no chance of succeeding.  The Senate, after 21-hours of politics, mixed with some Dr. Seuss, still proceeded to the funding bill.  This wasn’t a Wendy Davis style “Mr. Smith” speech; in Davis’s case, she had to meet a deadline to the kill the bill and she did.  Cruz’s speech didn’t accomplish anything tangible.  Sure, he gained an enormous focus on his and his fellow Republicans’ efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act, but the end result is unlikely to be in different due to his actions.

No, and I don’t mean to be cynical here, but there’s no way not to talk about it with a little bit of eye-rolling: this speech was all about Ted Cruz.  From a political standpoint, this was a brilliant maneuver.  While the Democratic Party is in a situation where it’s likely Hillary or Bust (we as a party really need to start pushing our bench of Gillibrand, Patrick, O’Malley, Cuomo, and Klobuchar to a stronger position in the national conversation), the Republicans have a plethora of strong contenders.  Cruz’s job in trying to be president (and make no doubt-anyone who did what he just did is more interested in the White House than a long career on Capitol Hill) is to find a way to distinguish himself from the brimming Republican bench of contenders.  Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Scott Walker, and Sarah Palin all have longer resumes and a better claim on the nomination.  On a base level, all of these politicians agree on almost every major Republican issue-Cruz needs to get his name in the media in order to gain the upper hand.  This filibuster is easily his boldest (and most successful) move so far.

The reason for this is simple, and something that should be noted with the increasing movement to appease the base in presidential primaries: once the primaries are done, you have a 50/50 shot of being president.  We haven’t quite yet moved away from the 2000 election, which was a razor thin victory for George Bush in a nation that barely went for Vice President Gore.  The country, both in the popular vote and in the electoral college, remain fairly evenly divided.  One could make an argument that the Democrats have gained some upper ground in getting to 270, but elections in 2002, 2004, and 2010 prove that the swing states can move to the GOP with a modicum of ease.  As John Kerry and Mitt Romney (both candidates who inspired little fervor in their respective bases) proved, once you’ve gotten through the primary, you instantly get 47% of the vote-it’s the nominee's job to grab the last 1-2%.

So for Cruz, his biggest issue in 2016 may well be the primary.  It certainly was for Barack Obama the last time we had an open White House; few objective people would argue that John McCain gave him a harder race than Hillary Clinton.  This filibuster shows Cruz as a principled (you have to give him that) “man-of-the-people;” a fighter and a champion on one of the GOP’s biggest pet causes.  Every other major Republican has come out against the ACA, but no one gets the credit that Cruz does.  Being the face of the most important issue for the GOP is an enviable position for any politician who wants the White House, and you know that Paul, Christie, and Rubio are wishing they had gone on such a successful media blitz.

Cruz’s move didn’t come without penalties, of course.  He’s made a mortal enemy out of the likes of John McCain, John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and John Cornyn, four of the most powerful Republicans in Congress.  He’s not going to be getting any plum committee spots after this, and I doubt he’ll ever be able to be a significant policy shaper for the Republicans, unless he can succeed into an executive position.

But for the purposes of what he was trying to accomplish (positioning himself as a major player in the next presidential election and as the poster boy for overturning the ACA), this has to be considered a home run.  Like it or not America, Ted Cruz has arrived.