Why Ted Cruz Made the Right Choice

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)

With Sen. Ted Cruz's (R-TX) announcement yesterday, the 2016 presidential race, which has been waging throughout the Republican Party since Mitt Romney dropped the ball in 2012, got to use the word "official" for the first time with documentation to back it up.  While there are a number of thoughts about entering the race first (historically it's about as good of an idea as betting against a Meryl Streep Oscar nomination), I kind of think this may be the right move for Cruz, and I'll illustrate three reasons why below.

1. The GOP Roles are Essentially Solidifying, and He Doesn't Have One Yet

Looking at the Republican race, and at the serious candidates, Rand Paul has the Libertarians, Jeb Bush has the country club Republicans, and Scott Walker has the time-for-a-change-conservatives.  With Mike Huckabee on the sidelines with a whole host of Christian conservatives, there's not a lot of room for Ted Cruz to play in without trying to take over one of these factions.  Yes, of course there's the Tea Party wing, but really that's a hodgepodge of groups that's not really reliable, and as Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum learned in 2012, they aren't loyal enough or large enough to sway an entire electorate.  As an official candidate, Cruz can start talking and doing things that other candidates can't, and he can start to play the expectations game-if he succeeds, he might be able to chip away at the support for Walker and Huckabee, and perhaps deter potentially troublesome competitors (principally Sarah Palin and Ben Carson) from getting into the race or being a spoiler candidate to his campaign.

2. Ted Cruz Can Define the Race Now

One of the biggest things that Sen. Cruz has done in his time in Washington has been to be a thorn in the side of the establishment.  While most people know him from his epic filibusters, the reality is that his most meaningful role has been in giving John Boehner a massive migraine.  Persistently he has been the champion of the anti-Washington wing of the Republican Party, and has served as a pseudo-Speaker for the Tea Party in the House.  Ted Cruz's best chances at winning the White House would be to continue this path, but on a national scale and constantly targeting his fellow Republicans on the right.  Here's the deal with that aspect of the primary, and with elections in general: politicians already have an air of phoniness surrounding them, so when they clearly are just trying to appease a certain part of the electorate to win an election, it shows and people respond in kind.  You see this every Midterm when Democrats abandon their President (and it NEVER works), and this is going to be key in the Republican Primary.  People know that Ted Cruz is willing to go to the extreme right on issues like the Federal Reserve, Medicare, and gay marriage, and he knows that the GOP still has enough votes left to make him viable with these issues.  He also knows that candidates like Jeb Bush and Chris Christie don't. want. to. talk. about. them.  This is because they've got better general election credentials and they want to maintain their cake and eat it too in this regard.  Cruz can't take this race on his own, but he can make sure others lose and he is the beneficiary.  If he manages to turn Jeb Bush into Mitt Romney in 2012, don't expect the media to ignore that comparison and for the conservative right to say, "well we might as well lose with one of us" rather than going with the most "electable" candidate for the third cycle in a row.

3. Everyone Knows He's Running, So Why Not Run?

This is also true of Jeb, Hillary, Rand, and Walker, but Ted Cruz is unconventional, so why doesn't he take advantage of that by saying, "I know I want to run, I'm not just going to sit on the sidelines and wait to 'Take Back America?'"  This is to his advantage-he's not a gadfly in the same vein as Al Sharpton or Bob Smith, both of whom ran recently for President.  He's a sitting U.S. Senator with very strong name recognition and a sizable national showing.  There's no reason for him to wait (there's no reason for the rest to wait too, quite frankly, but that's an article for a different day), and the sooner he gets in the more press that he can demand.

These are all why Cruz should announce right now.  There's obviously a lot of hangups to his candidacy (principally that he would be a toxic general election candidate, to the point that Nancy Pelosi could conceivably become Speaker again), but let's hear your thoughts on Ted Cruz's entry-was it a good idea to get into the race so soon?  Share in the comments!