Ted Cruz and His Fight for the Nomination

“The Obama economy is a disaster, Obamacare is a train wreck and the Obama-Clinton foreign policy of leading from behind—the whole world is on fire.” Ted Cruz’s climax was nigh as he roused the crowd with hellfire, brimstone and thinly-veiled references to interracial sodomy. Before Mr. Cruz could finish his description of the third installment of Thomas Cole’s Course of Empire, a young girl interrupted him: “The world is on fire?” Mr. Cruz offered in return in a tranquil tenor, a convenient summation of his platform for candidacy: “Yes, your world is on fire.”

A few days later Mr. Cruz posted a fateful tweet: “I’m running for President, and I hope to earn your support!” This tweet marked the official beginning of the 2016 race for the presidency.

If you don’t know the name of the latest maverick to his the GOP stage, you might remember him as the Senator from Texas who gallantly filibustered in protest of the Affordable Care Act, during which he professed to the nation that his father invented green eggs and ham, and that he isn’t partial to them. (According to the Ron Swanson “Are you America” barometer, Mr. Cruz just came up wanting—if not downright Soviet in his lack of love for literary breakfast.)

So now that he put his name into the goblet of fire the question becomes: will the courageous conservative be chosen to compete in the Tri-Wizard Tournament—I mean 2016 presidential race?

Mr. Cruz followed up the announcement of his candidacy via Twitter (no doubt an attempt to depict himself as “in touch” with current technology and youth trends) with a speech at Liberty University, a Christian college in Lynchburg, Virginia—the university equivalent of Evangelical Wonder Bread. Mr. Cruz, a master of not-so-subtle symbolism, thus began with an effort towards carving out a two-fold base within the Republican Party: Evangelical Christians, and libertarian, small-government advocates.

How does the strategy measure up to the challenges that lay ahead? According to New York Times polling data, 47% of Iowa Republicans identify as “very conservative” and 57% describe themselves as born-again or Evangelical.” Having found salvation from his Canadian roots and born again in the rolling prairies of Texas, his message will surely resonate among Evangelical voters. Mr. Cruz has also spent tireless hours cultivating support among the conservative members of his party with plays taken right from the Stick-It-To-Em-Bible-Style playbook: he was the mastermind, alongside Mitch McConnell, of his caucus’s ill-fated attempt at a federal government shutdown. These numbers do not disqualify Mr. Cruz by any means. If he does well enough in Iowa and Texas, he may end up being a serious contender for the nomination.

However, even before Mr. Cruz took the Senate by the horns during the shutdown episode, Foreign Policy magazine awarded him for his mavericking the apparently much sought-after accolade: “The Most Hated Man in the Senate.” Foreign Policy described the Senator as “the human equivalent of one of those flower-squirters that clowns wear on the their lapels.”

Animosity towards Mr. Cruz from both left and right is not based just on being a grassroots outsider, taking on the conservative establishment to breath new life into the GOP. Mr. Cruz once served as clerk to Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and as a junior aide on W.’s presidential campaign. To get a glimpse of Mr. Cruz’s relationship with the conservative establishment, look no further than the 2000 Bush v. Gore oral arguments in the Supreme Court. Mr. Cruz, the former law clerk, had acquired tickets. Donald Evans, W.’s campaign chairman, wanted to attend. The New York Times reported that Mr. Cruz initially refused to hand over the tickets and only after a harsh talking-to from superiors did he roll over. At one point, Mr. Cruz came into open conflict with the Republican establishment when he signed a fund-raising letter for the Senate Conservatives Fund, whose purpose is to defeat excessively-moderate, incumbent Republicans.

Mr. Cruz’s hostility and, dare I say, wacko desperation for the spotlight has been on display time and time again through his career. In 2010, during his stint as solicitor general of Texas, he accused Harvard Law School of employing a dozen communist professors during his tenure there. And when questioned, Cruz insisted he still sees red there. In his campaign for office in 2012, he incited fear among constituents with stories of a United Nations environmental initiative led by George Soros to banish golf courses (Oh, hell). During Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s nomination process, Mr. Cruz attracted criticism not only from the left, but also from the right – including Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain. He has been known to advocate the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service. As David Ludwig of The Atlantic points out, these disparate positions sound more like outlandish paranoia than a political platform.

In his speech at Liberty University, Mr. Cruz took the simplistic position that President Obama is unequivocally bad for Israel, imploring his audience to imagine a president who stands unapologetically with Her. But what if Mr. Obama were to have behaved as Mr. Cruz’s political and spiritual lodestar, Ronald Reagan, had? As Haaretz essayist Chemi Shalev put it: “Former President Ronald Reagan’s confrontations with Israel were harsh and personal, yet Republican conservatives revere him….” On display is not a viable political platform; it is, rather, an amalgam of Eangelical conspiracies and cheap, albeit well-played, rhetorical ploys.

But maybe Mr. Cruz the firebrand has a hidden, youthful appeal. He hasn’t yet grayed. He announced his candidacy on Twitter. Youth may appreciate Mr. Cruz’s frank bombast as more honest than the progressive or liberal rhetoric that so often comes across as constricted by political correctness and therefore insincere. Youth may perceive as refreshing rhetoric couched in a moral vocabulary. Perhaps Mr. Cruz answers the questions David Brooks continually poses in his column regarding our society’s excessive moral relativism, a problem particularly evident among college students. “Ted is able to use erudite constitutional analysis with politically appealing slogans—that’s a rare talent,” said Walter Dellinger, the former Solicitor General during the Clinton Administration. As a radical Republican whose conservative convictions are matched only by his intellect and talent at argumentation, Mr. Cruz embodies many liberals’ worst fears.

Or does he?

With only 40% Republicans behind the possibility of voting for him, and 38% diametrically opposed even to the idea of his presidential run, according to a NBC/WSJ poll, the odds of winning a nomination are not in Mr. Cruz’s favor. He simply lacks appeal to the median, even within his own party. Until now he has gotten by with clever rhetoric and his jowl being mistaken for Mitch McConnell’s. In reality, though, he ranks quite low among his competitors, worsted only by Chris Christie.

Compared to his competition for the nomination, Mr. Cruz falls short in the reality of his vision with regard to garnering votes from outside his narrow base. Rubio supports comprehensive immigration reform. Not even Rand Paul embraces in earnest W.-style foreign policy. Cruz, in truth, is not selling an alternative to bipartisan bickering. The “tree of liberty,” according to Thomas Jefferson, Cruz’s other lodestar (second only to Reagan) “must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants” (that is, Democrats and Republicans willing to work with them). As University of California, Los Angeles political science professor John Zaller put it to The New York Times, a “candidate without substantial party support has never won the nomination.”

And despite Mr. Cruz’s best efforts to spit in the face of the Republican Party’s establishment, his entry will only bolster it. Mr. Cruz will save the newest Bush to make his foray into presidential politics from having to embellish his conservatism. Maybe it is all a grand plot for Cruz to sacrifice himself to save Bush.

In 2008, it was a moose hunter whose primary appeals were that she was a hockey-mom and could wax eloquent in Swansonesque ‘Murica trope. In 2016, it begins with Mr. Cruz. In 2016 the GOP will once again have to confront its radical demons and internal contradictions. Cruz represents a fundamental dilemma for the Republican Party: its electoral prospects must prove their mettle with firebrand political theatre rather than feasible policy.