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Posted on 05/16/2014 8:34:57 AM PDT by SoConPubbie
1. Sen. Ted Cruz was born on Dec. 22, 1970 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada to a Cuban father and an American mother. When questions arose about his eligibility to run for president, Cruz released his birth certificate. From the article in The Dallas Morning News:
Dated a month after his birth on Dec. 22, 1970, it shows that Rafael Edward Cruz was born to Rafael Bienvenido Cruz, a “geophysical consultant” born in Matanzas, Cuba, and the former Eleanor Elizabeth Wilson, born in Wilmington, Del.
Her status made the baby a U.S. citizen at birth. For that, U.S. law required at least one parent who was a U.S. citizen who had lived for at least a decade in the United States.
She registered his birth with the U.S. consulate, Frazier said, and the future senator received a U.S. passport in 1986 ahead of a high school trip to England.
2. His father was imprisoned as part of Fidel Castro’s movement to overthrow Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in the 1950s. From a 2006 profile of then-Texas solicitor general Cruz by the Austin American-Statesman:
Cruz's father rarely spoke of his sacrifice. Cruz learned of it in bits and pieces from his grandparents, aunts and uncles. Rafael Cruz loathed oppression and was willing to die to end it. "He was a guerrilla, throwing Molotov cocktails and blowing up buildings."
Battista's soldiers beat the elder Cruz in prison, and only his own father's bribe freed him in 1957. While earning a degree in mathematics at UT, Cruz spoke to Austin business groups, lauding Castro's revolution. After the victory in 1959, hearing from relatives what Castro was doing, Cruz returned to those same business groups to apologize, Ted Cruz said.
"My father has been my hero my whole life," he said.
3. His education in conservatism came early on. His teacher from an after-school education program picked him to be part of a traveling show about the Constitution. From The Weekly Standard:
Story chose four or five of his best students, led by Cruz, to join a traveling troupe called the Constitutional Corroborators. He hired a mnemonic specialist to teach them how to memorize the text of the Constitution up through the Bill of Rights. (Who wants to memorize the Eleventh Amendment?) Armed with an easel and felt pens, with Mrs. Moore or another parent at the wheel, the corroborators drove throughout Texas and occasionally beyond to breakfasts, lunches, or dinners held by the Rotary Club or Kiwanis or the VFW or any other civic group with an open slot for speakers. While the audience sawed away at the Chicken a la King, the corroborators wrote out various articles of the Constitution word for word. When the meal was over they’d take questions.
“The people just loved them,” Mrs. Moore says. “They knew so much, people couldn’t believe it! And you had to be a very polished speaker. Ted really worked at it. He’d practice at home in front of the mirror to get everything just right.”
4. He was a champion debater during his undergraduate years at Princeton. But after one particular round, Cruz and his partner faced off against the other team in a different competition. From Slate:
Cruz competed against and lost to former White House economic adviser Austan Goolsbee in the American Parliamentary Debate Association's 1991 Team of the Year* contest. (Cruz went on to win in 1992.) Goolsbee's debate partner, David Gray, recalled that after beating Cruz and his partner, David Panton, one team challenged the other to a pickup basketball game. As Gray remembers it, Goolsbee was matched up to guard Cruz, and proceeded to trash-talk Cruz up and down the court.
"Austan can be very, very funny. He kept challenging Ted to shoot the ball from outlandishly long places—'I bet you $20 you can't make a shot from right here,' " Gray said. "Austan would bait Ted to shoot, shoot, shoot, and it was not a good result for him. ... Ted couldn’t help himself from taking the shots." Princeton lost the game.
5. Cruz keeps a reminder in his Senate office of the first time he argued in front of the Supreme Court. From a GQ profile by Jason Zengerle:
But all along, what kept drawing my eye was a giant oil painting above the couch depicting Cruz as he delivered the first of his nine oral arguments before the Supreme Court. "I was 32 years old," he recalled. "It was abundantly clear we didn't have a prayer.... And I've always enjoyed the fact that as I'm sitting at my desk, I'm looking at a giant painting of me getting my rear end whipped 9-0." He gazed at the wall. It is an unusual painting: From the artist's vantage point, we see three other courtroom artists, each also drawing Cruz—so the painting actually features not one but four images of young Cruz before the bench. "It is helpful," he explained to me, "for keeping one grounded."
6. Cruz met a future Senate counterpart during a 2010 meeting of the Federalist Society in Washington. From the GQ article:
He'd been out of government for two years and was looking for a way back in, this time via election. The only real opening in Texas, though, was a U.S. Senate seat—an impossible reach for Cruz, who'd never even held elected office.
But at the meeting, he met someone who had pulled off that exact feat: Utah senator-elect Mike Lee. Like Cruz, Lee had been a creature of the conservative legal movement, having clerked for Samuel Alito on the Supreme Court. Like Cruz, he had left Washington to become a government lawyer back home. And like Cruz, he had never before run for office. But he rode the Tea Party wave of 2010 into the Senate, ousting an incumbent Republican by running to his right. After the Federalist Society meeting, Lee and Cruz took a long walk around the Capitol. "We talked about every conceivable political and constitutional issue," Lee recalls. "I concluded we were kindred spirits."
7. Cruz typically likes to wear a pair of cowboy boots he calls his “argument boots.” But he ditched them for his 21-hour speech on the Senate floor this week. From the Star-Telegram:
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., reminded him during the first hours of Cruz' crusade on the Senate floor against Obamacare to wear comfortable shoes.
Cruz said he remembered that Paul had touted comfortable shoes after the Kentucky senator's filibuster against drone use in the U.S. earlier this year.
"I will embarrassingly admit that I took the coward's way," said Cruz. The Texan wore black tennis shoes instead.
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I like Cruz, Perry and Col. West.
If Cruz isn’t the nominee for 2016, I probably won’t be voting.
God Bless Senators Cruz and Lee!
BUT it is also up to us to support them and the real conservatives against the Dems/ Libs
That means we must vote
We let them down in 2012( even as we Texans elected Cruz)
Those who chose NOT to vote for Romney for whatever reason might as well as voted for the POS 0dumbo.
If Bugs bunny is running at the GOP candidate in 2016 we must vote for him.
Can anyone who did not vote for Romney because they didn’t like some of his views honestly say that POS we got is better than Romney would have been?
Thanks for the article. Hopefully it gets people thinking
And if he is, this is just the opener for nbc. This is their version of a hit piece. They’re very busy talking to all shopkeepers to find just a piece of soil on his wife
They never talk about him, they have nothing (bad) to say about him
At this point I’d have to agree. Unless someone new pops out of the woodwork Cruz is the only candidate that I believe at this time that I could pull the lever for.
About that Screen name...are you a Bernard Cornwell fan?
I experimented with Giles Kristian but I found myself getting bored quickly.
Not sure Ted is eligble if he was born in Canada.
I'd also recommend Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey and Maturin series if you haven't tried them yet. It's a 21 book series but each book is just an extended chapter in a long, addictive novel.
Truly addicting.
So, then, it was romney who elected Obama. He told social conservatives to get lost. They did.
bump
I am always amazed when people get upset at those who refuse to vote for liberals, on this forum of all places
I am also amazed how often these same people look back and try to justify their deserting their principles. It’s beginning to strike me as a guilty conscience.
How could I vote for Romney over 0dumbo, knowing that if I didn’t vote for Romney I increased that POS BO’s chances of winning?
EASY REally EASY
Because the areas that a POTUS and party in power control has a huge effect on our entire country. and I am proven right in what the vile POS has done just since his re-election.
There are several areas of consideration for my vote. there will NEVER be a candidate who agrees with me in every area
but I considered the harm BO would do, the harm that is destroying our nation
That YOU, even knowing the Godless BO not only supported abortion and gay marriage but could also issue executive orders expanding both, would not vote against him I find sad.
We should agree to disagree on what Romney might have done on your 2 issues but I know you can see what the evil BO did
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