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.
If you can ignore the elimination of opposition to abortion, then you are clueless, or in support of it.
You seem determined to promote Mitt Romney on this Ted Cruz thread.
You are completely in error
Bur I have one question
Do you think Romney would have done so many disastrous things to our country as that POS?
and I know You can’t ignore the destruction in all areaas that Obama has wrought
for the record I started working on Senator Cruz’a campaign in Feb 2011
I am not the one who started blasting the GOP candidate. who while not perfect would have been better than what people who didn’t get out and vote( were you one?) or people who voted for a candidate they knew would lsoe ( or would you here)
These people who thought they were so high and mighty on 2 of their convictions( YES important but not the only ones as we see from what BO is doing ) are the reason our country is spiraling down noe
I’m not in complete error.
Your devotion to Romney is obsessive, and the passion mysterious.
I can’t help but notice how you keep ignoring the facts and corrections that have been presented to you on this Ted Cruz thread, as you keep hammering for the pro-abortion Mitt Romney here in mid 2014, whose goal was to make the GOP a pro-abortion party.
Only Mitt Romney could change the GOP internally, and contrary to what you said, once he won the nomination he claimed that he had openly “campaigned” as opposing the pro-life platform, and being for the “health” of the mother.
Do you think our country is better off with BO being re elected?
Do you think our country would have slid so much further down if Romney had been elected?
can you answer those?
I think you have already answered the question of where you are on abortion.
Indifferent, at best, so you are another one who supports the GOP moving left.
Why are you afraid to answer what happened after the 2012 elections
Do you think our country is better off with BO being re elected?
Do you think our country would have slid so much further down if Romney had been elected?
can you answer those?
Interesting that you got on this thread to hijack it and go into a rabid defense of Mitt Romney, and in a round about way, abortion, since you won’t even acknowledge it as important.
I think that can be explained by you aggressive defense of Romney when you first signed up in 2009, and this revealing of your lack of interest in social conservatism, in 2011.
To: BarnacleCenturion
so what can he do as POTUS?
legalize abortion?
we hve really serious financial issues that have to be addressed NOW
Of course I would rather my POTUS be firmly prolife
but that won’t be a deal breaker compared to what 0dumbo is doing to our country.
if newt is the nominee i will work as hard as i can for him
11 posted on 11/18/2011 1:59:45 PM by RWGinger
Can YOU say our country is better off with Obama being re elected?
LOL, you hijacked a Cruz thread for that?
Are you going to promote Mitt Romney and abortion, for 2016, on every Cruz thread?
Are you pleased with what 0dumbo has and is doing?
So you made your point and 0dumbo got reelected.
We are in such dire straits that are only going to get more dire I guess making your point was more important to you than another 6 triilion in debt.
and you think that by making your point we will get a candidate that is more acceptable to you?
That is as clueless as anything I have read from any Dem’ lib
I am through reading your oh so righteous excuses while Rome has burned down
done with this
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