Cruz: GOP foreign policy debate could lead to 2016 run

Sen. Ted Cruz hinted in an interview released Sunday that growing instability around the world could help convince him to run for president in 2016 even as he resisted a direct attack on one potential Republican rival.

“It increases my interest in doing everything I can to change the direction we’re on," the Texas Republican told ABC News in an interview that aired in part on "This Week."

“The American people in 2014 and also November 2016 are going to be looking for leaders who want to work to restore America’s leadership in the world,” Cruz said.

The battle to shape U.S. foreign policy wages on not only between Democrats and Republicans, but within the Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), another potential 2016 hopeful, has generally taken a more isolationist stance than most Republicans on conflicts around the world, though he's insisted in a Time magazine op-ed that he is not an isolationist and, to the contrary, hopes to see President Barack Obama act more aggressively to fight the threat posed by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

Asked about Paul's assertion that he isn't an isolationist, Cruz wouldn't say whether he agrees. "I’m going to let Rand characterize his own views,” Cruz said. “And I will leave that to the American people to make their own judgments.”

"If we must have an enemy at the head of Government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures." - Alexander Hamilton

"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates wouldn’t make any sense at all." -- President Ronald Reagan

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." - Thomas Paine 1792

"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams

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