“And how has the one term Senator, Constitutional scholar that has never done anything outside government but can wax eloquently and is beholden to special interests worked out for us?”
I gathered from your post that you do not know much about Ted Cruz. There is a fine post here listing some of his many accomplishments. Aside from that you are wrong about him never having a job outside of government. He has worked in private practice as an attorney.
His book is impressive as he started studying and speaking about the Constitution & Economics while in high school. He joined a group called the Free Enterprise Institute founded by Rolland Storey. Mr. Storey started a speech contest based on the ten pillars of economic wisdom.
After studying and reading works by Milton Freidman, Freidrich Hayek, Adam Smith, Bastiat & Ludwig Von Mises the students had to write a twenty minute speech based on each of those ten pillars. This was the beginning of his education & beliefs in the free market system.Cruz was a winner in that contest each of the 4 years he was in HS.
By the age of 14 he was giving speeches on economics to Chamber of Congress groups, Kiwanis, Rotary clubs and other business group over the state of Texas.
His second year in HS he joined the Constitutional Corroborators where he spent hundreds of hours studying the Constitution, reading the Federalist Papers and Anti-Federalist papers, and the debates on the ratification of the Constitution. He also memorized all of the provisions in it. Pretty impressive for a HS student wouldn’t you say? Again this group of 5 students traveled around the state speaking to groups and presenting the Constitution and describing socialism so that people would know the difference.
His first job when he was 10 years old was working for his father in his computer business. He ran a couple of other small businesses while still working for his father buying soda and stocking the machines at work and mowing lawns.
One summer he worked for a water softener company going door to door setting up prospects for the salesmen.
He paid his own way through college with scholarships, financial aid and campus jobs.He was deeply involved with the debate team and student government. He worked several summers for a large law firm. He also clerked for Chief Justice Rehnquist.He also held jobs as research assistants for law professors and clerked for an appellate judge.
His Senior Thesis was written about the 9th and 10th amendment to the Constitution.After he graduated from law school he clerked for a federal appeals judge in VA.
He was an editor of the Harvard Law Review & Executive Editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy & founding Editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review.
Cruz was the Solicitor General for the state of TX and also worked as Domestic Policy Advisor on George Bush’s 2000 campaign helping to write policy. He was instrumental winning in court for Bush against Al Gore in the election recount mess.
Cruz was the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, an associate deputy attorney general at the United States Department of Justice, and domestic policy adviser to President George W. Bush on the 2000 George W. Bush presidential campaign.
He was an adjunct professor of law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin where he taught Supreme Court Litigation. These are just some of his accomplishments. There are more.
His book sets up his qualifications for the job he is running for. In his book you can see how he has been studying the Constitution, speaking about it and debating it since high school. The cases he argued and won in front of the SC were landmark cases. They showed me that he had the same beliefs and fought for them back then as he says he does now. There is a paper trail that shows us his life-long conservativism. I believe he is the best school on the Constitution, understands the principles and the founding father’s reasoning behind it better than any other candidate. Ted Cruz has show himself in the Senate to be a man who does what he says he will do. He doesn’t win much but there is NO CONSERVATIVE who is gaining wins in the Congress right now. He is being wasted as a sitting Senator.
This is why I chose him as my candidate. That and he is the most conservative of all of the candidates.
As for Obama, he wasn’t a Constitutional Scholar. That was BS. And no one knows what he did or didn’t do in College. Very little is known. He always was a community activist and organizer and had known associations with some very shady characters.
Being a one-term senator means nothing in itself. It depends what you do when you are there. Lincoln only had one term in the House. It is Obama’s ideology that makes him a bad president. You cannot compare Obama in this regard (who mostly voted present while in the Senate) with Cruz who has led the fight against the dems repeatedly. And he has an impressive voting record. Only Mike Lee’s is more conservative than his according to Conservative Review.
Ted Cruz doesn’t have the charisma that Obama had. There are no big white columns nor people fainting at his speeches. I would compare Obama’s charisma more to Donald Trump’s (who has never been in the Senate)style.
Obama mostly voted “present”, Trump has no voting record to look at. Trump used to be a dem and recently has claimed he became a repub and pro-life. Cruz has always been a conservative, has always been religious and always has been pro-life & pro-second amendment. He has fought cases in the SC that show these beliefs & fight for religious liberty. He followed them in practice while a Senator.
These are all the things I weighed when choosing him as a candidate and why I believe that he is the best choice.
Very detailed and articulate analysis of Ted Cruz. I’ve seen it before and read the resume. He appears to be a stalwart conservative and has all the bona fides to back it up. However, in his adult life he has not done anything in the “real world”. He has not worked in the private sector. He has not built a business, made payroll, hired/employed/fired employees to/from a payroll that is of his own doing, not on taxpayer dollars. There is no doubt he has a tremendous understanding of the Constitution, probably better than any other candidate. However, like it or not, fair or not, he’s been in the Senate, even during a majority, a weak, feckless Senate (I know, McConnell is the leader, not Cruz)and also made several questionable votes and is not far off from the GOPe on issues such as amnesty. He is most known for “shutting down the government” (which I supported) and reading Green Eggs and Ham during a filibuster. He is a pariah. He allowed the media and the RINO leadership to paint a narrative about him. He appears to be just “part of the problem” with the exception of a core constituency. His polling numbers show that. Great crowds of conservatives in the hundreds to maybe a thousand. He’s got to be able to able to the masses, or at least enough of them, to get out of the primaries let alone the general. Perhaps he will be able to do that.
Trump, warts and all, lacking Cruz’ conservative bona fides is an open book. He will say it like it is and he is known for doing things and getting things done. He has not been involved in politics and is not beholden to any special interest groups. He cares about America (yes, and himself) and making it great again and fixing the serious problems we’re facing after a generation of the uniparty and the last six years of transformation into a European style socialist state. He has the charisma and stones to take on the media and the establishment. Just look what has happened in the last 100 days. The narrative would NEVER have been on illegal immigration and building a wall. Fox News has been shown for what they are and many “conservative” pundits are now showing their true colors. Trump doesn’t let anyone paint a narrative of him. He is the narrative. He exhibits leadership and an “in charge” persona. We so desperately need that both in this country and across the world. Because of his outsider position, he is appealing to segments that Cruz would never be able to reach, fair or not. I think Cruz can be most effective in an AG or SOCTUS position, perhaps VP where he can learn to work on his appeal and delivery. No doubt, if Cruz is the nominee, I will support him. I don’t think he is the answer at this time. This is a very different time and I think the last 100 days has shown this.