Free Republic

After the theatrical launch of his presidential campaign Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz now faces a massive hurdle: raising the tens of millions of dollars it will take to mount a year-and-a-half long campaign. The Texas Republican and tea party darling is months behind his competitors in recruiting the megadonors and bundlers essential to a credible GOP primary bid. He’s not well-liked among cash-flush lobbyists. And his uncompromising policy positions and role in forcing the government shutdown in 2013 didn’t exactly excite the financiers and business executives who make up the elite donor class. Those considerations, along with the need to...

Michael Van Der Galien has tried to understand why the Ted Cruz presidential candidacy announcement has set social media on its ear and advances a tentative theory. “But why are leftists’ heads exploding as well? I’ve got no doubt I know the answer: they fear him. Tremendously even. He is everything they oppose: a true, small-government conservative.” If that were all Cruz were guilty of it wouldn’t be half bad. It’s far worse. His “Imagine” speech seemed calculated to ridicule every Leftist shibboleth with predictable effect. The Left lost no time characterizing him as a Christian bigot, a patriarchal supremacist,...

The war of words over climate change is getting blisteringly hot between Gov. Jerry Brown and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, with the Republican presidential candidate blithely dismissing the Democratic governor as one of those “global warming alarmists” who relies on ridicule and insult. A Brown campaign strategist shot back Monday that the “factually irrational” Cruz is apparently now determined to “stand out from a pack of troglodytes in the GOP race for the White House.” The public slap down — and the dis of Brown — came as Cruz formally announced his run for the White House at Liberty University...

He sure does, says Team Cruz. But the key to victory, Cruz advisers believe, is to be the second choice of enough voters in the party’s libertarian and social conservative wings to cobble together a coalition to defeat the chosen candidate of the Republican establishment… To them, the Republican primaries are a series of single-elimination brackets where the four GOP leaders who best represent the party’s libertarian, establishment, social conservative and tea party wings will survive as the field winnows. Cruz will vie for the support of the tea party electorate, his advisers say, but will fare well enough with...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz began his 2016 presidential bid with an impassioned appeal to the religious right on Monday, exhorting a cheering crowd at the world's largest Christian college to "join a grassroots army across this nation coming together and standing for liberty." "God's blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation, and I believe God isn't done with America yet," he said. "I believe in you. I believe in the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to reignite the promise of America, and that is why today, I'm announcing that I'm running for...

FoxNews' The Five attacked the newly announced Ted Cruz presidential candidacy on the same day as his announcement. You expect Juan Williams and Dana Perino (a mindless Bushbot) to oppose him. But, Eric Bolling said Cruz is just not ready and Greg "Congenital Idiot" Gutfeld opined that Cruz is only running because of his own self-importance.

It's hard to believe that three years ago nobody knew who Ted Cruz was, or that during his 2012 campaign to become a senator in Texas, he was accused of supporting "amnesty" and attacked by Laura Ingraham for his stance on China. Today, Ted Cruz is not only something of a household name, but he's considered one of the most conservative Republican lawmakers in the nation. In modern politics, freshness is a virtue, and fortunes can change overnight. Lots of people think Ted Cruz is a phony. Others are just as sure that he's among the most genuine politicians in...

“I think of him as a tennis player. You know, if you’re going to rush the net all the time you better have a lot of motion to the left and the right. And he hasn’t proven that to me yet,” Chamber CEO Tom Donahue said. He also remains bullish on immigration reform. WASHINGTON — U.S. Chamber of Commerce CEO Tom Donohue Monday criticized Sen. Ted Cruz, who led the quixotic campaign to defund Obamacare that ended up shutting down the government, saying he has yet to prove he is capable of legislating. “Well I don’t know Sen. Cruz,”...

So I saw several years of complaints that Obama was born in Kenya. Lets assume he was. His mother is an American citizen; there isn't any dispute there. And, in the minds of those who believe he was born in Kenya, that means he's not eligible to be President. Lets move to Ted Cruz. He was born in Canada. His father wasn't a US Citizen at the time of his birth. His mother was. So if Obama being born in Kenya supposedly matters, why does Cruz being born in Canada NOT matter?

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest responded today to Ted Cruz‘s strong pledge in his presidential announcement this morning to repeal Obamacare once he gets into office. In his list of things he asked the audience to imagine, Cruz said, “Imagine a new president signing legislation repealing every word of Obamacare.” When asked about this today, Earnest said, “There was a presidential candidate who ran in 2012 promising to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and that campaign pledge didn’t work out very well for him.”

If there is such a thing as being too conservative to be elected president of the United States, Ted Cruz is having none of it. Announcing his candidacy for the Republican nomination Monday at Liberty University, the first-term senator from Texas offered himself as the pure essence of conservatism and challenged the tea party and evangelical wings of the Republican Party to rise up behind one of their own and take control of the party and the country. His candidacy is a test of a proposition, one that he has carried across the country for many months. He has argued...

Now he belongs to the ages. Today Ted Cruz, one of the foremost representatives of the state’s persecuted Texan-Canadian community and the junior Senator from the North Texas tea parties, ascended from this state’s low mortal plane and affixed himself to the celestial realm of presidential politics, where he’s always thought he truly belonged. The announcement wasn’t a surprise, but when it happened (earlier than his competitors) and where it happened (at the evangelical Liberty University) was. What to make of it? Is this the beginning of a long, slow grassroots groundswell of the kind that Cruz harnessed to trample...

Full Speech: Ted Cruz announces 2016 presidential run at Liberty University: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8f3DsoMotU

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In nearly every presidential primary, a few candidates attract a lot of news media attention even though they have almost no chance to win the nomination. Sometimes they even lead national polls or win states, but invariably their appeal is too narrow to allow them to build the broad coalition necessary to unite a diverse party. Ted Cruz, the Texas senator and Tea Party favorite, who on Monday became the first major candidate to formally enter the race, has seemingly been on track for this role since he first ran for the Senate in 2012. He is the darling of...

Sen. Ted Cruz opened the first major campaign of the 2016 presidential season Monday with a kickoff speech courting cultural conservatives and declaring that he will devote himself to "reigniting the promise of America." One of several Republican hopefuls to rise from the tea party movement, Cruz spoke at Liberty University, the college founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, hours after a wee-hours tweet announcing his White House bid. The choice of the college founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell was meant as marker against potential rivals who are also counting on Christian conservatives to fuel their candidacies.

Hillary Clinton on Monday called for action to address inequality in America’s cities as she made what is expected to be one of her last public appearances before launching a presidential bid."A lot of our cities truly are divided, they have a lot of inequality which has only gotten worse," she said Monday during a roundtable at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank."They have some of the most dynamic, well-educated, affluent people in the world, and people who are trapped in generational poverty, and whose skills are not keeping up with what the jobs of today and...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK) Senator Ted Cruz has made his presidential wishes official, with Cruz’s speech streaming live on ABC News and other news outlets as of this writing, with Senator Ted reaching deep into the belief system that he says changed his life and included his parents’ belief in Christ. During the speech, Cruz related how his father and mother were drinking way too much alcohol when he was a young boy, and at one point, his dad decided he would leave the family — deserting his young son and wife. However, being invited to a Bible study changed Cruz’s father’s life,...

LYNCHBURG, VIRGINIA—Ted Cruz's official campaign announcement was slow-rolled over the weekend with leaks and, ultimately, at midnight Monday, a tweet. But on Monday morning, Cruz made his first official opening pitch at a special edition of one of Liberty University's weekly convocations. "I believe God is not done with America yet," he said. "I believe in you and the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to reignite the promise of America, and that is why today I am announcing that I'm running for president of the United States."   With his tweet and speech Monday, Cruz becomes the...

Sen. Ted Cruz gave the convocation address at Liberty University this morning where he announced to a standing ovation his candidacy for the president of the United States. You can watch the full speech below: