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On Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) became the first major contender to announce his candidacy for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. Dan Balz has written that Cruz’s candidacy “tests the limits of conservatism,” and based on his congressional roll call voting record, Cruz is the fourth-most-conservative member of the Senate. But how does his ideological position compare to those of Republican primary voters, especially in early states such as Iowa and New Hampshire? Very favorably, as we will see. We use data from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). The 2014 CCES asked respondents to place themselves and several...

Peggy Noonan says Clinton is Democrats presumed nominee, while Bush, Cruz, Walker and Paul will battle for GOP nod.Peggy Noonan is an author of several books on politics, religion and culture, and a conservative-leaning weekly columnist for The Wall Street Journal. She is perhaps best known as the primary speech writer for President Ronald Reagan, for whom she had kind words while addressing a full house Tuesday at The Society of the Four Arts’ 700-seat Gubelmann Auditorium. “Mr. Reagan was the last great gentleman of American politics, in terms of personal grace and a lovely public dignity and warmth,” Noonan...

There are few people I do not take seriously in politics. Or to put it more specifically, there are few people I fully discount in the context of national elections. Ted Cruz is one of those people. By contrast, I think it is highly unlikely that Rand Paul can make it in the GOP primaries, let alone a national election. There are so many intra-party disputes, so many iffy stories lurking in the background for him and his father and a lot more. But there are enough unexpected and cross cutting aspects to Paul that I can't be sure. Always...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, yesterday Ted Cruz makes his speech at Liberty University, and I shared with you the fact that I had spoken with Mr. Cruz on Friday. And I shared with you additionally that I had told him one thing after he asked. It's important for you to know that he asked. I did not sit there and tell him how to do his business. I warned him, I told him that something I have noticed in the last probably three or four presidential primaries, certainly the last two or three, what happens is that conservatives...

I did … not think we’d be seeing Rand, of all people, making electability arguments at the expense of other candidates, but if there’s any guy in the field whom Democrats would demagogue more gleefully than they would him, I suppose it’s Cruz. The money line here comes when he talks about “not just throwing out red meat, but throwing out something intellectually enticing to people who haven’t been listening to our message before.” That’ll be his core attack on Cruz throughout the primaries, partly of necessity since there’s not much that divides them on policy (by Paul’s own admission)....

Cruz's announcement signals the start of a messy primary contest that will let Clinton appear to be the adult in the room. Hillary Clinton’s embattled pre-campaign team breathed a sigh of relief Monday as a central player in their grand strategy to win the White House strode boldly onto the 2016 battlefield. His name? Rafael Edward Cruz, the Republican junior senator from Texas. Democrats from both inside and outside the Clinton camp have groused for months that the all-but-certain candidate was moving too slowly in formulating and projecting a rationale for running for the White House outside of her gender...

I was listening to Rush Limbaugh when I heard the advertisement. The voice blaring over the radio belonged to the junior senator from Texas, and he was calling for the Congress to defund ObamaCare. He was also urging listeners to donate to the Senate Conservatives Fund, an organization that’s spent millions of dollars attacking fellow Republicans for being what it deems insufficiently conservative. Ted Cruz, having burned his bridges in the Senate, now thinks his destiny lies in a race for the White House. Perhaps it does, but his assault on almost every one of his fellow Republicans during his...

The launch of Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential bid Monday has prompted an outpouring of excitement and delight — from Democrats. To liberal activists, the firebrand Texan is much too far to the right for the nation at large and too extreme to even win the Republican nomination. But they want nothing more than for him to run strongly throughout the primary season. The more momentum he develops, they argue, the more likely he is to push the eventual GOP nominee further to the right than that person will want to go. “I can’t believe Christmas has come so early,” Chris...

LYNCHBURG, Va. - Launching his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas asked Christian conservative voters to imagine a United States without the IRS, Obamacare or abortion rights - and to imagine they can make that happen by supporting him. His aspirational appeal on Monday, aimed at America's most conservative voters, could quickly run into challenges in winning over moderate voters - and eventually deep difficulties in governing should Cruz win the White House. But it's a message that Cruz, the first major 2016 contender to declare himself a candidate, is expected to forcefully emphasize in...

At Liberty University Sen Ted Cruz officially threw his hat into the ring as a contender for president in 2016. Cruz's speech brought tears to my eyes; inspiring, boldly Christian, and unapologetic conservative – vowing to stand for liberty. Cruz touting the greatness of our legacy as Americans gave me the same goosebumps I felt as a young voter hearing the same pride, optimism, and high expectations from Ronald Reagan. But folks, we have heard it all before; promised to repeal Obamacare, stop Obama's illegal amnesty for illegals, and all of Obama's other assaults on our freedoms and trashing of...

You can talk about the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire and South Carolina all you want – and those all are important – yet none of them is the most important primary on the Republican side. No, the most critical Republican primary, at least for non-establishment candidates, is the Rush Limbaugh-Drudge Report-Breitbart-Mark Levin-Sean Hannity-Glenn Beck internet message board primary. For a conservative base candidate to win the nomination, he or she must carry most of the above precincts. Now, this is not to say that all or any of the above will endorse a candidate by name during the primary...

The horse race for 2016 is several months old now, so it might surprise you that no presidential candidate left the gate before today. That changes with Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas declaring for the presidency later today in a speech at Liberty University. He made it official this morning...

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...

By far, a Cruz VS Warren debate would likely be "The One" Conservatives would even pay to watch. Cruz VS Hillary would probably be the second choice. If it were to come down to Ted Cruz VS Elizabeth Warren come the fall of 2016, we all know Warren will be in a state of panic. Warren may even need to take a little extra medication before the three debates. So how would we interpret these debates? King Kong VS Ronald McDonald? Predator VS Joy Behar? or how about Mike Tyson VS James Carville? So many possibilities!

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is framing his presidential campaign as part of a conservative crusade against the "mushy middle" of Republican politics. However, his more immediate foes are also on the right. While former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) has increasingly been dubbed the frontrunner in the race, he's not Cruz's main concern in the GOP primary. While Bush and another top GOP contender, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, are clearly appealing to relatively moderate Republicans, Cruz is hoping to grab staunchly conservative voters who may be inclined to back a hardline candidate as an alternative. However, Cruz isn't the...

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...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)New York Republican Rep. Peter King, who is considering his own bid for the White House, mocked Texas GOP Sen. Ted Cruz's announcement that he was running in 2016 and said the Texas Republican isn't qualified to serve as president. "Shutting down the federal government and reading Dr. Seuss on the Senate floor are the marks of a carnival barker not the leader of the free world," King said in a written statement on Monday. King's statement references a Cruz speech on the Senate floor that last more than 20 hours, railing against Obamacare in 2013. The New York Republican...

(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,...

Texas Senator Ted Cruz just made it official: He's running for president. He made the announcement in a tweet, accompanied by a video, shortly after midnight, eastern time. Ted Cruz ✔ @tedcruz I'm running for President and I hope to earn your support! (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Cruz believes he has a path to the GOP presidential nomination by winning the Tea Party vote, and doing well enough with both social conservatives and libertarians to knock out potential rivals, according to a Houston Chronicle report published over the weekend: Cruz's senior advisers, however, see a path to victory that all but ignores [the GOP...

The Texan spent the last months before his presidential campaign showing off his knack for articulating the most conservative position on numerous issues.Sen. Ted Cruz will reportedly launch his 2016 presidential campaign during a speech Monday, the Houston Chronicle wrote Saturday night. The Texas Republican has been laying the groundwork for a run for months—visiting early primary states, meeting with Republican activists, and hiring political strategists to manage his campaign—and has chosen the evangelical Liberty University in Virginia as the site of his official announcement. Though Cruz is not considered a favorite to win the GOP nomination, he will undoubtedly...