Texan Ted Cruz Gears Up For 2012 GOP Senatorial Race

On April 4, 2012, Barack Obama announced his bid for reelection as president of the United States.  Former Governor Tim Pawlenty announced his plans to begin an exploratory committee to determine his chances as a potential candidate.  Donald Trump, has been testing the political waters for a while, and today, after a White House staffer declared that Trump had zero chance of becoming president, he stated that he is not interested in the GOP nomination.  Instead, said the Donald, he might run as an Independent.  Other Republican hopefuls have not announced, but are making the rounds and making themselves visible to voters.  

Is it too early to announce one's candidacy?  Considering the political climate, we'd venture to predict that any race between Republicans and democrats is going to be tight.  The sooner a candidate announces his intention to run for office, the sooner he can begin to raise funds for his campaign.

The Texas senatorial campaign will be one of those that will come down to the wire.  Once Kay Bailey Hutchinson announce that she was not going to seek reelection, candidates for her senate seat began to line up.  One such candidate is Republican Ted Cruz.   Keeping the seat which Hutchinson is vacating is extremely important to Texas Republicans if they are going to win the Senate in 2012.  Thus far, no Democrat has announced for Hutchinson's seat.  Republicans believe that whoever wins the  GOP Primary in 2012 will be the new senator from Texas.  

Two Sisters From The Right is not endorsing any candidates yes, but as one of us is a Texas voter, we've decided to begin our evaluation of possible nominees right here in the Lone Star State.

Fred Barnes, co editor of The Weekly Standard, has written an informative, introductory piece on Ted Cruz who needs the name recognition. 
Two Sisters

Ted Cruz's Bid to Be the Next Republican Senator from Texas
by Fred Barnes

Ted Cruz, a conservative popular among Tea Party activists, has raised more than $1 million this year in his bid for the Republican nomination to succeed three-term Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is retiring in 2012.

In an announcement today, Cruz says he’s received donations from 1,100 persons from 122 Texas towns and from 37 states. He announced his candidacy on January 19 and raised $100,000 a week for over 10 weeks.

Cruz’s fundraising in the first three months of 2011 signifies that he’s a serious candidate, though hardly a frontrunner. He’s never been elected to public office, but was considered a shoo-in to be elected state attorney general in 2010 if incumbent Greg Abbott had sought higher office. Abbott chose to run for reelection.

Cruz, 40, faces a crowded field in the Senate race. Five candidates have already announced. And when the Texas legislature adjourns in May, Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst is likely to join the field. Dewhurst would be the instant frontrunner.

Some Texas Republicans think Cruz is overreaching in seeking the Senate seat and should wait until 2014 to run for attorney general. Cruz, after campaigning for AG for a year until Abbott decided to run again, thought otherwise.

“I believe I’ve got the strongest proven record as a conservative, standing up [and] fighting for conservative principles and winning on a national level,” he told the Texas Tribune recently.

Democrats haven’t won a statewide election in Texas since 1994, but some party leaders have suggested that Democratic prospects may be brighter next year. However, no Democrat has announced for Hutchison’s seat. Republicans believe the winner of their primary next March is all but certain to prevail in the general election next November.Holding the Texas seat is important to Republican prospects for gaining control of the Senate in 2012. Losing a solidly Republican seat—Hutchison was first elected in 1993—would put GOP chances in serious jeopardy.

To win the nomination, Cruz must first emerge as the main challenger to Dewhurst, the best known, wealthiest, and the leading officeholder of the candidates. “He can write his campaign a check for $25 million,” a prominent Texas Republican says.

In a statewide poll conducted in February by the University of Texas and the Texas Tribune, Dewhurst was favored by 27 percent of Republican voters. Cruz was far behind at three percent. The other candidates: Michael Williams, a former state railroad commissioner, five percent, railroad commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones, three percent, and former Texas secretary of state Roger Williams, two percent. Leppert was not a candidate at the time.

Cruz is focusing his campaign on “the need for new leadership” and his “proven conservative record.” All the candidates call themselves conservatives, but Cruz may be the most conservative of the bunch. He is angling for the endorsements of two significant players in Republican primaries, Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina and the Club for Growth.

A Cuban-American, Cruz was Texas solicitor general, an appointed post, from 2003 to 2008 and argued nine cases in front of the Supreme Court. He was a domestic policy adviser to George W. Bush in the 2000 campaign, and then worked for the Bush administration in Washington.

He has an impressive record outside politics: Princeton, Harvard Law School, Supreme Court clerkship to the late Justice William Rehnquist.

His chief task now is fundraising. With little name ID across Texas, Cruz may need as much as $10 million to raise his visibility among Republicans and deliver his conservative message. This means he will have to continue bringing in, on average, $100,000 a week or more, a difficult job for a candidate without high name recognition.

Cruz’s fundraising of more than $1 million included a $70,000 loan from Cruz to his campaign. “Conservatives in the Senate desperately need reinforcements,” he said in a statement
 
Copyright, 2011 - The Weekly Standard

SUNDAY REFLECTIONS

As the newly elected Senators and Representatives prepare to be seated and sworn in, everyone is speculating on what the mixture of a GOP dominated House, a Democrat Senate and President. will do for the country.  How will it affect the economic crisis?  For weeks now commentators and pundits have been making predictions.  The GOP has announced that the first order of business will be to repeal Obamacare.  Some liberals take offense to the term Obamacare and try to push through the more palatable "health care reform" terminology.  Conservatives warn the Congress not to "roll over" for Obama.  Democrats admonish that Obama won't go begging to the GOP.  In the meantime the president enjoys his  $1.5 million Hawaiian Christmas while signing bill and making objectionable appointments without consulting the Senate as is his wont. 

Others such as Rep. Issa indicate that they are going after the corruption in the Obama Administration.  The new Speaker of the House to be, John Boehmer plans an Obamacare repeal vote before the State of the Union address.  All of us know that the GOP House must still contend with a Democrat held Senate and Obama's veto power.  It's going to be an interesting beginning to the new year.

As we scoured the news reports for facts, and researched for information to write our blog, we did so with the idea of what advice we'd give the GOP.  Sister Two has a new Republican Senator in Mark Kirk.  Sister One unfortunately lives in a Democratic stronghold, but within the Corpus Christi metropolitan area, and they made history on November 2, and defeated Representative Solomon Ortiz and replaced him with Republican Blake Farenholdt.  We are anxious to see what the GOP will do.  Can they succeed?

Armed with several ideas, and even more false starts,  we came across Sunday Reflections in the Washington Examiner, and by golly, here was Professor Reynolds, eloquently expressing what we would have said, except he said it much better.  So with gratitude to him and the Washington Examiner, we bring you an article  that we hope all the GOP in Congress will read.   
Sunday Reflections
Modest proposals to help the new Congress survive and America to thrive


By: Glenn Harlan Reynolds
OpEd Contributor
Washington Examiner


With the new Congress being sworn in this week, everyone is full of advice. 


Well, I'm no exception.


The first advice comes from Han Solo in the debut "Star Wars" film: "Don't get cocky." Republicans won big in the last election, but, if they think that constitutes an excuse to slip back into their old ways, circa 2004 to 2006, then they are doomed -- not just as individual politicians, but quite possibly as a party. The public's patience is quite limited, and is likely to stay so for the foreseeable future.


Second, remember that fortune favors the bold. It's true that ordinarily in politics, most progress occurs at the margins. But it's also true that these are not ordinary times. Big money-saving and government-shrinking proposals in the House, even if they're shot down by the Democrat-controlled Senate, will nonetheless establish a tone.

 They're trying to hide it, but the Inside-the-Beltway permanent-government political class is currently scared. Keep them that way, while showing the public at large that you're serious.


Third, look beyond Congress. There's a simmering mood in favor of constitutional reform across the country. Proposals such as Georgetown law professor Randy Barnett's "Repeal Amendment" -- in which overweening federal laws can be repealed by a supermajority of state legislatures -- are already floating around and generating sufficient support to require pushback from the New York Times.


Nineties-era ideas like the Balanced Budget Amendment and federal term limits for Congress are also popular again. And there's even interest in calling a federal Constitutional Convention. No doubt other ideas will appear. Give them a fair hearing in Congress. Not only is this worth doing on its own, but it will help keep the Washington-insider crowd off-balance.


Fourth, ignore the press. The establishment media still have their power, but they've never been weaker, and they're perceived by an ever-greater percentage of Americans as simply an arm of the political-class Democratic Party. If you pay attention, they have power over you. If you do what you think is right, they don't.


Fifth, go after the infrastructure of the government-backed Left. Back in 2002, I wrote that Republicans should be repealing the awful Digital Millennium Copyright Act: By doing so, they'd not only build up goodwill among college-age downloaders and libertarian tech-types, but they'd also harm the entertainment-industrial complex that is a huge source of money and media power for Democrats.


Seldom are politicians presented with the opportunity to do something simultaneously so inherently right, politically popular and strategically advantageous. Naturally, the congressional Republicans of that era blew it.


They just couldn't bring themselves to go after Big Business, even if it was hostile Big Business. That opportunity is still there. And don't pass up similar opportunities, either. There are a lot of them out there.


Sixth -- and this may be the hardest of all -- lead by example. Democrats have been hurt by, for instance, campaigning against Americans' big carbon footprints while living in enormous mansions and flying in private jets. Don't follow in their footsteps.


Saying no to the perks of office is hard, but Americans, who might tolerate hypocrisy when things are going well, are pretty sick of it now. Act like public servants, not members of an entitled aristocracy, no matter how great the temptations are to act otherwise. And they are great indeed.


Finally, and most importantly, don't forget that these are serious times. In the 1990s, America was able to fool itself into believing that we had reached the end of history, that the tough decisions were mostly behind us, and that progress and prosperity were mostly inevitable.


We know better now. The country is on the verge of bankruptcy, the federal government is at a low point in terms of popular legitimacy, and not just Congress, but the entire political class, is on probation.


"Don't blow it" is fairly unspecific advice, but it's important here. Don't be distracted by the many, many things that seem important in Washington but that don't really matter.


This last advice is probably the most important. We live in perilous times, and they demand a self-discipline and seriousness of purpose that has been missing from those who have governed us in recent years.


Rise to the occasion on the big things, and the little ones will take care of themselves. Drop the ball on the big things, and it won't matter how tactically clever your political position is.


So, yeah, don't blow it.

Examiner Sunday Reflections contributor Glenn Harlan Reynolds is founder and editor of Instapundit.com, and a University of Tennessee law professor.