Ted Cruz was the insurgent Tea Party – supported candidate running against the more establishment David Dewhurst.
If we followed the establishment advice to keep the seat safe, we would not have this rising star in office. The same is true for Marco Rubio and other next-generation Republican leaders.
While there were other races where it didn’t turn out as hoped, Ted Cruz demonstrates the importance of primaries:
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Neither the Tea Party or the Establishment have very good records at putting people in office. The Tea Party in particular, needs to be more selective in people who can win. The good ones are great, and the rest, meh. The Establishment needs to swallow its ego and get behind the good Tea Party candidates. We lost a couple of close races do to their ambivalence, or even active opposition.
I am not s sure you are correct about TEA Party nominees. The establishment Republicans are all too eager to migrate toward “Democrat lite” positions which makes the two parties seem the same. The ability of the TEA party to nominate conservatives will serve to pull the “Democrat Lite” politicians toward more conservative and libertarian positions.
Barry Goldwater offered “A choice, not an echo”. And, while he lost, he paved the way for Reagan.
Yes, we win some and we lose some, as is true for the Pubs in general. The key is to learn from mistakes.
Akins in Missouri was a mistake — when McCaskill was running ads in his favor during the primary that told us all we needed to know, but we didn’t listen.
Murdock in Indiana was not a mistake, but he ran a terrible campaign (and Lugar, the slime, didn’t help).
McDonnell? Mistake. Angle? Mistake.
So let’s learn from this. Let’s remember how the Dems play the game and be prepared. 2014 is coming, and there’s lots the Tea Party can do to benefit both the public and the Pubs.
Tre…The Establishment attacked the Tea Party primary winners.
They should have gotten behind Akins but instead assisted the Kommiecrats and we lost a conservative seat to them.
Same in Alaska in ’10 when The Establishment supported a 3rd party rino to defeat the GOP primary electee.
Establishment anti Tea Party peope consiste of seesions from TX, hatch from UT participating in attacking Conservative but approve & assist the Kommiecrats…remember Orange man?
Any insurgent movement has growing pains.
This is especially so when the movement vaunts grass-roots candidates, who are…by definition…inexperienced and have a history of being apolitical.
The TEA Party people have shown a strong learning curve, and can be expected to offer better choices than some in the past.
It should ALSO be remembered that people like Akin were NOT TEA Party picks.
Rags…the Tea Party backed 2 Conservatives when they should have stuvk with 1, hense they last to a last choice who WON the primary.
The Establishment then attacked the GOP candidate rather then support him assisteng a very liberal Kommiecrat to win. THEY DIDN’T STICK WITH CONSERVATIVES but threw a snit fit.
What a brilliant individual. He emanates it. Listen to how quickly, how seamlessly, he reconfigures the questions.
My guideline is that, before seeking higher office, a politician should be reelected to their current slot by a greater margin than they were elected by.
Cruz heads my list of potential exceptions.
I supported Ted Cruz when he first announced his challenge to David Dewhurst for the Republican nomination and you cannot imagine how difficult it was for Cruz to mount that challenge. Dewhurst had a personal fortune behind him, the support of the Texas Republican establishment (including the Bush family, excepting George P., who was Cruz’s campaign chairman) and a fundraising machine.
Cruz defied the odds and became our nominee, thank goodness, and won the seat! He is smart as a whip, highly articulate, and a principled conservative. We need more like him, because he is not flummoxed by media “when did you stop beating your wife” questions, like Boehner, McConnell and Romney are. Watch the Left start to target him, as they’ve done with Rubio- they cannot afford more Republicans like Cruz, Rubio, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Paul Ryan, etc.
Opportunity conservatism – I like that. What a great message from someone who can handle the media. I hope we hear more from him and that he is able to nudge some of the others in Washington.
I watched this interview yesterday and I was very impressed with Cruz. Wow! We need someone like him to run for president in 2016. No muddled conservatism-speak there!
BTW: I first learned about conservatism/libertarianism from reading and watching Milton Freidman’s Free to Choose Series many years ago in the 70’s. This was long before there were conservative blogs and TV programs like FOX news – long before the suggested “bubble.”
Based on my own empirical experience I agree with Ted Cruz. Conservatism “works.”
What Hillary Clinton is to secretary of states, and what Barack Obama is to presidents, the GOP hacks are to statesmen.
Thanks for the video. I just hope that he can make a difference in Washington. This country needs many, many more politicians just like him.
As a Tea Party Coordinator in Dallas, I was invited to meet Ted Cruz in Oct. 2011. I assumed that Ted would be speaking to a group of us, but when I arrived (late), I found a small group of 15 or so Tea Party leaders, in a circle around him, and Ted sitting on the edge of his seat, listening to US! He was seeking our advice and comments. Very refreshing!
He won that primary by an unusual set of circumstances- a runoff on July 31. Small town Texas turned out in droves to off-set the larger cities. But he even won Dallas County- after Tom Leppert, former Dallas mayor, who was also in the primary, threw his support behind Dewhurst. Simply amazing! It helped that Dewhurst’s ads were so nasty that they turned a lot of voters off.
Right man. Right time. Right place. God bless him.
I first met him around that time at a small gathering – about 50 or so – in Houston. I’d heard that he was a brilliant litigator and advocate for the state of Texas, but I was prepared for one of those big lawyerly egos. Boy, was I surprised. Like you say, he’s a listener, and when he speaks, it’s with a passion and intensity that draws you inside his vision. My wife and I campaigned for him, our first foray back into politics since Steve Stockman sent ol’ Jack Brooks ‘a packing.
Ted Cruz is the real deal.
I support local and selected national Republicans. When the RNC calls me for money, I tell them,
“I don’t have a dime to spare,
‘Till the RNC grows a pair.”
‘Nuff said.
Someone read this piece to Jon Podhoretz, who has gone completely over to the David Frum side of the Republican Establishment.
Ted Cruz is the best thing that has happened to Texas politics since my arrival here back in 1990.
I am so thankful that the mealy mouth Dewhurst was sent back to the lockers!
Maybe a shred of light will begin to shine in the GOP after November, 2014…
Professor, the establishment has noticed the primaries too and they’ve already hit the road to make sure we never get another Ted Cruz. 1/4/13, “GOP scrambles to fix its primary problem,” Politico, Jonathan Martin
“The disastrous 2012 election and embarrassing fiscal cliff standoff has brought forth one principal conclusion from establishment Republicans: They have a primary problem.
The intra-party contests, or threat thereof, have become the original sin that explains many of the party’s woes in the minds of GOP leaders. It’s the primaries that push their presidential nominees far to the right….High-profile Senate Republicans are going to try to pre-empt bloody primaries with aggressive, early recruitment and support — effectively trying to clear fields.”…Karl Rove is already on the job. They consider Club for Growth an enemy. Steve LaTourette is in charge of a new PAC to protect RINO’s he says.
I like and supported Ted Cruz, I did donate to him, as I did Marco Rubio and Deb Fisher.
The seats that should have been won by conservative, especially Tea party fiscal cons were the one in MO and IN. Instead the idiots there decided to about about rape. And then Akins droned on and on about “fighting the establishment”, what a complete moron, he has been in congress decades at that point. The could have done the decent think and allowed Sarah Steeleman to take his place, and she would have won! As for Murdock, absolutely no excuse for his rape comments, after seeing what happened to Akins. Both men too stupid to not figure out the political terrain and demonsrats pounced on it, predictably.
*decided to talk about…
[…] Any time that an Establishment rumpswab starts in on you about TEA Party candidates, remember the words of Prof. Jacobson: […]
I’d never put Rubio in the same class as Cruz who’s a man of genuine conviction.
One of the first items on the Tea Party agenda should be
to eliminate open voting in primaries.
As a Texan and a Tea Party person I supported Ted Cruz with my money and my vote. I would like to thank the DOJ for their law suits against our voting districts for his win. He was definitely not leading when the first primary happened. The delay of the runoff by the DOJ allowed the Tea Parties to get him front and center and supported by so many more than the first vote. I don’t like being bossed around by the DOJ and Voting Rights Act but in this case it worked to our advantage.
Dont blame Akin and Mourdock completely on the Tea Party. They didn’t lose because of any small gov Tea Party positions they expressed, but because of their stupid statements on abortion, and abortion is not even an official part of the Tea Party platform. You could just as easily blame their losses on the evangilicals and socons, who were just as responsible for nominating them as the tea party.
I think the main lesson for the Tea Party is to be wary of endorsing anybody with extreme abortion positions, unless they have been carefully vetted so they can express and defend them without sounding like idiots. For example, Ryan is fairly extreme on abortion, but he can defend his position without sounding loopy, and is mainly known for a small gov budget guy anyway. And the Tea Party also gave us 4 very good senators, Rand Paul, Rubeo, Cruz, and now Tom Scott, plus lots of great governors, plus many very good congressmen.
Also remember that there were about 5 establishment senate candidates that lost winnable races as well, like Tommy Thomson in WI, so the repub establishment doesn’t always pick winners either. And Romney and McCain were both establishment candidates.