In a midnight twitter announcement, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) made it official: he is running to become the next president of the United States of America.
Cruz is, like all things iconically Texan, larger than life.
The son of a Cuban activist who was imprisoned and tortured, Ted Cruz is an ardent Evangelical Christian, and a huge supporter of Israel.
A captivating orator, Cruz has argued before the U.S. Supreme Court and was the Solicitor General of Texas. He worked in the U.S. Justice Department and at the Federal Trade Commission.
Cruz’s father was an immigrant who washed dishes for 50 cents an hour and spoke no English upon his arrival in the U.S. His mother was the first in her family to attend college.
Cruz graduated with honors from Princeton University and Harvard Law School.
Alan Dershowitz, the former Harvard Law School professor, said of his former student, that Cruz was “off-the-charts brilliant,” and one of the smartest students ever from Harvard Law School.
On the other hand, the State Department briefings often sound like an elitist jock club chortling at the mention of an initiative or query issued by Sen. Cruz – with both the reporters and the State Dept. spokesperson acting as if Cruz is the team doofus. This isn’t surprising, given Cruz’s unabashed conservativism, his religiosity and his ardent support for Israel, all traits belittled by those progressive elites.
Cruz made his candidacy announcement in a midnight tweet, followed the next day by a formal speech at Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia.
His speech Monday morning, March 23, in Virginia hammered out his core message: with Cruz you’ll have the antidote to all that has gone wrong under the Obama administration. The Texas senator intended to repeal “every word” of the Obamacare legislation and to dismantle the Internal Revenue Service, as well as rescind illegal immigration amnesty.
Cruz also lambasted the educational curriculum standard “Common Core,” which is not only strongly supported by the Obama administration, it is supported by Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who is considered the front runner in the field of Republican presidential hopefuls.
Cruz elicited the longest and loudest applause from the Liberty University audience when he urged them to “imagine a President who stands unapologetically with the nation of Israel” according to CNN.
Cruz is the first of several who are expected to seek the Republican nomination. The others, who will be announcing their own candidacies soon, include Bush, Senators Rand Paul of Kentucky and Florida’s Marco Rubio, as well as Congressmen Scott Walker of Wisconsin and New Jersey’s Chris Christie.
The Democratic field is expected to be dominated by former New York Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Vice President Joe Biden.
Of all the current front-runners, Cruz is also the standard-bearer for positions on Israel and Middle East policies that run counter to this administration’s. He has repeatedly criticized the administration for its own criticisms of Israel and for pandering to the behemoth terrorists in the Islamic Republic of Iran and ISIS, as well as the more moderate in execution – though no less so in hatred – terrorists of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Palestinian Authority.