Ted Cruz is officially in.

Alessandra Kelley said:

Wow.

That Cruz' ancestors may have gotten special immigration privileges might be relevant in light of Cruz' attitudes towards other immigrants.

But that his father simply is or was Cuban, that's not relevant to his fitness to serve.

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Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), whose push to defund Obamacare led to a government shutdown, now plans to get insured through the federal exchange.

"We will presumably go on the exchange and sign up for health care and we're in the process of transitioning over to do that," Cruz told the Des Moines Register on Tuesday.

Previously, Cruz had been covered under his wife's blue-chip employer health insurance plan.

But Bloomberg reported that Heidi Nelson Cruz, a managing director for Goldman Sachs in Houston, had taken an unpaid leave from the company in order to pitch in on her husband's presidential campaign. Cruz confirmed to the Des Moines Register that his wife took a leave from the Wall Street firm.

....

Ironically, it's Cruz's fellow Republican senators that compelled him to turn to Obamacare after losing health insurance through his wife's employer. An amendment Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) inserted into the law required all members of Congress and their staffers to purchase health insurance on the federal marketplace.

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It is extremely unlikely that Cruz could ever win the GOP nomination. And as certain as one can ever be in this fallen world that he cannot win a national election.

This is for three reasons.

Starting with most obvious, Cruz would not survive first contact with the range of blue states and swing states where a Republican must compete. Some say, they didn't think he had a chance in Texas either. Well, Texas, as they say, is a whole 'nother country. Both on the issues and temperamentally Cruz embodies the caricature of Republicans which nominees studiously work to dismantle in the general election phase of the campaign. Indeed, Cruz would run so poorly in many blue "reach" states that he would probably bring down a non-trivial congressional Republicans because he is so toxic to non-right wing ideologues. He won't win a national election. Not at the top of the ticket.

Second, no one wins the presidency who does not come off as a good guy, someone you would like, to a majority of the population. The one possible exception is Richard Nixon, though a significant part of his 1968 success was combating this problem. Lots of people hated Clinton and Bush and now Obama too. But most people liked them.

Likable guys, not, in a word, assholes. People who come off like assholes don't get elected president. From college and law school to the Senate and seemingly everywhere in between, Cruz has found small groups of admirers while convincing the vast majority of people as a consummate asshole.
This isn't just me sounding off; it's not trash talk. This is a really basic dynamic of presidential elections. There were plenty of Democrats who thought W was an entitled jerk. Most of the population did not feel that way. Many republicans felt Clinton was a slippery charlatan. But even many of them found it difficult to resist his charm. Indeed, that was one of the reasons they hated him.

Most people, including most Republicans, find Ted Cruz grating, divisive and arrogant. That makes it extremely hard to make the kind of emotive connection with voters who come to elections without strong ideological moorings. Cruz's great strength, albeit with a small but intensely devoted slice of the national conservative electorate, is that he has taken the unbridled self-assertion and norm-breaking which make him intolerable to many up close and cast them as the ultimate expression of the right-wing id. Also another thing, people don't like assholes.

Third, establishment Republicans: Ted Cruz does not play ball. He is arrogant. He causes lots of damage for Republicans who either have moderate views or are in the business of politics. Ted is not good for business in either the good or bad senses of the term - whether that's people who simply want to govern or those most focused on delivering goods for constituents (or getting people who are not named Ted Cruz elected). Ted will never be elected president. And I think it is very, very unlikely he will get the GOP nomination. The most likely outcome is that he will poll well with far right Republicans and pull the field to the right.

To summarize, pass the popcorn.

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Don said:

I was raised Southern Baptist, where I learned "we" were really God's Chosen People. Just speaking from personal experience.

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ShaunHorton said:

Let the interview insanity begin! On the subject of climate change, Cruz compares himself to Galileo and everyone who believes in climate change to "flat-earthers".

Anyone want to place bets on how long he'll maintain that position for the next year?

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Reservoir Angel said:

Because some part of me says no other Republican in the primary is going to want to get into a "who said the craziest science-denying thing" contest because that'd probably be mutually-assured destruction for the lot of them.

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clintl said:

You're giving them too much credit. The Republicans are pretty much all-in when comes to crazy science denial.

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On the strict comparison, Cruz has more leadership experience than Obama had at the beginning of his presidential campaign. Over five and a half years as solicitor general, Cruz led a large agency with hundreds of lawyers. Obama never ran an equally complex organization.

But that’s not the operative issue when executive experience is the question. The practical question is whether he has the kind of skills the Republican governors he’s competing against use every day and which most closely approximate the ones a president needs.

The reason this matters is that previous competency gives us some indication about whether a politician can back up the promises he makes with results. That was the critique George W. Bush leveled against John McCain in the 2000 race. The Arizona senator called himself a “reformer” and Bush retorted that as Texas governor he was a “reformer with results.”The distinction matters particularly when you promise an agenda as sweeping as Cruz does.

The skills governors need include the ability to read the political landscape, pick priorities, build consensus among friends and foes, and convey their will to others.

Cruz has no problem with setting priorities. He knows what he wants to do. What he hasn’t demonstrated is any significant achievement as a political leader that compares with his opponents. John Podhoretz put it bluntly in the New York Post: “Ted Cruz’s challenge: The other guys have done things.”

A key requirement for a president is building relationships and mobilizing the bureaucracy. In these two areas Cruz has shown the opposite of proficiency. His Senate colleagues would agree that he’s no community organizer. He is known more for the disorder he creates in his community. In fact, that’s what he’s running on: his stalwart opposition to the temporizing and capitulating GOP lawmakers in Washington. In the Senate, he has created more enemies than friends. This thrills his supporters, but it is not a recipe for governing. Cruz is good at winning a debate, but those talents haven’t translated to winning over the minds of his colleagues who didn’t already agree with him before he started. Their chief complaint is that while he may have focus, he is incapable of striving for anything besides symbolic goals. Governors can’t afford to do that kind of thing. In the same way that a governorship or presidency isn’t the same as a boardroom, it’s also not the same as a courtroom.

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robjvargas said:

Any time opponents expend such effort to attack a man that has no chance of winning, that should make people notice.

It's not always what it seems to be.

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"Rather than second-guessing what Pence has done, let me talk about how we win," Cruz answered. "It used to be there was a bipartisan consensus. We defend the civil liberties of our fellow citizens."

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