It’s late March of 2015, but it’s all about 2016 for a couple of politicians in the news today.
One is South Florida-based Democratic U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, who is officially running for the U.S. Senate next year. You can read our interview with the young Democrat (he’s just 31) that we conducted with him last night.
But the big news nationally is Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s announcement in a few hours that he will be running for president in 2016. Unlike Jeb Bush or Scott Walker, this isn’t an exploratory campaign, but a full-fledged candidacy. (Meanwhile, it’s been reported that in 15 days Rand Paul will announce his candidacy, and he’ll campaign in five states in a few days).
Several commentators are emphasizing that it would be wrong to underrate Cruz, but seriously, how many of you out there reading this can imagine his winning the nomination in Cleveland in June of next year? Highly doubtful. But his entrance into the race could be very entertaining.
According to an article in the Houston Chronicle (Cruz’s hometown newspaper), the Texas senator’s advisers say they believe his key to victory 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.”
We’ll see about that. That’s pretty much an acknowledgement that his far-right stances place him somewhat outside of the mainstream. Cruz is considered extremely intelligent, however, and it will be interesting to see how much traction he gets outside of the conservative early states like Iowa and South Carolina.
Of course, Cruz won’t be the only Cuban-American freshman senator with Tea Party roots running for president.
Marco Rubio looms out there as well. Rubio continues to do well with conservative elites. But can he translate that into grassroots support among GOP primary voters? There’s still lots and lots of time to see how that plays out.
