Ted Cruz (Republican)
Fun Fact:
Whether you agree with Ted Cruz’s policy or not, this Texas senator is highly educated — graduating from two Ivy league schools. Cruz graduated cum laude from Princeton University with a B.A. in Public Policy, we went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard Law School with a Juris Doctor degree.
Before setting foot in the political arena, Cruz was an adjunct law professor at the University of Texas from 2004 to 2009, teaching U.S. Supreme Court litigation.
What’s up with the campaign?
Cruz has held his head above water, consistently placed as a top-tier candidate in the GOP field. The Texas senator won his first election in 2012, being in Washington just long enough to have some knowledge in policy, but not long enough to be considered an “establishment” candidate by any reasonable margins.
However, in a political field that’s hungry for someone that isn’t politics as usual, Cruz has struggled to make himself stand out compared to Trump — who is about as outside the beltway as you get. In a Trump-less election, Cruz would have likely been seen as the fringe candidate doing a hostile takeover of the GOP.
His ultra-conservative ideology and political resume put him somewhere between Rubio and Trump. With more than $19 million on-hand and a super PAC, Cruz is running a powerful campaign — but it has been hard for him to stand out or propose any attractive proposals other than he isn’t Trump.
Cruz may have won Iowa, but he looks weak moving forward. The path to the White House is narrow for the Texas senator.
Voters might like:
● Cruz is the most conservative candidate. Period. He has earned a 100 percent score from the Heritage Action Scorecard and the American Conservative Union. Glenn Beck also said Cruz is “more conservative than Reagan.”
● There’s no fear from Cruz in fighting the establishment and standing up for his principles. He consistently advocates abolishing the IRS and the Department of Education. We also cannot forget his 21-hour filibuster against Obamacare. During that same filibuster he gave a phenomenal reading of Green Eggs and Ham.
● He speaks to the evangelical crowd — which is a huge voter base in the GOP primary. Cruz has captured the heart of a lot of religious Americans, speaking as a man that lives Christian values.
...but watch out for
● Many view Cruz as more “dangerous” than Trump. This anti-Washington crusader has made a career out of dismantling the government, thus hasn’t made a lot of friends in Congress. He led the government into a shutdown in 2013. Trump has proven he can get independents and Democrats to vote for him, Cruz seemingly only has support from the far-right.
● Cruz is a loud and proud climate change denier, once saying it’s “not science, it’s a religion.” It is difficult to measure whether that is pandering or the Texas senator is being a honest skeptic of science. But when virtually all scientists and governments take climate change seriously and the pentagon considers it a “security threat,” it’s difficult to take skepticism seriously when some of Cruz’s largest donations come from oil companies.
● Cruz really hates government — of course that is a staple for conservatism these days, but he takes the Ronald Reagan rhetoric of “government is the problem” to the max. Cruz is not talking about the Islamic State when he says, “we are facing what I consider to be the epic battle of our generation” — he is talking about Obamacare. Cruz has a true hatred of the federal government, which makes it hard to understand why he wants the highest position in the federal government.
Biggest policy proposal:
Like a lot of conservatives running for the Oval Office, Cruz has proposed a flat tax — yet his is probably the most dramatic of all.
Cruz would replace the income tax with a 10-percent flat tax, abolish corporate tax and all payroll, estate and gift taxes. Some analytics such as the Tax Policy Center find that plan would cost the U.S. about $1 trillion per year for the next decade and lower the GDP 3.6 percent.
War
Cruz hasn’t been entirely clear on whether or not he would use conventional ground troops in Iraq or Syria to fight the Islamic State. However, it sounds like boots on ground is an option.
"The mission should be defeating ISIS before they succeed in carrying out more horrific acts of terror, before they succeed in murdering Americans. If need be, we should go that step," Cruz said in an interview on This Week with anchor George Stephanopoulos
Cruz has made it clear that the priority should be arming those already fighting ISIS on the ground such as the Kurdish fighters in Iraq.
The primaries are elections in which the parties pick their strongest candidate to run for president. In Ohio, Election Day is Tuesday, March 15, 2016. Go here for more information on primaries. CityBeat will be profiling each of the candidates every week until the primaries in March.
