CRUZ CONTROL

CRUZ CONTROL

MARCH 29, 2015    LAST UPDATED: SUNDAY, MARCH 29, 2015, 1:20 AM
BY MARC FISHER
THE RECORD

GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz is a lightning rod for controversy, a stickler for process, an evangelist for conservative principle, a constitutional wonk in ostrich-skin cowboy boots.

Marc Fisher writes for The Washington Post.

TED CRUZ looked out over a sprawling audience of Iowa farmers and agri-business leaders, people who rely on federal subsidies of ethanol, and the man who would be president stuck it to them.

“I know you’d like me to say I’m for the renewable fuel standard” — that’s the subsidy of their product — “that’d be the easy thing to do,” he said. “But I’m going to tell you the truth.” He’d take away their subsidy, he said with a big smile.

The farmers sat on their hands.

A week earlier, in a vast ballroom at Maryland’s National Harbor, where blood-red conservatives gathered to evaluate a showcase of Republican presidential wannabes, Cruz was again the steely man of principle. He railed against Washington, slammed his opponents (“Hillary Clinton embodies the corruption of Washington”) and asked the true believers to demand of their candidates, “When have you been willing to stand up against Republicans?” The son of a Cuban man who saw what happens when freedom is stripped away swore that “I’ll die before I let it happen again.”

This time, the crowd stood as one, roaring with admiration and hope.

A ‘modern Jeremiah’

His father describes Cruz as a “modern Jeremiah,” delivering the final warning before the collapse, sending an unpopular but vital message. His Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, calls him “off-the-charts brilliant.” Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican and unsuccessful presidential candidate, once dubbed Cruz a “wacko bird.” His own wife says Cruz’s supreme certainty had a way of being “irksome.”

It is Cruz’s ramrod devotion to principle — or, its flip side, an unyielding insistence on getting his way — that could propel him to the front ranks of Republican contenders for president or render him unelectable.

Cruz, 44, was a marvel in high school, a kid who memorized the Constitution and wowed audiences with his speaking skills. In college, he was a prodigy and a pest; the same people who avoided having dinner with him went out of their way to watch him debate. As a politician, the senator from Texas is what he’s always been — a lightning rod for controversy, a stickler for process, an evangelist for conservative principle, a constitutional wonk in ostrich-skin cowboy boots.

Those who find his newly announced presidential campaign thrilling and those who find the notion of Cruz in the White House disturbing agree that his devotion to principle reminds them of that of Barry Goldwater, the movement conservative and 1964 Republican presidential nominee who famously said “I’d rather be right than president” and got his wish.

Uncertainty

Beneath Cruz’s mesmerizing speaking style — midnight-smooth delivery, never ruffled, even as he drops lacerating lines about the evils of Obamacare (although he acknowleged he signed his family up for Obamacare last week) — and his unthreatening appearance — suits, slicked-back black hair, baby-faced complexion — how the senator would govern remains unclear. Is he a rigidly uncompromising originalist or, as Cruz argues, more like Ronald Reagan, who preached conservative populism but governed as a dealmaker?

Although his father often proudly introduces his son guaranteeing that “Ted will not compromise,” Cruz says he follows Reagan’s approach: Push for limited government, but take what you can get. Despite the popular caricature of him as inflexible, Cruz says, “If they offer you half a loaf, you take it — and then come back for more.”

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