Ted Cruz to John Cornyn: Drop Dead

Ted Cruz surprises Senate analysts by hesitating to back fellow Texan John Cornyn for top post

By TODD J. GILLMAN

Dallas Morning News

Washington Bureau

tgillman@dallasnews.com

Published: 21 February 2012 11:03 PM

WASHINGTON — John Cornyn is the odds-on favorite to win the Senate Republicans’ second most powerful job later this year. Most GOP contenders for Texas’ other Senate seat readily pledge to support his bid to move up the ranks.

Ted Cruz, however, refuses to commit — a stance that reflects his vow to “make waves” in Washington, and his eagerness to ally himself with the small but vocal tea party contingent in the otherwise clubby Senate.

“It is important that leadership in the Senate stand and fight for conservative principles,” Cruz, the state’s former chief appellate lawyer, said in a recent interview.

He won’t decide his vote for GOP whip, one step below party leader, until November — once it’s clear how many “constitutional conservatives” got elected, he said.

“I’m not going to prejudge,” Cruz said.

“It’s not the most politically astute move,” said Jennifer Duffy, who analyzes Senate races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. She called it “pretty unusual” to withhold support from a fellow Texan, especially given that in Cornyn’s current role, chairing the National Republican Senatorial Committee, he is the party’s chief Senate campaign strategist.

“Not only is he not committing to the guy who [will be the state’s] senior senator, but he’s also not committing to the guy running the NRSC — the guy with the checkbook,” she said.

Cornyn, after a decade in the Senate, is widely considered an outspoken and consistent conservative, and Cruz doesn’t accuse him of straying ideologically. Nor does Cruz question his political judgment, save for one Senate race in 2010 in which Cornyn backed a moderate Florida Republican over a tea party favorite, freshman Sen. Marco Rubio.

But his stance does reflect a divide between tea party activists and GOP leaders. Cruz is appealing to those who demand more urgency in cutting spending and welfare programs, slashing taxes and returning power to states, and those who put a higher premium on aggressive representation than on compromise.

Cornyn aides declined to comment, though allies voiced dismay and surprise.

“I am very troubled by Cruz’s hesitancy … and would be most interested to hear what his rationale might be for that,” said Bill Crocker, one of two Texans on the Republican National Committee who, like Cornyn, is neutral in the primary likely to pick Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s successor.

Cruz hasn’t kept internal Senate GOP politics entirely at arm’s length. Two months ago he endorsed freshman Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson’s bid to fill the fifth-most senior post in the Senate GOP conference. Johnson — another DeMint tea party acolyte — lost to Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt. And he doesn’t rule out supporting Cornyn in the end, should he win.

DeMint, who tangled with Cornyn over several GOP incumbents’ races in 2010, said it would be “silly” for Cruz to pledge support for Cornyn at this stage.

“He shouldn’t commit to it. He doesn’t know who’s running,” DeMint said in an interview, adding that he, too, won’t make up his mind quite yet. “John Cornyn is a great ally. He’s a conservative guy. I just don’t think we should be talking about leadership elections until we know the mix of our conference.”

DeMint eyed a leadership bid in 2010, and Duffy and others have speculated that he might try again — and perhaps that’s one reason Cruz is keeping his powder dry.

“I’m not ruling anything out, but that’s certainly not my plan now,” DeMint said.

GOP senators, including newcomers who win seats in November, will elect leaders after Election Day.

As whip, Cornyn would be second-in-command behind Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, with an even higher national profile as party spokesman. The current whip, Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona, is retiring.

Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina also is running for whip, but Cornyn is a strong front-runner and would be virtually a lock if Republicans regain the majority after his four-year stint as campaign chief.

Cruz’s major rivals in Texas made clear they back Cornyn’s bid without reservation.

“Texas conservatives have to stick together if we’re to have any chance of repealing the Obama agenda,” Dewhurst said.

Tom Leppert, the former Dallas mayor, lauded Cornyn’s service in the Senate and as head of the campaign committee. As for Cruz’s stance, he said: “It says everything I want when I said I’d be a strong supporter of John Cornyn’s.”

Craig James , the former SMU football star and ESPN commentator, also vowed to support Cornyn.

Cruz, lagging Dewhurst in name recognition and funds, has sought to define his rivals as members of the so-called “establishment.”

He and DeMint argue that the Senate is at a “tipping point,” predicting a dramatic power shift with a handful of new conservatives to prod fellow Republicans toward more urgency when it comes to slashing spending and curbing government.

“It’s not a win for conservative principals to get a spineless jellyfish,” said Cruz, who touts support from DeMint and three tea-party backed senators who won seats in 2010: Rand Paul of Kentucky, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Mike Lee of Utah.

Cruz also routinely compares himself to Rubio, a rising star in the Senate who has not endorsed anyone in the Texas race.

“In every one of those states,” Cruz said, “the party graybeards were supporting somebody else. The establishment had somebody who was already picked to be quote ‘a member of the club.’ ”

Cornyn, as part of the Senate leadership, apparently is one of those graybeards.

After tangling throughout 2010, Cornyn and DeMint came to a truce. Cornyn conceded he’d made a mistake by backing then-Gov. Charlie Crist over Rubio in Florida, and agreed to stay neutral in contested primaries. DeMint, who alienated colleagues by backing long-shot tea partiers who may have cost GOP seats in Delaware and other states, pledged not to undermine incumbent Republicans in his quest for allies willing to “rock the boat.”

For full story, please visit: http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/headlines/20120221-ted-cruz-surprises-senate-analysts-by-hesitating-to-back-fellow-texan-john-cornyn-for-top-post.ece

Leppert's New Ad and Cruz's New Challenge

This morning, Tom Leppert released his second television ad, which again highlights his business record and focus on job creation. The ad looks great and has a resonating message. People need jobs, and Leppert claims he is the guy to create them.

I’ve written previously about Leppert’s conservative authenticity gap, but this is a positive step for his campaign.

Perhaps as a result of Leppert’s new ads or to push back against the toll that has been taken to his credibility as a result of the flood of negative articles last week, Ted Cruz issued an open challenge to Lt. Governor David Dewhurst to participate in five Lincoln-Douglas style debates.

If you talk to ten different people about why a challenger with low name ID and zero political experience would ask for debates, you’d probably get ten different answers. The one important trait this exposes from the Cruz campaign is an unsettling arrogance.





Tom Leppert has a potentially strong bloc of voters in Dallas, and is reinforcing that base with hundreds of thousands of dollars in paid media before the holidays. For Cruz to write-off Leppert, who has a nearly 2:1 cash advantage over Ted, demonstrates a rookie’s hubris.

Tom Leppert used his financial advantage to defeat multiple, qualified candidates in his Dallas mayoral race. And he has demonstrated he will say (although not always act on) what it takes to win.



Cruz dismisses his opponents at his own peril.

Cruz Coverage Continues

I thought that the coverage of Cruz’s missteps on his family history would be over this week. After Bob Garrett’s blog post transformed into a story in the print edition, I considered this issue over.

This morning, though, the Dallas Morning News continued their coverage, this time in the form of an editorial that gives practice advice to Mr. Cruz on dealing with his family history in his Senate run.

“Cruz, who had not run for elected office until now, should have been clearer in describing his own history and far more assertive in controlling those who were loose with its particulars.”

Adding to Mr. Cruz’s woes was Part II in his self-inflicted wounds, his bulldog attack of the Council on Foreign Relations. In case you missed it, Cruz referred to the group as snakes who are threatening American sovereignty.

Perhaps he did not think through his answer, but Ted’s wife, Heidi Cruz, was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations until this June.

Heidi served a five-year term on the CFR, where she served as a co-author of a report that many blog commenters seem to interpret as calling for a North American Union. My reading of it is that the CFR is advocating for a closer relationship between Canada, Mexico and the United States – no more no less.

An entry on David Frum’s website asked why Ted, an Ivy League-educated attorney who has spent most of his adult life as a government lawyer, would veer so hard to the tinfoil hat side of the conservative wing.

To the author, the answer is simple – political expedience.  

How Cruz responds between now and Thanksgiving, when campaigns traditionally go underground, will be an interesting case study for a candidate who has spent so much time courting the Washington press, only now to face attacks from it.

Meet the Cruzes, Part II

The last two days for the Ted Cruz Senate campaign have not been the best, and his family has been the focus of the vulnerability.

The Dallas Morning News wrote about Cruz’s family history, and Ted made a rare error for candidate whose campaign prides itself on discipline.

In the article, when pressed about whether he corrected those who said positive but inaccurate things about Cruz’s family story, his answers did not sync up for journalist Robert Garrett.

This line from Garrett’s article is damning: “Cruz, a Republican and former state solicitor general, said this week he felt no obligation to correct others’ mistaken impressions.”

This morning, Politico broke the story about Ted Cruz savaging the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential New York-based think tank concentrated on international affairs and foreign policy.

From the Politico article: When asked about the Council at another event in Tyler, Tex., on Oct. 15 -- Texas, home of Ron Paul and Alex Jones, is the sort of place this comes up a lot -- Cruz called the organization "a pernicious nest of snakes" that is "working to undermine our sovereignty," according to video provided by someone who opposes his candidacy.

One problem – his wife Heidi was a member of this organization up until June of this year.

Ted Cruz remains a strong, compelling candidate but this week has to be a real blow to his credibility. When Cruz is off-script from the speech he has been delivering for over a year – it becomes clear that his desire for applause lines has occasionally gotten in the way of the truth.

Dallas Morning News: A tighter-lipped Cruz lets others fill in blanks on Cuban father's exodus

Here is the story from today's Dallas Morning News. It's even-handed, but had a glaring inaccuracy about Cruz being born in America. Cruz was born in Calgary.

This is just another example of the strain under which reporters, proofreaders and copy editors must be in in this time of intense change in the newspaper industry.

I have underlined a few things that caught my eye.

A tighter-lipped Cruz lets others fill in blanks on Cuban father’s exodus

By Robert T. Garrett

Austin — Texas U.S. Senate hopeful Ted Cruz often laces his speeches and radio interviews with a story about how his father fled Cuban oppression.

But this fall, Cruz told few if any audiences that his father came to the U.S. in 1957, more than a year before Fidel Castro came to power, and that his flight was from the regime of right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista, not Castro’s.

Cruz has remained silent as journalists and political activists repeatedly — and incorrectly — placed his father among the many Cubans who fled after Castro took power. Cruz’s father, Rafael, was a guerrilla who fought to topple Batista, though he departed for Texas before the Cuban revolution succeeded.

Cruz, a Republican and former state solicitor general, said this week he felt no obligation to correct others’ mistaken impressions.

“I have many, many times described the full context of his fighting with Castro — in the broader sense … not side by side but on the same side as Castro,” Cruz said in an interview Monday.

A review by The Dallas Morning News of dozens of speeches and interviews Cruz has given since 2005 found no instances of his incorrectly describing when his father fled from Cuba, as U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., recently acknowledged doing.

Last week, The Washington Post reported that Rubio said on three occasions since 2006 and on his official Senate website that his parents came to the U.S. after Castro’s forces overthrew Batista in January 1959. They actually arrived more than 21/2 years earlier. Rubio has said his parents wanted to go back to Cuba but couldn’t because of Castro’s Marxist oppression.

Like Rubio, Cruz was born in the U.S.

Cruz, a Republican conservative firebrand, has shaped and reshaped the story of his father, who is now 72 and lives in Carrollton , since 2009, when the younger Cruz ran briefly for state attorney general. Last January, Ted Cruz threw his hat into the ring for the seat of retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, and he now faces a crowded March primary field.

Until August, Cruz routinely said in public appearances that in 1956, under the Batista regime, his paternal grandfather bribed guards to free his father from prison. Rafael Cruz, though, recently told his son that wasn’t accurate.

“My dad said, ‘No, that that piece is not the case, I don’t believe that is right,’ and so I’ve stopped saying that,” Ted Cruz said. He said his father, then 17, was tortured and “beaten almost to death.”

In at least seven speeches and radio interviews last month and this month, Cruz talked about his father’s flight from Cuba but mentioned neither the date nor Batista, The News found.

In an appearance earlier this month at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, Cruz quoted his father as saying in a speech at a 2009 Dallas Tea Party rally: “When I was a young man, I saw a young charismatic leader come to power, and he promised hope and change.”

Ted Cruz acknowledged Monday that his father was talking about Castro’s early years in power. “He didn’t say he was there firsthand, suffering it. He just described it,” the younger Cruz said.

In a 2006 report, the Austin American-Statesman quoted Cruz as saying his father “was a guerrilla, throwing Molotov cocktails and blowing up buildings.”

“Anytime one is recounting oral history of your family, there are necessarily some vagaries that come with memories 50, 60 years ago,” Cruz said. “There is nothing to hide.”

Click here to read the full story.

Meet the Cruzes

This morning, Bob Garrett of the Dallas Morning News, wrote about the parallels between the the family narratives of Senator Marco Rubio and U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz.

Rubio has done a full-court press on conservative talk shows, and the Miami media has circled the wagons to protect Rubio against the allegations of embellishing his background to frame a better narrative.

Rubio is a skilled politician who recognizes the value of a good story.

And Ted Cruz? At the recent Value Voters Summit, he had this to say:

"My father fled Cuba and came to the United States when he was 18. He didn't speak a word of English. He landed in Austin, Texas with no possessions," Cruz said.

"When I was a kid, my dad used to say to say to me all the time, when we faced oppression in Cuba, I had a place to flee to," [Cruz] continued.

Cruz is either artful or deceptive in never mentioning who was the oppressor: Fulgencio Batista or Fidel Castro.

Dallas Morning News: “Texas U.S. Senate hopeful Ted Cruz often ends his speeches with a story about how his father fled Cuban oppression.

“But what the stumping GOP Senate candidate hadn't clarified, until asked by The Dallas Morning News this week, was that his father departed for the U.S. in 1957, more than a year before Fidel Castro came to power.”

A little digging shows the extent to which Rafael Cruz fought with Castro.

“My Dad spent the next four years throwing Molotov cocktails, blowing up buildings,” Cruz has said.

I think Cruz must have answers to the questions that will follow:

Has Ted Cruz ever let the characterization that his father was oppressed by Fidel Castro stand?

How did Cruz’s father enter the country if, as Ted maintains, it was not illegally?

Some of this story highlights the ugly side of politics, but a principal part of the Ted Cruz narrative is that of his father’s journey to America. These questions may never come, but regardless, I’m sure we will see a more consistent Ted Cruz in the future.

Is Jason Johnson Ted Cruz's glass jaw?

Maybe Jason Johnson knows something I don’t, but I doubt it.

In the latest memo from general consultant Jason Johnson, the Ted Cruz campaign rolls out their case for victory. Rather than highlight the genuine, positive attributes of their campaign that are based in reality, Johnson instead lays out the foundation of his case using three factors that are a complete house of cards.

Johnson’s claims:

1)      Cruz has won “11 consecutive straw polls against the major candidates”

If Johnson is trying to portray Ted Cruz as a Tea Party juggernaut, he is conveniently forgetting that another Tea Party favorite Glenn Addison handily defeated Ted Cruz at two of the most high-profile straw polls in Waco and Austin.
 

2)      Cruz has the highest fundraising total of anyone in this race*

Over the last 270 days, Cruz raised more money than any other Senate candidate ($2.8M); however, it took David Dewhurst ($2.64M in 3^rd Quarter) less than 45 days to nearly outraise the amount Cruz has raised over the last 270 days.

Tom Leppert has raised nearly $2.5 million, also over the last nine months, but has the personal resources to make up for any fundraising edge Cruz may have.

Both Dewhurst and Leppert dwarf Cruz in cash-on-hand.  

3)      Johnson touts poll showing Cruz in first place

As I have mentioned before, Johnson and the Cruz campaign team are doing their candidate a disservice in promoting this poll. No matter how the poll is framed, it is based on faulty methodology. The campaign will have to stand by this talking point the next time any major public poll comes out.

In his overly-defensive response to a barb that trial lawyer Ted Cruz is on the wrong side in his legal defense of a Chinese conglomerate against an American inventor; and in this meandering memo, Johnson emerges as the glass jaw of the Cruz campaign.

In spite of Johnson’s recklessness, campaign manager John Drogin deserves true credit for maximizing Cruz’s connections with the Ivy League, Wall Street bankers, trial lawyers and Washington insiders into quality, national earned-media appearances for his candidate.

Jason Johnson? Not so much.

After losing Greg Abbott as a client, Johnson seems to be doubling down on a Cruz candidacy by chasing every wild pitch. Memos like these only serve as notice that he is not ready for the major league.