First Hussein, then Cruz.... It is a pity when you think of it.

he's the perfect distraction from the real candidate.

well played republitards.

Who is the real candidate?

there seems to be only one that isn't a religious nutcase and/or any other form of nutcase and doesn't seem to have too many skeletons in his closet - Jeb Bush

but will he make it through the primaries without scaring off the normal folks?

because only with the white religious, conservative people, no one will win an election nowadays

At the moment there seems to be no real strong republican candidate. Cruz it too batshit crazy to appeal to the more moderates, Bush has the family name issue and at this point none of them seem to have a plan for trying to draw in minority and younger voters.

But it is early. You never know who may enter the race or what could happen.

This is what I'm saying. Why hasn't the birther movement come alive and why aren't they screaming from the top of their mountain tops about how Cruz wasn't born in the United States?

This is my take on the Republican situation too. I don't see a clear, strong front runner.

for quite a while i was thinking it's Jeb. Now i'm not sure but i would expect the republitard party must have a favorite by now that the political machines are being primed right? i now rove has been on the circuit for a bit now, so things are ramping up. certainly some of these candidates are falling on their swords so to speak to muddy things up, etc.

certainly they have at least an outline of an agenda by now.

and wouldn't you agree cruz is an ideal candidate to do that? an irish catholic cuban canadian texan conservative PUSA? not a chance.

I liked Jon Huntsman (besides him being a mormon). But he seemed to be a reasonable, quite liberal person with good international experience.

that's probably why he'll never get far in the Republican Party

edit - just found this - says it all

Jon Huntsman says no thanks to 2016 run - Anna Palmer - POLITICO.com

Rand Paul is going after both minority and younger voters very actively.

Bush has no shot with his amnesty and common core positions.

I honestly don't know much about Bush other than his family.

Paul seems to ruffle the feathers of the GOP, which can be a good thing to some degree, but I wonder if they would back him enough to help him raise the money needed to compete.

It could turn into a very interesting election.

Conservatives love to be lied to.. Bush will just lie and change his mind about any previous issues and it will then be ok. Look at Mitt Romney as example. Look at all the stuff in his background like Romeycare and woman's issues.. He just lied about it and made himself a new past and the "base" ate it up.

With the right more than anything, it's all about the "team". When Democrats aren't happy with their voting options they don't vote. Clear example is the last mid terms. Democrats just didn't vote, hence the reason so many Republicans won their elections..

Meanwhile Republicans vote for the team not for the candidate and will vote for whomever the GOP presents for them. This has been shown time and time again, clear example of McCain and Mitt Romney.. both were hated by the fringes but the fringes still showed up to vote for them.

In theory Cruz is the perfect guy to put out there as an example of an extreme right winger. Then along comes a republican that is a little more moderate, yet still conservative and they seem like such a better choice compared to Cruz.

i'm still predicting a republitard victory!

who do they think can raise $1 fucking billion dollars?

What to me is more interesting than who is parents are or where he was born is that until recently he actually held a dual citizenship. He recently renounced his Canadian citizenship. You would think that would make some of those crackpots suspicious.

Of course they may still speak up. He just announced. When we actually get more candidates and the election starts to kick up if he shows himself as a potential legit challenger we might start hearing them speak out.

Not true at all. The base of the Republicans stay home too if they are not happy. Romney lost because the base stayed home. Both Democrats and Republicans stay home if they are not happy.

Midterms are a tough thing for Democrats though. Midterm elections tend to skew older and only the die hards. The older you are, the more you skew Republicans and they get a bigger turnout usually as a result. Again unless pissed, like 06 where you had Republicans pissed at Bush for his and congress spending out of control, and you had Democrats pissed with the wars and losing 04.

But yes you are right about McCain and Romney and any RINO that is a Democrat really, but runs and campaigns are conservatives. They try to win moderates but lose their base, and lose elections. Christie and Bush are this years. Even Scott Walker is jello on a lot of issues. You can see McCain by the way starting to act very conservative again, as he is up again in 16. Does it everytime.

i can see that as what's happening.

i'm still figuring the Bush name is what will raise that sort of money needed, but...........

I'm always reminded of what Karl Rove once said. While talking about how modern day republicans win elections he said something to the effect of, "Pander to the base, then move just enough to the middle to get the more right leaning moderates and then pray for rain on election day."

He knows if a republican can make the base happy they will turn out and vote. If there is a low voter turnout it almost always favors the republicans because of this. Like you said, the republicans tend to do better in the mid-terms because it is older and more hardcore, base-oriented voters.

The challenge it seems today's republican presidential candidates have is making that base happy, yet still being able to appeal to enough moderates to carry the battleground states.

Sure, I have no doubt Bush could raise a boatload of cash. I just wonder if the people are ready to elect a third Bush especially considering that the first two were pretty crappy.

The Kock suckers have already stated they plan to spend 900 million on the 2016 election..

Koch Brothers Rival GOP With Plans To Spend $900 Million In 2016 : NPR

The amount of money thrown around these days in presidential elections is sickening. I remember when Obama was running against McCain he had so much money he was buying ads in McCain's home state simply because there were no other ad spots available for sale anywhere else and they still had millions they could spend.

Ted Cruz is a small part of our Canadian plan for world domination.

He has his head firmly in the clouds and up his own ass, enjoy

:1orglaugh:thumbsup

That's a shit ton . it's my understanding that about 300 million of that will go to the pusa campaign an the lions share spread out amongst quite a few campaigns. Have you heard who they are liking?

They like all the crazy Tea Party candidates because the only thing the Kock's care about is less taxes, less regulation and more free govt money.

Obama was born in Africa but managed to get elected POTUS.

I think if they actually ran conservatives who stood for something they would do better than expected with moderate and independents, plus keep the base. But usually they chicken out and go for what media thinks is the right guy. And that guy usually is a straw blowing in the wind. Stands for absolutely nothing. The base stays home, and its lights out.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

To me one of the big problems with the republicans is that to bring in the base most of them have to take pretty conservative stances on social issues like gay marriage. Those stances turn off a lot of moderates. It is a fine line they have to navigate.

Still, it seems like a candidate who says, "This is who I am, this is what I believe," tends to do better than a candidate who jumps all over the place trying to please everyone.

Cruz was born on December 22, 1970[7][16] in Calgary, Alberta, Canada[7][19] where his parents, Eleanor Elizabeth Darragh Wilson[19][20][21][22][23][24] and Rafael Bienvenido Cruz,[22][23] were working in the oil business.[25][26] His parents owned a seismic-data processing firm for oil drillers.[22][27] Cruz's father, who was born in 1939 in Matanzas, Cuba,[22][23] "suffered beatings and imprisonment for protesting the oppressive regime"[22][27] of dictator Fulgencio Batista. He fought for Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution[28][29] when he was 14 years old, but "didn't know Castro was a Communist."[30] A few years later he became a staunch critic of Castro when "the rebel leader took control and began seizing private property and suppressing dissent."[22][31] The elder Cruz fled Cuba at age 18 in 1957, two years before the revolution, with $100 sewn into his underwear. A Cuban émigré who knew no English, he landed in Austin,[27] to study at the University of Texas.[32][33] His younger sister fought in the counter-revolution and was tortured by the new regime.[29] He remained regretful for his early support of Castro, and emphatically conveyed this remorse to his young son over the following years.[22][29] The elder Cruz worked his way through college as a dishwasher, making 50 cents an hour,[21] earning a degree in mathematics.[27] Cruz's father is a pastor in Carrollton, Texas,[20] a Dallas suburb, and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2005.[23]

Cruz's mother was born and raised in Wilmington, Delaware,[23] in a family of three quarters Irish and one quarter Italian descent.[21][26][34] She was the first person in her family to attend college. She earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Rice University in Houston in the 1950s, working summers at Foley's department store and Shell Oil.[35] She later worked in Houston as a computer programmer at Shell.[27] Cruz has said, "I'm Cuban, Irish, and Italian, and yet somehow I ended up Southern Baptist."[4]

Cruz's parents returned to Houston in 1974, after working in the Alberta oil fields, when a slump hit the price of oil and they sold their first seismic data company.[20] They divorced while Cruz was in law school.[27]

The point is moot anyway. Cruz doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell in getting the nomination. Obviously Cruz gets a pass to run for U.S. president even though he was born in Canada.

Funny though how the birther movement didn't happen until AFTER Obama was elected. No one thought about it or gave a shit until the whole Kenya nonsense was concocted.

I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned it yet: Cruz?s Wife Heidi to Take Unpaid Leave From Goldman - Bloomberg Business

This is called "politics" and it's business as usual.

It's a bit stunning that someone can reach so high up in government office, yet hold duel citizenship. Not sure about anyone else, and I acknowledge a fair percentage of us are immigrants to some degree, but I think someone who is a Senator or Congressman shouldn't be a citizen of another country.

But this is all part of politics. Cruz cannot make a run at the White House while having duel citizenship. Jeb Bush too has been spending the past year dropping his business ties; Ironically, Jeb Bush made a lot of money off of Obamacare. And it's not only the Republicans who do this - I believe Hilary's entire work history since her husband was President was designed for a run at the White House also.

Cruz will never win a general election, because he's looked upon as an idiot to most sane people. A republican primary though --- he'll do well there. But if Cruz does become the Republican nominee....I think he has too much conviction and loyalty to his far right conservative beliefs to move center enough to win a general election. The one good quality the guy has will be his monkey wrench.

The liberals like to throw around the Koch Brothers thinking it's some kind of badge, fuckng ignorant fucks, well at least Crockass,
https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/

Shows that the Koch brothers have nothing on the Unions, 222 million? I have two union cards and that pisses me off

Agreed, I would rather see a moderate run, either republican or democrat, but they don't seem to exist anymore

Here you go, the Koch Brothers are #10
https://www.opensecrets.org/overview/topindivs.php

Union work for the workers whom pay their dues. Kock Brothers work for their own greedy pockets. Of course you don't see the difference because OBAMA!

Well you certainly aren't one.. :1orglaugh