{"id":13127,"date":"2012-02-23T19:40:05","date_gmt":"2012-02-24T00:40:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=13127"},"modified":"2012-02-23T19:40:05","modified_gmt":"2012-02-24T00:40:05","slug":"texas%e2%80%99-marco-rubio-makes-unforced-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/13127\/texas%e2%80%99-marco-rubio-makes-unforced-error\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas\u2019 Marco Rubio Makes Unforced Error"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve written previously about former Texas Solicitor General and U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz<\/a>.\u00a0 He\u2019s a towering legal intellect and a conservative\u2019s conservative.\u00a0 His Cuban heritage and up-by-the-bootstraps story from son of immigrants to Princeton and Harvard Law are legendary.\u00a0 His ill-chosen words about Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) are not.<\/p>\n

In an interview with the Dallas Morning News reported by Roll Call<\/a>, Cruz said he was \u201cnot going to prejudge\u201d the upcoming Senate GOP leadership race where Cornyn is running for GOP whip, one step below party leader.\u00a0 Based on his comments, Cruz seems to be saying that if he becomes Texas\u2019 next U.S. Senator he might vote for someone besides Cornyn if the opponent is more of a constitutional conservative.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all well and good, and Cruz\u2019s scenario may even come to pass, but the first-time campaigner made a rookie mistake by refusing to support his fellow Texas Republican in what amounts to little more than deference to a party elder.\u00a0 After all, as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee Cornyn has his hands on millions of dollars in fundraising that he could use to either hurt or help Cruz in the latter\u2019s current primary battle.<\/p>\n

So far, Cornyn has honored his pledge to stay neutral in the primary.\u00a0 Chances are he\u2019ll keep that pledge, but Cruz\u2019s unforced error makes it more likely that Cornyn would be fine if David Dewhurst, Cruz\u2019s primary opponent and sitting Lieutenant Governor, frames Cruz\u2019s comments as a signal he can\u2019t be both a conservative and a Republican at the same time.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Florida\u2019s Marco Rubio isn\u2019t having that problem.\u00a0 Without sacrificing any of his conservative bona fides Rubio has managed to win the confidence of party elders and is no doubt on the vice presidential short list of every remaining Republican presidential candidate.\u00a0 Cruz needs to take a page from Rubio\u2019s playbook because Texas \u2013 and America \u2013 needs as many constitutional conservatives as we can get in the U.S. Senate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve written previously about former Texas Solicitor General and U.S. Senate candidate Ted Cruz.\u00a0 He\u2019s a towering legal intellect and a conservative\u2019s conservative.\u00a0 His Cuban heritage and up-by-the-bootstraps story from son of immigrants to Princeton and Harvard Law are legendary.\u00a0 His ill-chosen words about Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) are not. In an interview with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2033,435,352,2890,561],"class_list":["post-13127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-2033","tag-john-cornyn","tag-marco-rubio","tag-ted-cruz","tag-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13127"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13131,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13127\/revisions\/13131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}