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Ted Cruz For President In 2016?


He hasn't even been sworn into office and there's already talk of Ted Cruz running for president.

Cruz will represent Texas in the U.S. Senate this coming January. The political newcomer shook up the Republican Party in Texas and after a speech in Washington Thursday night, some are saying he could do the same across the country.

The future senator made an impassioned speech before a conservative group called the "American Principles Project."

"Let me suggest a very simple reason why we lost the election. We didn't win the argument. We didn't even make the argument," Cruz told the audience.

He touched on what went wrong for Republicans in the presidential election and what needs to be done to reshape the party.

Cruz brought up Mitt Romney's “47 percent" comment. "In that comment, and in the narrative we made to this country, the Democrat notion that there is a fixed and static pie. The rich are the rich, the poor are the poor, and all that matters is redistributing from one to the other. The essence of the conservative message should be, we want a dynamic nation where anybody with nothing can achieve anything," Cruz said.

And Cruz says the Republican Party also needs to do a better job identifying with Hispanics who overwhelmingly voted for President Obama.

Cruz said, "Republicans need to remain a party that supports securing the border and stop illegal immigration and at the same time welcomes and celebrate legal immigrants. Champions legal immigration." He was met with applause at the end of that statement.

Jay Root is a political reporter with the Texas Tribune. Root says there are enough reasons to see why Ted Cruz is being viewed as a potential candidate for president in 2016.

According to Root, "He is really the rising star Republican in Texas and Texas is a very big deal. It's the second largest state. So I think just operating from that base alone...generating a lot of buzz...being Hispanic...a Tea Party darling from Texas. Just those elements right there is somebody you can't ignore as a potential presidential candidate."

Ted Cruz is American of Cuban descent. In 1957, his father Rafael fled the revolution in Cuba and came to Texas.

Knowing only Spanish, he took a job as a dishwasher here in Austin for 50 cents an hour and saved enough money to put himself through college at the University of Texas. After graduation, Rafael Cruz started his own business, doing seismic data processing for oil companies.

By Ron Oliveira