2016 Election

[Ryan Ruck]

I suspect either Hillary (unless this stuff about Bill's travels to Orgy Island with pedo Jeffrey Epstein boils over) or Elizabeth Warren will be the Dem pick.

There don't seem to really be any other Dem names getting air time, not even long shots.

[American Patriot]

I don't like either of them.

I don't like 90% of anyone though.

I think the Dems ought to run Wookie.

[Malsua]

i think the dems ought to run wookie.

*shivers*

[MinutemanCO]

I think the Dems ought to run Wookie.

It bothers me a little remembering that Obama kinda came outa nowhere.

[American Patriot]

/chuckles

[Ryan Ruck]

Ted Cruz To Announce Presidential Bid Monday

March 21, 2015

Sen. Ted Cruz plans to announce Monday that he will run for president of the United States, according to his senior advisers, accelerating his already rapid three-year rise from a tea party insurgent in Texas into a divisive political force in Washington.

Cruz, scheduled to speak Monday at a convocation ceremony at Liberty University in Virginia, will not form an exploratory committee but rather launch a presidential bid outright, said advisers with direct knowledge of his plans, who spoke on condition of anonymity because an official announcement had not been made yet. They say he is done exploring and is now ready to become the first Republican presidential candidate.

Over the course of the primary campaign, Cruz will aim to raise between $40 million and $50 million, according to advisers, and dominate with the same tea party voters who supported his underdog senate campaign in 2012. But the key to victory, Cruz advisers believe, is to be the second choice of enough voters in the party's libertarian and social conservative wings to cobble together a coalition to defeat the chosen candidate of the Republican establishment.

The firebrand Texan may have few Senate colleagues who will back his White House bid, but his appeal to his party's base who vote disproportionately in Republican primaries could make him competitive in Iowa and beyond.

Yet critics of Cruz argue that he will have trouble raising high-dollar donations from traditional contributors, will land few endorsements from the nation's political establishment and be unable to escape comparisons to President Barack Obama, who also ran for president in his first Senate term. And if he advances to a general election, Cruz trails likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton solidly in early public opinion polls.

"I don't consider him a mainstream candidate, and usually to win you've got to be inside the 45-yard lines," said Greg Valliere, a political adviser to Wall Street firms who believes that if Cruz did earn the nomination, he would not win more than a dozen states in the general election. "The enthusiasm for him will be tremendous in maybe a third of the party, but another third of the party will be strongly opposed and another third of the party will be wary."

Senior advisers say Cruz will run as an unabashed conservative eager to mobilize like-minded voters who cannot stomach the choice of the "mushy middle" that he has ridiculed on the stump over the past two months in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

"Ted is exactly where most Republican voters are," said Mike Needham, who heads the conservative advocacy group Heritage Action for America. "Most people go to Washington and get co-opted. And Ted clearly is somebody that hasn't been."

Upon arriving in Washington, D.C., Cruz discarded the expectation of deference that accompanies a freshman senator, launching frequent one-man stands to stymie congressional Democrats and Republicans alike. After Cruz led a shutdown of the federal government in October 2013 as part of an effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act, conservative activists flocked to their new hero even as Republican leaders excoriated him.

For Cruz, 44, Monday's planned announcement will culminate two years of open musing about running for president that began nearly the moment voters elected him to the Senate in 2012. Only a month later, as senator-elect, Cruz established a political action committee to back conservative candidates nationwide. During his first congressional summer recess, he was already visiting Iowa.

And over the past seven months, the Jobs, Growth and Freedom PAC has added a coterie of nationally experienced political operatives to the 2012 team of Texas strategists who engineered the surprise dethroning of Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the Republican primary. Joining the team Monday will be Cruz's wife, Heidi, a managing director at Goldman Sachs in Houston, who will take leave from the firm and accompany her husband on the campaign trail.

[American Patriot]

He announced I think last night

[Ryan Ruck]

Unofficially he did.

As I'm sure everyone heard, the official announcement was at Liberty University today.

Time to update my signature.

[Ryan Ruck]

Here's Cruz's speech. Fast forward to 1:14.

[Malsua]

I've said all along that if Ted runs, I'm in.

He's the best candidate in the field. I can only hope he has a chance.

[American Patriot]

Some assholes posted he is a "Canadian Citizen" and if Obama wasn't born in Hawaii (and he was, they said) then how can someone vote for Cruz. Because they are RACISTS..

God what a bunch of fucktards

[Malsua]

I'm voting for Cruz because he's Latino instead of an angry white harridan. I guess that makes me a racist.

[American Patriot]

He's a WHITE Hispanic! God... you racists.

LOL

[Malsua]

Well, if he's a white hispanic, I'm voting for the Cuban half.

[American Patriot]

lol

I like the guy.

I think he's one of those rare people that come along and say it like it is, means what he says and then does something about "it", whatever "it" is.

[Ryan Ruck]

Just tell them if a Kenyan is good enough for the White House, so is a Canadian.

I swear, it's almost sad how dumb people are to have the inability to research and see that the legal requirements of conference of citizenship have changed over the years. 4 times if I remember correctly from the debate about Obama's eligibility.

[Ryan Ruck]

Ted Cruz's Rollout Breaks the Rules, Scores a Quick Million

Cruz raised $1 million in just over the first 24 hours. Data analysts were crucial to maximizing return.

March 25, 2015

Ted Cruz's entire decision of whether to jump-start his presidential candidacy at the end of a fundraising quarter hinged on the ability to raise $1 million in the first week.

The Texas senator ended up hitting that milestone in just over a day.



Fueled by a team of 10 data scientists who are tasked with conducting real-time analysis of prospective supporters, the reach of and return on Cruz's rollout has already exceeded the initial expectations of even the campaign's top advisers.

While initial media reports detailed Cruz raising $500,000 on the first day, the candidate actually reached the $1 million marker near 2:30 A.M. Tuesday, just past the first crucial 24 hours since the campaign's launch on Twitter midnight Monday.

An avalanche of small dollar donations goosed the top line, according to data provided exclusively to U.S. News by the Cruz campaign.

Two-thirds of Cruz's initial contributions were under $100. Checks of less than $250 amounted to 95 percent of Cruz's rush to his first million.

Texas, unsurprisingly, was his top donor state, followed by California, Florida and Virginia.



(Looks like a lot of support from very key areas! Note: I am not solely responsible for the big red spot over Cincinnati. )

But it wasn't only about shaking the money tree.

Because they were to be first to turn the ignition key on a 2016 candidacy, Cruz's political brain trust also sought to expand the scope of its rollout, beyond the customary single day flurry of media coverage. His advisers mapped out a carefully planned succession of events designed to build on each other and churn over a week's span of time.

On Saturday, word began to float out to reporters about an "important speech" Cruz would deliver on Monday at Liberty University. By Saturday night, Cruz's hometown newspaper, The Houston Chronicle, had nailed down the scoop: Monday morning was go-time.

But first, the tweets.

At 8:05 PM Sunday night, Cruz placed word on Twitter that "around midnight there will be some news you won't want to miss." Four hours and four minutes later, just after midnight Monday, he tweeted, "I'm running for President and I hope to earn your support!"

The tweet was viewed 1.1 million times and the ensuing Facebook post scored more than 800,000 views and reached 2.6 million.



Of course, not all the social media feedback was positive. On Yik Yak, the app for posting anonymous missives, there was plenty of griping and joking from Liberty students who were required to be there. Twitter and Facebook drew ample Cruz detractors as well, with many jabbing him for failing to own the rights to TedCruz.com and other websites bearing his name. Still, the overall optics of the announcement were favorable. He was also blessed with luck, of course. If the Germanwings plane had fallen out of the sky and into the French Alps a day sooner, it could've drained his coverage significantly.

(If they were anonymous, how do we know they were really Liberty Students? The only places I saw that conspiracy theory were from liberal sources. As for TedCruz.com, it was claimed by a liberal long before Ted Cruz came on the national scene. 2004 I think.)

"Nothing happened," a top Cruz strategist told U.S. News, almost exhaling in relief.

Following the Liberty University announcement, which dominated most of cable news Monday and showed Cruz basking before a youthful, exuberant audience, the candidate hopped on a plane not to Iowa or New Hampshire -- but New York. In addition to a fundraising event there, he did Sean Hannity's radio show as well as sat for the full-hour on his Fox News Channel primetime television program.



The next morning, even as Cruz was headed to NBC's Today Show for the first joint interview with his wife, Heidi, he still made the front pages of most of the major daily newspapers in Iowa and New Hampshire.

The outset of the Cruz endeavor is demonstrating how crucial analytics will be in building on his initial success. When Cruz sat for an interview with Fox's Megyn Kelly on Tuesday night, he pulled in 952 donors who contributed $70,486 as a result of the appearance, according to Cruz's data crunchers.



The 10 staffers who hold PhDs in behavioral science or analytics monitored the profiles of those hitting the website during the Kelly interview and quickly redirected social media and Internet-based ad campaigns to maximize the output of their potential targets.

This graph shows how traffic to the Cruz website spiked during his Kelly appearance. He saw a similar, smaller bump -- yielding about $39,000 -- when he was on Glenn Beck's radio program in the morning, demonstrated in the graphic that follows.

Cruz's team believes their rollout sets a higher bar for the Republican aspirants who come after him -- namely, all of them.​​​​​​​​​. He skipped the exploratory step, went right for the full announcement at a unorthodox time (at the end of a month and quarter) in which he visited neither his home state or an early nominating state. (He embarks on an early state tour -- guaranteed to suck up more media, next week.)



"Imagine Mike Huckabee doing an exploratory committee now. How much oxygen does that get?," challenged the Cruz strategist. "How do you announce and fly around your home state? What's that worth?"

Ironically, Cruz's bold move was in part, inspired by Jeb Bush, who initially announced his consideration of a presidential campaign in mid-December a few weeks before Christmas, when voters were busy, distracted and assumed to be focused on anything but politics.

Cruz's team eyed Bush's bold move and thought they could break the conventional timetable mold too.

There's an unwritten rule in presidential politics that says a campaign shouldn't launch at the end of March, right before the fresh fundraising quarter of April. The rule dictates a candidate would want a full three-month cycle to raise money before having to report it out to the punditry.

"The rules this cycle," says the Cruz strategist, "are meant to be broken."

[American Patriot]

(looks like a lot of support from very key areas! Note: I am not solely responsible for the big red spot over cincinnati. :d)

lol!

[Ryan Ruck]

Watch out Pete! That first step's a real doozy!

Rep. Peter King Threatens to Jump Off a Bridge if Cruz Gets GOP Nomination

March 23, 2015

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) appeared on CNN’s The Situation Room Monday afternoon and when Wolf Blitzer asked him to explain his statement that compared Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to a “carnival barker,” the Republican congressman opted not to walk back his comments but instead take about a dozen steps forward.

“We need intelligent debate in the country. Ted Cruz may be an intelligent person, but he doesn’t carry out an intelligent debate,” King said. “He oversimplifies, he exaggerates and he basically led the Republican Party over the cliff in the fall of 2013. He has shown no qualifications, no legislation being passed, doesn’t provide leadership and he has no real experience. So, to me, he is just a guy with a big mouth and no results.”

But would King support Cruz if he ended up becoming the Republican Party nominee for 2016?

“I hope that day never comes,” King told Blitzer. “I will jump off that bridge when we come to it.”

King said Cruz would have to undergo a “complete conversion” before he could imagine casting a vote for him in a general election. He described himself as a “true conservative” unlike “counterfeit” candidates like Cruz and Rand Paul and said he might just have to run himself to prevent them from “hijacking the nomination.”

The congressman named Jeb Bush, Scott Walker and John Kasich as GOP candidates he could see himself supporting, but added he just doesn’t see Cruz and Paul as being “part of the talent pool.”

Watch video below, via CNN:

(Video at link)

[Ryan Ruck]

In a Short Time, Ted Cruz Has Raised Big Money From Small Donors

April 2, 2015

Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican senator, raised nearly $4 million in the eight days after he announced his presidential campaign, according to The Wall Street Journal. What’s important about that number is that almost all of it came in amounts of less than $100.

That’s a big change for Mr. Cruz. During his Senate run in 2012, 80 percent of the money he collected from individuals were in donations of $200 or more, the threshold for when donor’s names are listed on Federal Election Commission reports.

Assuming The Journal’s report is correct that about 95 percent of the donations raised in late March came in contributions of less than $100, it means that Mr. Cruz has raised nearly as much money from small-dollar donors in eight days (an estimate is between $2 million and $3 million) as he did for his Senate political action committee during the previous four years ($2.9 million). We won’t know the donor breakdown until April 15.

Running for president does provide a much different platform for fund-raising than a Senate campaign does, with live-streaming of Mr. Cruz’s announcement at Liberty University and the media attention of being the only major candidate officially in the race. But Mr. Cruz’s early ability to capitalize on the attention by bringing in money from small-dollar donors has two long-term implications.

Nearly all of the money he is raising at this point can be spent on the Republican primary. Not so with all of the money raised from those dinners where individual donors give the maximum amount: $2,700 each for the primary and the general election. Any money given by a donor above the first $2,700 can’t be used until the recipient is the nominee. While Mitt Romney was stockpiling maximum contributions in 2012, President Obama was going back again and again to donors who had yet to reach the primary limit. Both kinds of contributions are useful, but primary money can be used now.

There’s hardly a chance Mr. Cruz can maintain a 95 percent ratio, but even around 50 percent would be an achievement. And if Mr. Cruz can continue his early small-dollar success, it strengthens his argument that he represents grass-roots conservatism better than a candidate with stronger ties to the Republican establishment, like Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor.

Other Republicans have tried this. Herman Cain, for example, raised more than half of the money for his brief presidential campaign in 2012 from contributors who gave less than $200. Several other G.O.P. also-rans got sizable chunks of money from the small-dollar crowd, including Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich.

The risk for Mr. Cruz is that he is unable to sustain the enthusiasm of those initial donors, forcing him to compete with Mr. Bush and other Republicans for high-dollar donors. Nearly two-thirds of Mr. Romney’s donors in 2012 gave at least $1,000, according to the Campaign Finance Institute. The percentages for the rest of the field were much smaller: 12 percent for Ron Paul, 7 percent for Mr. Gingrich and 6 percent for Mr. Santorum.

The model for Mr. Cruz’s campaign fund-raising is Mr. Obama, who succeeded at both the low and high ends of the donor spectrum. Mr. Cruz’s first F.E.C. report, due April 15, won’t be a definitive marker of his progress, but it will show early strength among small-dollar donors. The more important reports will come later when we can ascertain how sustainable that strength is.