Ted Cruz’s splashy entry into the 2016 race Monday intensifies the early battle to consolidate conservative voters who are intent on denying the Republican Party establishment yet another presidential nomination.
In a primary fight more up for grabs than any Republicans have waged in a generation, at least a half-dozen credible contenders are likely to join Cruz in competing for the hearts of conservatives. They face a labyrinth of tests of ideology and temperament, on talk radio and at Tea Party and faith forums, in a melee to become the hard-right’s standard bearer.
Cruz, a 44-year-old senator from Texas whose combative posture has made him a household name for restive conservative activists nationally, offered himself in his announcement speech Monday as an uncompromising champion for Christian evangelical voters as well.
Other rivals, chiefly former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, are positioning themselves instead as favorites of the business and mainstream wings.
But the emerging GOP scramble cannot be neatly defined by the establishment and the conservative grass roots. There are myriad and fluid categories that intersect in other ways.
The candidates can be grouped generationally and geographically. Some of their pitches are focused on domestic issues, others on foreign policy. There also is a divide between first-term senators in Washington who offer rhetoric and ideas, and governors who plan to run on their records of enacting change in their states.
The key for each candidate, party strategists said, is finding a way to stitch together coalitions while preserving his or her political viability in the general election, when Democrats will have a demographic advantage.
“Everybody starts off from a certain part of the party, but the candidate who can expand his base, who can speak in terms that unite this party, is the candidate who wins,” said Dick Wadhams, a veteran GOP consultant who lives in Jefferson County. “This thing is wide open, and the debates are going to make the difference.”
By officially launching his campaign Monday at Liberty University, the Christian college in Lynchburg, Va., founded by the late fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell, Cruz tied his candidacy to his Christian faith and signaled that outreach to evangelicals would be central to his political calculus.
Cruz faces stiff competition. The past two winners of the Iowa caucuses, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, have strong followings with social conservatives and are preparing for repeat bids in 2016. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson also is wooing the religious right and spoke during the weekend at televangelist Pat Robertson’s 85th birthday party.
Edward J. Rollins, who managed Ronald Reagan’s 1984 re-election campaign, said Cruz is angling to become “the leader of the Tea Party, which has never really had a leader, and bring together evangelicals.” He added that Cruz has the potential to “crowd out Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ben Carson.”
Cruz, as well as Huckabee, Santorum and Carson, will rely expressly on Christian conservatives and small-dollar donors to help propel their candidacies forward.
“Cruz is occupying just one of the lanes, the social conservative, right wing, Tea Party lane — and it’s an important lane,” said Douglas E. Gross, a Bush ally and prominent Iowa Republican. “Cruz’s hope is that his lane is big enough to have an impact on the entire process and enable him to finish in the top two in Iowa. There is, however, no guarantee that a one-lane campaign is enough.”
Other contenders are making overtures to social conservatives but have potential to rally significant support in other parts of the party as well.
