Visits to key primary states like Iowa suggest Cruz has an eye on 2016.
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Like Obama, Cruz is a dynamite speaker. Unlike the President, he shuns a teleprompter. Possessed of what friends say is a photographic memory, Cruz paces the stage, condemning Big Government with a preacher's cadence and a syrupy drawl. At a gathering of conservative activists held in a New Orleans ballroom adorned with paintings of the Constitution's framers, he won a standing ovation just for walking into the room, then got mobbed after delivering a stem-winder that compared congressional Republicans to hostage victims suffering from Stockholm Syndrome.
Cruz has argued nine times before the Supreme Court, and he keeps a painting of his first loss before the Justices on the wall of his office to instill "humility," he told ABC News. In conversation he is genial and polished. He chooses his words carefully, often pausing before laying out an argument in shapely, numbered paragraphs. At the same time, he can struggle to suppress the impulse to prove he is the smartest guy in the room. If faced with the presidential beer test, he might lecture you about the hops.
As for policy, Cruz wants to downsize Washington, abolish the IRS and TSA, shutter the Departments of Commerce, Education and Energy and privatize Social Security, which he has called a "Ponzi scheme," a phrase that helped torpedo Texas Governor Rick Perry's presidential hopes in 2012. He has claimed that liberal financier George Soros was behind an international plot to extend "the tentacles of the United Nations" into American government, abolish private property and eliminate golf courses.
Cruz notes with a mix of pride and frustration that the media seems to have invented a third label for his brand of conservatism: not stupid or evil but potentially "crazy." I ask which of the three adjectives he would prefer to be used in this article. Cruz laughs and rules his reply off the record. One suspects each would be a badge of distinction in a game where attention can be everything.