Ted Cruz's educational pedigree...does it hurt him?

[nashvillegoldenflash]

NBC political correspondent Kasie Hunt believes Ted Cruz, despite his far-right rhetoric, won’t get past the primaries because of his educational pedigree.

KASIE HUNT, NBC NEWS: To give you a sense of Cruz and where he has come from, this has been a very rapid rise. He’s only 44 years old. He was born in Canada, but he renounced his Canadian citizenship over the past year. He grew up in Houston, attended Princeton and Harvard. So, not necessarily the type of pedigree that would immediately seem to appeal to the base of the party, but at the same time those are the voters he is going after here.

He also clerked at the Supreme Court, was Texas Solicitor General, and worked on the 2000 Bush campaign. He was a lawyer actually working on the Florida recount. He was elected first to the Senate just in 2012. So there are many Republicans in his party who think that this step is a little bit ambitious for somebody who has only been in the Senate for about three years, but Cruz has been unapologetic and straightforward about his ambitions to run for president, and that’s led him here today becoming the first Republican to announce he will run for president in 2016.

BBJ, I'm starting to believe she may be right about Cruz's educational pedigree hurting his chances at winning the nomination. I realize it's still early in the presidential race but I would have thought Cruz would have much more support than he has at this point. Perhaps I'm wrong about this because Trump is a graduate of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, another prestigious Ivy League school, and look how much support he currently has. How much longer can Trump maintain his strong lead over Cruz and will he have to really mess up in the debates before people begin to see who he really is as a candidate? With ten of the GOP candidates appearing together, the "debate" tonight really will not have enough time for each candidate to make counter points and pose questions to the other candidates so this format could actually help Trump and hurt Cruz since he will not have an opportunity to demonstrate his skills that made him a national debating champion at Princeton. Thoughts?

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...ty.html#ooid=J3dDg1dDogC_EeCmpW2E-qeZCiJO_Def

 

[nashvillegoldenflash]

How does Ted Cruz, a champion debater at Princeton University, attorney who argued before the Supreme Court and now Republican White House aspirant, prepare for Thursday's presidential debate?

By spending two days holed up in a townhouse on Capitol Hill, discussing strategy and how to break through in a field of 10 candidates while still staying on message.

"Our focus is simply conveying the same core message that we convey in every forum," Cruz, who rarely has problems staying on message, said in an interview with The Washington Post. "Which is that we’ve seen far too many campaign conservatives who talk a good game on the campaign trail but don’t follow through on their commitments."

Cruz said he has a "trusted" team of friends and advisers -- he wouldn't name names, but his senior staff was there preparing with him -- who have spent hours getting ready for the debate.

"Part of that preparation has consisted of discussing strategy, what messages we want to convey, what messages other candidates will want to convey and how one communicates with 10 somewhat conflicting messages all on the same stage at the same time," he said. "Other portions of it have consisted simply of holding moots, facing tough questions and trying to give the best answer you can."

The team has staged mock debates for the Texas Republican, where people play the role of other candidates (Cruz didn't say who played whom) and try to approximate what Cruz's rivals might say in Cleveland.

"Of course in any debate the best answers are those that are spontaneous and react to the events on the ground and I assume that will be the case on Thursday as well," he said.

It was clear Cruz had been practicing messaging when asked how he would respond to the person everyone will be watching in the debate: Donald Trump, whom Cruz has defended on immigration and met with privately in New York last month.

"I expect my approach to all of the other candidates to remain consistent," he said. Cruz said the Republican presidential field is "an amazingly diverse field with young, talented dynamic leaders."

"It stands in sharp contrast to the Democratic field, which at times feels like a rerun of the TV sitcom 'That 70's Show,'" he said.

Cruz said he views Thursday's debate as a small piece of the larger primary campaign.

"In many ways this debate is simply one stop on an ongoing conversation and every campaign speech every media interview, every town hall with grassroots activists is part of that same conversation," he said.

It will undoubtedly be a much different experience than his time debating at Princeton, where Cruz was a member of the American Whig-Cliosophic Society. Princeton's debate team named its novice championship after Cruz: the "Ted Cruz Living Memorial Novice Championship."

In his book, "A Time for Truth," Cruz called debate "the most rewarding experience of college."

Cruz's roommate and best friend, David Panton, with whom he bonded over games of cards and "Super Mario Brothers" was his debate partner. The team partied after debates.

"College debate was great fun, and it was a terrific learning experience, but unsurprisingly a far more juvenile endeavor than debating in a presidential campaign," Cruz said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...e-champion-prepare-for-a-presidential-debate/

 

[nashvillegoldenflash]

BBJ, the fact that Cruz was the most searched person on Google at the start of the debates last night is a positive sign that people are starting to show more interest in him as a candidate (click web address below). I'm just tired of all this talk about Trump when it is clear he cannot win the nomination and certainly cannot defeat Hillary. You and I both follow politics very closely but most Americans do not so it may take more time before potential voters really know who they will support next year. Having said that, I'm still amazed that the majority of Republican voters have not yet recognized the passion and brilliance of Ted Cruz as a true leader for conservative principles. It's clear to me that he is head and shoulders above everyone else although Scott Walker, Ben Carson, and Marco Rubio are all good candidates as well.

http://www.youngcons.com/ted-cruz-most-searched-person-on-google-at-the-start-of-debates/