Ted Cruz Running For President: Republican Senator Starts Tweeting The News
WASHINGTON - Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, one of the Republican Party's most conservative members, announced early Monday he is running for the party's 2016 presidential nomination, making him the first among what is expected to be a crowded field of White House hopefuls to officially enter the race.
"I'm running for president and I hope to earn your support!" he tweeted. In an early preview of his campaign message, he says in an accompanying video that "it is going to take a new generation of courageous conservatives to make America great again."
Several other Republicans are expected to enter the race in the coming weeks, including former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and two Senate colleagues, Kentucky's Rand Paul and Florida's Marco Rubio.
Cruz, 44, is the son of an American mother and Cuban-born father and would be the nation's first Hispanic president.
He has considerable appeal among the Republican Party's base of conservative and small-government, low-tax tea party voters. After his election to the Senate in 2012, the former Texas solicitor general quickly established himself as an uncompromising conservative willing to take on Democrats and fellow Republicans alike.
Criticized by members of his own party at times, he won praise from ultraconservative tea party activists in 2013 for leading a 16-day government shutdown in an unsuccessful drive to repeal President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.
Recent Republican history, however, could work against Cruz and other deeply conservative candidates as they battle through state-by-state primaries and caucuses. That selection process is dominated by the most conservative Republican voters and can lead to the nomination of a candidate who is not acceptable to more moderate Republicans and independent voters.
Cruz is set to release a book this summer that he has said would reflect themes of his White House campaign. In a recent Associated Press interview, he said he wants to counter the "caricatures" of the right as "stupid," ''evil" or "crazy."
"The image created in the mainstream media does not comply with the facts," said Cruz, who does not believe in climate change.
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Ted Cruz Running For President: Republican Senator Starts Tweeting The News