Cruz and the Texas Tea Party voters

Washington Times:

One by one, several candidates hoping to be Texas’ next GOP Senatenominee made their pitches to the Republican Party’s forum in Erath County, just west of Fort Worth — but the few dozen voters packed inside the small meeting hall on a hot afternoon last week were getting antsy.

Then, 40 minutes late, Ted Cruz strolled in, grabbed the microphone and began to speak. This was what the rural central Texas crowd had come to see.

In a defiant yet amiable tone, Mr. Cruz, the charismatic former Texas solicitor general and son of a Cuban immigrant, fired up the crowd with calls to oust the “radical” Obama administration, eliciting sympathetic head bobs and a chorus of “uh-huhs.”

But Mr. Cruz, 41, has more than the president in his sights. For him, the battle for the Republican nomination to succeed retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison is the next test of whether tea party power, which exploded onto the political scene in 2010, can drive the political conversation again in 2012.

“This race has been called ground zero between the moderate establishment and the tea party tidal wave that swept the country” two years ago, Mr. Cruz said later that day in Dallas. “The stakes could not be higher.”

While nine Republicans are on the ballot for Tuesday’s primary for Texas’ open Senate seat, the race essentially is between two men; Mr. Cruz and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, 66, who has the backing of the state’s GOP establishment, including Gov. Rick Perry.

... Mr. Cruz has been likened to another tea party favorite, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, whose parents, like Mr. Cruz’s father, fled Cuba in the 1950s. The Florida Republican also challenged an establishment Republican, then-Gov. Charlie Crist, during his successful 2010 Senatebid. 

Mr. Cruz says he is flattered by the comparison, but insists he’s more than just “Rubio 2.0,” though he acknowledges that, as with Mr. Rubio, his ideology was molded in part by the struggles and life experiences of his Cuban-born father. 

He says he finds inspiration in Mr. Rubio’s 2010 victory, calling the Florida race the most important election in the country that year because it highlighted the rise of young Reaganite conservatives on Capitol Hill — including freshmen Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky, and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin....

There is much more.

Cruz has had to respond to some unfair attacks from Dewhurst in recent days.  It will be interesting to see whether those attacks backfire on Dewhurst who is still favored to lead the first round of voting, but not by enough to avoid a runoff with Cruz.