David Drucker argues in a Washington Examiner column that Ted Cruz is “stomping all over” U.S. Senate colleague Rand Paul as the two vie for a chance to win next year’s Republican presidential nomination.
Cruz on Tuesday unveiled a coalition of libertarian supporters that is chock full of activists who backed Paul’s father, Ron Paul, in the two previous Republican presidential primaries. Cruz very unsubtly moved to stamp out the competition for this voting bloc with a campaign video that features this group recalling their fondness for Ron Paul and discussing how Cruz embodies his libertarian ethos. Libertarian Republicans were supposed to form the bulwark of Rand Paul’s 2016 campaign.
“There are a lot of things that impress me about Ted Cruz in the way he’s really picked up the mantle of Ron Paul in a lot of ways,” Joel Kurtinitis, a veteran of Ron Paul’s 2012 campaign and a founding member of the group Liberty Iowa, says in the video. …
… The Paul campaign shrugged off Cruz’s incursion into the senator’s turf as inconsequential and less than meets the eye. Senior adviser Mike Biundo said Paul is building a strong grassroots network, including a 250-member leadership team in New Hampshire and coalition in Iowa that is chalk full of influential Ron Paul supporters and liberty activists and designed to perform over the long haul.
“The only true liberty candidate in this race is Rand Paul,” Biundo said. Cruz, he added, is “trying to be a little bit of everything to everyone.”
