Sen. Ted Cruz for President

Presidential candidate Senator Sen. Ted Cruz is showing Sierra Club President Aaron Mair to be an ideological hack and global warming alarmist. Mark Steyn, sitting in for Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday, called Cruz’s relentless questioning of Mair “a thing of beauty.”

Richard A. Viguerie, CHQ Chairman

Ted Cruz's base is the conservative movement and his almost spiritual bond with America’s country class – the voters outside the Beltway who have looked with alarm at Obama’s fundamental transformation of America and seen not a spending bill to be negotiated or a deal to be cut, as the Republican establishment does, but an existential threat to American exceptionalism and the future of constitutional government that must be resisted at every turn.

Here is a rush transcript of Ted Cruz speech to Liberty University. Sen. Ted Cruz kicked off a new phase in the 2016 presidential race Monday when he declared himself a candidate for the GOP nomination, setting the stage for a frenetic battle among Republicans eager to take back the White House.

Saying during a speech at Liberty University Monday that he believed "millions of courageous conservatives" were ready to rise up and vowing to restore the "promise of America," Cruz announced: "And that is why, today, I am announcing that I'm running for president of the United States."

Sen. Ted Cruz opened the first major campaign of the 2016 presidential season Monday with a kickoff speech courting cultural conservatives and declaring that he will devote himself to "reigniting the promise of America."

Senator Ted Cruz, in boldly opting to forgo what has become known as the “explore phase” of a presidential campaign, is signaling his confidence in having both the grassroots support and the financial resources necessary to win the Republican nomination.

A prominent Republican consultant — who isn't working for any of the 2016 presidential candidates and who has been right more times than Cillizza and Blake can count — said something that shocked them when they had lunch recently. He said that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz had roughly the same odds of becoming the Republican presidential nominee as former Florida governor Jeb Bush.