[smspence]

Ted Cruz is an extreme outlier. Everyone else in the Republican party hates him. Please don't take his dumb remarks as representative of anyone else.

Here is a quote [1] referring to how Mitch McConnell (Republican Senate Minority Leader, soon to be Majority Leader) handles nut-jobs like Ted Cruz:

"Mitch has very carefully, very methodically, very much under the radar, isolated Ted Cruz. He's kind of sealed him off like the body puts a sack around some foreign matter"

I believe that's how most Republicans feel about him. Cruz echoes the idiotic thoughts of a very very small minority. But, since they sound like such bizarre nut-jobs, they get media coverage.

[1] http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2014/1...

[joezydeco]

"Please don't take his dumb remarks as representative of anyone else."

The GOP is masterfully adept at deciding on a set of talking points, getting them into the hands of key people in politics and the media, and then beating voters over the head repeatedly with it until the voters start repeating it back.

The Republicans just won the Senate back on the idea that Obamacare is the root of all evil. Watch them leverage that idea into every. single. thing. from now until 2016 (and beyond).

[protomyth]

You give more credit than I would, especially about the recent election since the messaging was anything but coherent from the party leadership. I think the Scott Walker / Chris Chrissy feud is a pretty nice indicator of where the breaks lie. The GOP is basically a split party these days under one roof. I would expect at some point to get back to a single message, much as they did before.

Yes, Cruz is popular among the rank and file, but he is very unpopular among the leadership and media. He is a very good speaker and makes a fair number of good points. He is also very easy to soundbite-attack.

If you look at rhino369's comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585565 you can see what many of the Republicans fear. The boogeyman of "fairness doctrine" has even been raised. If you are serious about net neutrality and brush aside the concern then you are not going to advance any issue.

I don't expect anything to advance on this issue. Its to mantra and flags now.

If someone would narrowly define a technical definition of what techs actually want for net neutrality, then I think you could a fair bit of Republican support. Particularly if it was phrased as keeping the fairness doctrine out of the internet. Never mention the poison phrase net neutrality.

[smsm42]

There were much more issues than Obamacare for this election. Most of them with one underlying topic - gross incompetence of the federal government which managed to mess up multiple times both locally and abroad. Of course, since Democrats are holding the presidency and half of the Congress, they are held responsible for this. Obamacare is a part of it - the law was full of bugs and nonsense like 1099 provisions, its implementation was the regular disaster and as always, it was massively oversold, underdelivered and took more money and produced less useful effects and more unexpected conseqences then planned. But this is the way of Big Government and Obamacare is only one instance of it. Of course, Republicans used all the instances against the party holding the presidency - that's what opposition does. That's the only way to have a measure of accountability there.

[cement]

Ted Cruz is incredibly popular and a frontrunner for the 2016 presidential nomination. If he isn't representative of the modern Republican party, who is?

[waterlesscloud]

He's definitely not a frontrunner for the 2016 nomination. He's polling at around 4%, well behind Paul, Bush, etc.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/page/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/...

[joezydeco]

Front-runners this early in the game have a very reliable tendency to implode before the primaries. Being the dark horse at this point in time is not a problem.

Obama had a 17% nod from Democrats two years before the 2008 election. It was all Gore, Edwards, and Kerry in that year.

[smspence]

I'm sorry, I think I'm going to need a citation for that "incredibly popular" claim. Or is it that I run in the more moderate circles, so I am unaware? Is he popular among everyone, or popular among tea-party nutter butters?

[6stringmerc]

No, he's actually a harbinger of the more polarization trend evidenced by the Republican party. In short, I was a Republican, but then the party disassociated itself from the values and concepts that I enjoyed, so I no longer affiliate with them. Ted Cruz is a player...to deny that he raises a ton of money and motivation to vote for his causes / perspective is ignorant. Fortunately he's at least open about his distorted worldview, apple doesn't fall far from the tree, most psychological disorders are inheritable. Yes, I'd actually say Ted Cruz is mentally defective.