Eye rolls in Washington

FORT WORTH, Texas — The stage was set for a clash of political titans as three likely presidential candidates and thousands of conservatives gathered here this weekend.
Instead, the Texas GOP convention turned into a blowout bash for Ted Cruz.

The Texas senator was introduced at times as “the next president of the United States.” His speeches were punctuated by chants of “Run, Ted, run!” and supporters mobbed him at his huge exhibition booth. Cruz easily overshadowed fellow potential 2016ers at the event, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, and he dominated them in a presidential straw poll held there.

 Cruz’s soaring rhetoric and near-apocalyptic talk about saving the nation, which engenders eye rolls in Washington, brought crowds here to their feet. People responded to the freshman senator’s speeches with “amens;” a “you da man” or two. But the most fervid responses often came when he hinted about his future plans.
“I tell you this: as good as 2014 is gonna be, 2016 is gonna be even better,” Cruz said at the Defense of Texas Marriage event.
Cruz reveled in dinging D.C. The hash tag #makedclisten, popularized by the Cruz team during the shutdown, was plastered on the senator’s posters, and Cruz remarked in his keynote speech on Friday that Ronald Reagan was “despised” by Washington in 1980.
“I hope we see leaders who are willing to suffer the scorn of Washington,” he told reporters later when asked about 2016. “I will say this: Any candidate who is embraced by Washington, D.C., my advice to the people is, run and hide, ‘cause that ain’t how we’re turning this country around.”
In sheer size and noise, the Texas GOP convention made the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington look like a staid gathering of moderate Republicans. The head count as of Friday night was about 7,000 and rising.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/06/ted-cruz-107566.html#ixzz349RvFQfk