(The cartoon image above is by John Branch in the San Antonio Express-News.)Yesterday I did a post about how the teabagger movement is losing support among Americans -- having dropped 10 points in the last three years, from 32% in 2010 to 22% in 2013. I said the teabaggers may be becoming irrelevant on the national level. I believe that is true, but don't take that to mean they no longer have any power. While they are losing support nationwide, they still have a strangle-hold on the Republican Party in many states -- so much so that they can dictate what they want the party to do (and many in Congress will follow their lead).
The new darling of the teabagger right is Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas). While he has irritated his fellow senators and been painted as a joke by many in the media, he is something of a hero to the radical right for his championing of their outlandish policies and theories. And a case can be made that he is now the de facto leader of the Republican Party -- since he is the current teabagger hero, and those teabaggers control the Republican Party.
Public Policy Polling has done a new survey (conducted on September 25th and 26th of 743 Republican primary voters nationwide, with a 3.6 point margin of error). That survey shows that Cruz has vaulted into a small lead as the most popular choice of Republicans for the 2016 presidential nomination.
In addition, he is much more popular with the Republican base voters than other Republican leaders -- like Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, and John McCain. And if he is that much more popular than the supposed leaders of the party, that means he has more influence with the party's base. That makes him a party leader, perhaps the party leader (whether the other national party figures like it or not).
Note that charts below (made from information in the PPP survey). They show that Cruz's influence in the party has grown substantially. That should worry other Republican leaders, because Cruz is on the far right-wing fringe and will lead the party even further to the right (and away from mainstream America). And if he does that, it will tend to alienate most voters on the national level, and cause the GOP to do even worse on the national level than they did in 2008 and 2012.
As a progressive, I personally despise the politics of Ted Cruz. But I welcome him taking leadership reins in the Republican Party, because I believe that Cruz (and his nutty policies) will scare the hell out of most voters. And the best thing that could happen for Democrats is for Cruz to be the 2016 nominee of the GOP.
