Boldness comes more naturally to Ted Cruz than compromise. Barely through his first year in the Senate, the Texas Republican bucked his party leaders and became the public face of a government shutdown while standing up for conservative ideals. Rewind three decades back, and you'd find Cruz selling a similar message as a teenager in Houston.
You could say Cruz ran with a gang in high school. Their colors were blue jacket, white shirt, red tie. They called themselves the Constitutional Corroborators. And their leader was the head of a conservative think tank named Rolland Storey, who took them around Houston to perform.
"He would introduce them and say, 'They're now going to write down memorized sections of the Constitution. Word for word,' " said Winston Elliott, who helped coach the young recruits.
The Constitutional Corroborators would roll into Rotary Clubs and other civic groups — and they'd be armed with easels.
"On cue, they would stand at the easel, and each write out on the easel a major section. And then, when they finished, [Storey] would say, 'Now each of you explain that section of the Constitution,' " Elliott said.
This is how Ted Cruz the teenager spent much of his spare time — hanging out two nights a week with a think tank in Houston called the Free Enterprise Institute.
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