Texas Sen. Ted Cruz scored a runaway victory in the presidential straw poll at the Values Voter Summit on Saturday, grabbing 35 percent of the vote among attendees at one of the country's highest-profile conservative gatherings, where no fewer than eight GOP presidential hopefuls came to court the crowd. Cruz had nearly double the support of the second-place finisher, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, and seven times the votes for Donald Trump, who was audibly booed during his Values Voter speech but still leads the Republican field among likely primary voters who are outside of the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington D.C.
Cruz must be wondering what will happen when he wakes up Sunday, since his weekend got started early and has been going strong ever since. As Cruz was preparing for his Friday appearance at the summit, news broke that Speaker John Boehner would be leaving Congress in a little over a month. Cruz, who Boehner recently called "that jackass" at an out-of-town fundraiser, has made it his business to stoke discontent with Boehner among the farthest-right reaches of the House Republican conference. With Boehner apparently cowed by the struggle over the federal budget, the dream of shutting down the government over funding for Planned Parenthood must seem more achievable than ever for Cruz.
The senator from Texas unfortunately didn't get the chance to reveal Boehner's announcement to the right-wing faithful at the conference on Friday—2016 primary rival Marco Rubio beat him to it—but it was impossible to miss Cruz's glee as he took the stage and cracked jokes about the conservatives in the room striking such fear into the Speaker that he'd up and quit when they came to town....
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
