Subject: Tea Party Primary: Cruz vs Rubio vs Everyone Else
From: DNC Press <[email-masked]>
To: DNC Press <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2016 20:16:28 +0000

<http://factivists.democrats.org/tea-party-primary-cruz-vs-rubio-vs-everyone-else/>

With Ted Cruz speaking today to a Tea Party group in New Hampshire, it's good reminder of how far the Republican Party has been pushed to the right and become a captive of the Tea Party movement.

When former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was unseated by Tea Party favorite Dave Bratt, Congressman Peter King expressed<http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/11/us/politics/cantors-loss-a-bad-omen-for-moderates.html> his fear that the results "will move the party further to the right, which will marginalize us further as a national party." And that's exactly what's happening.

Cruz rode a wave of Tea Party support to win a seat in the U.S. Senate, and his presidential candidacy just received the endorsement<https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2016/01/tea-party-patriots-endorses-cruz> of the nation's largest Tea Party group. To gain this support, Cruz has had to take a number of extreme positions on a host of issues. Cruz led the movement in 2013 to shut down<http://bigstory.ap.org/article/d877c1ae57254cda93d963ff4069ea26/gop-pragmatists-protest-tea-party-shutdown-tactics> the federal government and did so again in 2015, despite opposition even from large swaths of the Republican Party. These events threatened<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/us/congress-budget-debate.html> the credit rating of the country, which would have had enormous economic consequences for all Americans.

But, Cruz isn't the only one to take extreme positions to curry favor with the Tea Party. Marco Rubio has been a Tea Party darling<http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/magazine/10florida-t.html> since he first ran to represent Florida in the U.S. Senate. He was even described<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-politics/8106646/Midterms-2010-Tea-Party-Crown-Prince-Marco-Rubio-wins.html> as the "Crown Prince" of the Tea Party. It's not hard to see why. Rubio wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act and opposes immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship.

"We've always known Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were Tea Party darlings, but the Tea Party's extremism has metastasized, spreading through the entire Republican Party and dragging its center to the far right. On everything from vowing to repeal a law that has provided nearly 18 million Americans with health coverage they previously did not have, to opposing immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship, the Tea Party's stranglehold on the GOP White House hopefuls has only gotten stronger. The contrast with the Democratic candidates in the race, who are fighting to grow the economy, expand opportunity for hardworking Americans and make sure everyone has a fair shot, couldn't be more clear." - DNC National Press Secretary Mark Paustenbach

View this post on our Factivists site here<http://factivists.democrats.org/tea-party-primary-cruz-vs-rubio-vs-everyone-else/>.

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