{"id":31585,"date":"2016-01-11T09:01:50","date_gmt":"2016-01-11T17:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/ted-cruzs-outsider-claims-belie-his-political-insider-past\/"},"modified":"2016-01-11T09:01:50","modified_gmt":"2016-01-11T17:01:50","slug":"ted-cruzs-outsider-claims-belie-his-political-insider-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/ted-cruzs-outsider-claims-belie-his-political-insider-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Cruz’s outsider claims belie his political insider past"},"content":{"rendered":"

HUMBOLDT, Iowa \u2014<\/strong> Ted Cruz relishes his role as Washington insurgent and tea party agitator, but today\u2019s political outsider built much of his career around being a GOP insider \u2014 thriving in powerful circles he now says he\u2019d like to dismantle.<\/p>\n

A Princeton graduate and Harvard-trained attorney, Cruz clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist at the Supreme Court \u2014 the very court he now accuses of \u201cjudicial tyranny.\u201d While working as a Washington lawyer in 1998, Cruz represented one of his future Capitol Hill nemeses, John Boehner.<\/p>\n

He helped get George W. Bush elected president in 2000 \u2014 before the Bush White House enraged conservative activists by running up federal deficits.<\/p>\n

His first political appointment back home came in 2003. Texas\u2019 then-Attorney General Greg Abbott saw in Cruz a hungry young attorney who would enforce his own vision for conservative legal governance, luring him back from Washington to be state solicitor general.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first time I ever heard his name was from a longtime party establishment person,\u201d says Dale Huls, a suburban Houston tea party activist, referring to an area Republican precinct chair.<\/p>\n

Now Huls is preparing to campaign for Cruz in Iowa. Like many supporters, he says he doesn\u2019t hold Cruz\u2019s non-outsider past against him because \u201che has not disappointed us one single time\u201d since being elected.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou take your experience from the times you were living,\u201d Huls says. \u201cAt that time, Bush was the guy. I voted for Bush twice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cruz\u2019s unforeseen 2012 Senate victory got a $5.5 million bump from the Club for Growth, a small-government activist group based not in his home state, but Washington. Despite his insider resume, he got the backing of conservative grass-roots activists who helped him tap into the emerging tea party wave.<\/p>\n

The experience helped show him the power of being an uncompromising conservative \u2014 and a political insurgent was born.<\/p>\n

As senator, Cruz has lived up to that billing, helping shut down the government and accusing his own party\u2019s Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, of lying.<\/p>\n

Bob Larson, who recently heard Cruz speak in the Iowa town of Humboldt, said the senator\u2019s past work in elite circles helped him be more effective battling the system today.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he has learned from those and learned to do the right thing for what the people need,\u201d said Larson, a 66-year-old farmer.<\/p>\n

While campaigning, Cruz emphasizes his battles with what he calls the \u201cWashington cartel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019ve been walking the walk, it is evident from every step of the way,\u201d Cruz said this week in Sibley, when asked how voters could be sure he wouldn\u2019t go to Washington and be \u201ccorrupted.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery candidate in this race talks about how they\u2019re going to stand up to Washington,\u201d he said. \u201cThe natural follow-up is OK, when have you stood up to Washington?\u201d<\/p>\n

Before he even got to Washington, Cruz\u2019s Senate campaign victory shook the Texas\u2019 GOP establishment when he bested 9-year Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who\u2019d been endorsed by nearly every statewide officeholder. Because of Cruz\u2019s support from the Club for Growth and other Washington-based conservative groups, the Dewhurst campaign tried unsuccessfully to suggest Cruz would be co-opted by \u201cD.C. insiders.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had a bunch of Washington jobs and worked for a while for the state government, we tried all that,\u201d said Dave Carney, a GOP strategist who helped run Dewhurst\u2019s campaign. \u201cYour resume has something to do with it, but it\u2019s more your attitude, your vision.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pressure from Cruz allies and some of the U.S. House\u2019s most-conservative wing helped push Boehner to resign as House Speaker, and Boehner called the Texas senator a \u201cfalse prophet.\u201d But Cruz had served as Boehner\u2019s attorney in 1998, when the Ohio Republican sued a Democratic colleague over the release of a recorded phone conversation.<\/p>\n

Mike Carvin, who was then one of Cruz\u2019s bosses at the Cooper, Carvin & Rosenthal law firm, praised Cruz\u2019s early work in the case, which Boehner eventually won in 2008.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew some folks in the Bush campaign and Ted did as well,\u201d said Carvin, who said Cruz went to work there \u201cwith our blessing and support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cruz was a domestic policy adviser to Bush\u2019s 2000 presidential run, then was an associate deputy U.S. attorney general and worked with the Federal Trade Commission. Abbott, then Texas\u2019 attorney general and now governor, tapped Cruz as solicitor general in 2003 and he argued before the Supreme Court eight times.<\/p>\n

Cruz has spent much of his life revering the high court, but after its rulings on the health care law and same-sex marriage last summer, he suggested its justices had \u201ccrossed from the realm of activism into the arena of oligarchy.\u201d<\/p>\n

While that may look like a political about-face to some, others aren\u2019t worried that his background could undermine his insurgent credibility.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason they say he\u2019s an outsider is because he doesn\u2019t agree with the way things are done,\u201d said Curtis Stover, 55, of Fort Dodge.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Weissert reported from Austin, Texas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HUMBOLDT, Iowa \u2014 Ted Cruz relishes his role as Washington insurgent and tea party agitator, but today\u2019s political outsider built much of his career around being a GOP insider \u2014 thriving in powerful circles he now says he\u2019d like to dismantle. A Princeton graduate and Harvard-trained attorney, Cruz clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-31585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31585"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=31585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}