Bosom buddies during the various Senate clashes both with the White House and within the Senate itself, Rand Paul and Ted Cruz has been among a small caucus of libertine Senator often seen as tilting together against political windmills.
But now that the race for the White House is in full swing with new announcements coming almost weekly, Paul and Cruz are pitted against each other as they battle for the same niche of the Republican Party voter base reports Bloomberg Politics.
In his announcement of two weeks ago via Liberty University, Sen. Cruz appealed to a largely pro-liberty, evangelical base claiming it is time to retake the country from the clutches of the left.
It is a message strikingly similar to that of Sen. Paul, a reality which he admitted last week ahead of his own announcement making clear that both men “come from the same wing of the party.”
The question, of course, is how the two might distinguish themselves for voters given that their voting records are “very similar”. Paul offered in an interview with Fox News in what became a preview of his “different kind of Republican” theme that the key distinctive concerns “how we would make the party bigger”.
For Cruz’s part, foreign policy might be the only difference that distinguishes how the two might lead as head of state. Invoking Ronald Reagan, Cruz explained after his announcement that though they agree on a being “very reluctant to deploy military force” the U.S. should maintain a strong foreign presence.
