Neither Ted Cruz nor Jeb Bush have declared 2016 Republican presidential bids, but that won’t stop the two from firing shots across the bow.
The Texas Senator took a jab at the former Florida governor on Thursday, saying during an appearance on CNBC that he is too moderate to run and win votes.
Cruz was asked about Bush and other candidates stemming from the Republican Party’s establishment wing — Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, for example — and their consistent failure to win presidencies.
“Jeb has not declared his candidacy. I like Jeb. I’m a fan of Jeb Bush’s. I’m going to let him decide if he’s running first and let the primary voters make a decision,” Cruz said. “But I will say this: We need to learn from history, we need to look to history and what works and what doesn’t.”
“[I]f we run another candidate in the mold of a Bob Dole or a John McCain or Mitt Romney, we will end up with the same result, which is millions of people will stay home on Election Day, which is what happened for all three of them,” Cruz said. “And if we run another candidate like that, Hillary Clinton will be the next president.”
Hillary Clinton has yet to officially declare her bid for president, but she is the Democrat frontrunner by a massive margin.
A RealClearPolitics average of polls shows an extremely crowded Republican field, with Bush in second and Cruz eighth.
