Sen. Ted Cruz is warning against nominating Jeb Bush to the Republican ticket in 2016.
“If we nominate another candidate in the mold of a Bob Dole or a John McCain or a Mitt Romney — and let me be clear, all three of those men, they’re good men, they’re honorable men, they’re decent men, they’re men of character, they’re war heroes — but what they did didn’t work,” the Texas Republican said Tuesday.
Cruz called the former Florida Governor, the son of former former President George H.W. Bush and the brother of former President George W. Bush, “a good governor in Florida” — but then warned he is too moderate compared to the Republican base.
“It did not succeed,” Cruz, a likely 2016 presidential candidate himself, said about nominating the aforementioned candidates, ones with similar political views as Jeb Bush.
“If we nominate another candidate in that same mold, the same voters who stayed home in 2008 and 2012 will stay home in 2016, and Hillary Clinton is the next president,” he told Politico in an interview Tuesday after Bush declared he’ll “actively explore” a 2016 run.
Cruz didn’t specifically mention when he will make a decision about running for president, rather offering the insight that the Republican field “will form sometime between January and June of next year.”
He said he would be “thrilled” to see “half a dozen Republicans who’ve been standing and leading” run for the 2016 ticket and that it will be a crowded field.
The Texas Senator is eighth in the potential 11-deep candidate field, nearly nine percentage points behind Bush, the leader, according to a RealClearPolitics average of polls.
