There’s enormous and warranted attention in news reports this morning to Ted Cruz’s apparent double-digit victory over the Texas lieutenant governor, David Dewhurst, in that state’s Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat. It was a headlines-grabbing, come-from-behind trouncing, and the reports focus specifically, and rightly, on what it says about the continued potency of the Tea Party and the lure of a certain sort of purism in the Republican Party, whose establishment seems unable to beat back and control insurgents from the right.
Here’s Erik Eckholm’s analysis, in his story this morning for The Times: “Mr. Cruz, 41, is the latest conservative rebel to bring down an established party leader, tapping into frustration within the Republican ranks nationwide. These dissident triumphs include, in this year’s primaries, the defeat of Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana by Richard E. Mourdock and Deb Fischer’s win over a veteran Republican for the Senate nomination in Nebraska.”
And here’s David Catanese, in Politico: “Cruz’s double-digit victory in a megastate ushers in what Tea Party members hope will be a new phase in which no amount of money, name ID or establishment support is immune to the burgeoning movement.” READ MORE
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