Ted Cruz returns to Texas as a hero who is reshaping the state Republican Party

Sharon Alford knows what they have been saying about her state’s junior senator up in Washington. Which is why she was standing here, among about 600 people in a sweltering warehouse, holding a hand-made sign that said, “We the people ? Ted Cruz.

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Even more extraordinary is the degree to which the freshman senator — who until 2012 had never run for public office — has quickly remade the Texas Republican Party in his own image.

Just about every GOP candidate with aspirations to statewide office in 2014 seems to be styling himself or herself after Cruz. In tight formation, they are moving hard to the right and looking for the next big populist rallying cry — secession, rolling back the state’s liberal immigration laws, impeaching President Obama, amending the Constitution to end the direct election of U.S. senators.

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Cruz is “the new model, and I think it’s probably going to be the last model, because it will lead us right into the demographic changes that are occurring and will not serve us well as Texas becomes a purple state,” said veteran Republican political consultant John Weaver.

“There’s no way that playing to the angry crowd is a sustainable path,” added a Republican state legislator, who did not want to be quoted criticizing his party’s biggest rising star. “If [the Cruz forces] misplay it and continue to run into the ditch, then we will hand it to the Democrats.”

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ted-cruz-returns-to-texas-as-a-hero-who-is-reshaping-the-state-republican-party/2013/10/23/449c5a76-3b6a-11e3-a94f-b58017bfee6c_story_1.html