Ted Cruz  is the junior Senator from Texas. He is a candidate for President of the United States. Senator Cruz is married to his wife Heidi. His educational background is that he has a B.A. from Princeton and his law degree is from Harvard. Having been elected in 2012 he is a first term Senator with quite the resume. Cruz is the second youngest candidate running as he will be 45 years old in December.

As it stand now, with the recent poll numbers in, Cruz stands at 16%, in second place, as we are about to enter the new year when things will finally get serious. It is time to take his candidacy seriously as he and his fellow Cuban Senator, Marco Rubio should be considered co-favorites for the nomination.

What does Senator Cruz want to accomplish? First of all let us give him credit where credit is due. He is a hard core, right wing, Conservative, who is deadly serious about reducing the size and influence of the Federal Government. On his website it is quite clear that despite his positions on reducing the size of the government he wants a larger role for government regarding the emotional issue of immigration.

Senator Cruz wants to secure the border above all. He will make sure that a wall is built that works. In addition to finishing a wall, Cruz wants to triple the amount of Border Patrol officers that we have. He plans to dramatically increase deportations. His plan includes aerial surveillance, an increase the use of technology to inhibit entry as well as perfecting biometric tracking for our ports.

Cruz stresses the threat of more criminals and terrorists entering into the United States if we do not secure the border. His plan also includes rescinding 20 executive order that President Obama has issued regarding our immigration problems. He also promises to deal with what he claims are 340 sanctuary jurisdictions. He has not explained how he would do that, but he has committed to do something to eliminate any sanctuaries for illegals who reside in America.

The part of his plan that is most interesting is his wish to end any legal immigration as long as unemployment remains high. Well, the unemployment figures are pretty darn low, so the question comes to mind on whether Cruz intends to end any legal immigration for the for see able future.

Also he plans to end the possibility of any illegal getting a job or receive any government assistance, under any circumstances. Senator Cruz also promises to end Birthright citizens, which would require a Constitutional Amendment.

His domestic agenda, is called five for freedom. Senator Cruz promises to abolish the IRS as we know it, as well as the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, the Department of Commerce and HUD. Commerce by the way has been around since 1903.

As part of his agenda to reduce the size of government he intends to eliminate agencies, bureaus and programs. He promises to get rid of funding for PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Good luck with air quality and having economy cars, his vow to get rid of the programs to regulate Co2 emissions from power plants and fuel standard mandates promises us gas guzzling cars and bad air.

The most onerous of his promises is to put forward a flat tax of only 10%. With a substantial reduction of revenue it is hard to imagine our ability to pay for anything. His assurance that the money saved from taxes would go back into the economy sufficiently to improve the economy and cause huge economic growth reminds me of Reagan’s trickle down, magic math numbers, that never were realized.

For the uniformed it might be useful to check on the percentage of the budget that our military budget, Medicare and Social Security represent. A low flat tax would most assuredly guarantee that you could drown government in a basket.

If Senator Cruz plays his cards right, he could very well become the Republican Party’s nominee. How could that happen you might ask? If Cruz becomes the second choice of Trump delegates, he can win if Trump peaks at around 35%. The outsider candidate have fairly consistently amounted to 51% of the polled voters, which means that the delegates could turn to Cruz if Trump can not muster 50% at the convention. If he keeps his 16% and gains delegates from the other 2 outsider candidates he could win the nomination.

January starts the serious part of the campaign as we march towards the first primaries. Polls will no longer matter as much as the actual votes of the Republican Party nominating process.  It is a wide open race!