Time to Dust Off the Clown Car!

[mimi85]

What are Ted Cruz's chances against other Republicans in 2016?

Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas kicked off the 2016 presidential race Monday by becoming the first major candidate to officially announce a run — no "seriously considering," no "weighing options," none of the typical gobbledygook meant to put an asterisk on what is an obvious White House bid.

Forget for a moment what the freshman Republican lawmaker said. The place he said it, and the timing, spoke more about his standing than any words he uttered. He did not announce his campaign on his home ground of Texas, but at Liberty University, the evangelical Christian campus in Virginia whose students represent the GOP force that he would have to command to have a chance at the nomination. And his attention-getting timing appeared to be driven by his back-bench status in a party that has a bountiful assortment of presidential candidates to choose from in 2016.

It's flatly foolish to try to divine the future on the political grains of sand now before us. But it is possible to group the Republican candidates — declared or otherwise — into some general categories that suggest their odds of winning the nomination.

Caveat: As every campaign apparatchik will gladly remind, it is possible for a candidate yet unknown or underappreciated to surge in the fields of Iowa or the snows of New Hampshire. During the 2012 campaign, Republicans surfaced a candidate of the month, one after another, as they sought an alternative to establishment front-runner Mitt Romney. Rising to the top this time would require the same ability to catch fire — for longer than a month and with the kind of financial support that eased Romney's way to the nomination as he dispensed with his challengers one by one.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/la-na-gop-field-20150324-story.html