Texas tea party seeks Ted Cruz 2.0: David Barton

By STEPHANIE SIMON

Texas tea party activists eager to send another firebrand in the mold of Ted Cruz to the Senate have launched a movement to draft evangelical historian David Barton to run against Sen. John Cornyn. Barton, who hosts a daily radio broadcast, has wide name recognition and respect on the religious right as a Constitutional scholar dedicated to restoring the America the Founding Fathers envisioned, though his scholarship on that point has been widely discredited in the world of academia.

Political analysts doubt he could take down a candidate as well-funded, well-known and widely endorsed as Cornyn. But they’re not willing to count out an insurgent from the right — not after watching Cruz come from nowhere two years ago. Barton has deep political roots, having spent nearly a decade as vice chairman of the Texas Republican Party. He is a skilled orator. And he’s got the stagecraft down pat: He travels the country to deliver rousing tributes to patriotism, often in red, white and blue Western shirts.

“When I get down on my bony knees this evening, it will be to pray that David Barton runs,” said Calvin Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University. “That would be a great show.”
Barton has strong ties to many tea party favorites, including Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas. Barton’s early endorsement helped propel Cruz to his improbable victory in 2012. He has also campaigned for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee once famously said that he wished all Americans would be forced — “at gunpoint, no less” — to listen to Barton’s lectures on the Constitution. Another big name in Barton’s corner: TV and radio host Glenn Beck, who devoted time on his show this week to repeating the phrase “Senator David Barton” over and over, with evident delight. Beck’s advice to Sen. Cornyn: “Quiver in your boots and hide.”

Mounting a credible primary challenge against Cornyn, however, would be well beyond difficult.
The filing deadline is Dec. 9; the Republican primary is just three months later, on March 4. That leaves scant time for anyone to build a statewide following, especially in such a vast state as Texas. In 2012, Cruz had the luxury of several extra months on the ground, as his primary was in late May and the runoff in late July.

Cornyn also has a huge financial edge. He has nearly $7 million cash on hand and allies have collected more than $2 million in a political action committee.

Analysts agree that Barton has the mailing list to draw donors from across the country. But to win, he would also need a sizable investment from outside groups such as Club for Growth, the Senate Conservatives Fund and FreedomWorks. The PACs aren’t saying whether they’d get involved in Texas, but several already are targeting other races in smaller states like Kentucky and Mississippi, where an investment of several million dollars would go farther.

Republican consultants also suspect that national groups might hesitate to back Barton because he has made some inflammatory statements, such as suggesting the federal government should regulate homosexuality as an unhealthy lifestyle, akin to eating too much trans fat.

Cornyn’s aides express confidence that he retains wide support. When the campaign offered yard signs to supporters earlier this week, it got 25,000 requests in 24 hours. The senator recently secured the endorsement of Texas Right to Life and has top rankings from the National Rifle Association, Americans for Tax Reform and the American Conservative Union, among others.

“Endorsed by the largest pro-life organization in Texas and with a perfect 100 percent from National Right to Life, Sen. Cornyn looks forward to discussing his conservative record with folks across the state,” said Brendan Steinhauser, the campaign manager.

But endorsements don’t cut it with many tea party activists. They view Sen. Cornyn as an establishment figure who is conservative but cautiously so, not a crusader willing to rock the boat — or stage a 21-hour pseudo-filibuster — like their champion, Cruz. Exhibit A: While Cornyn has been a vocal opponent of Obamacare, he did not support Cruz’s quixotic effort to defund the health care bill this fall by blocking a procedural vote. “I see a real hunger for new leadership,” said JoAnn Fleming, who runs a Texas tea party group called Grassroots America We The People. “I have seen an aggressive ground game defeat big money before.”

Barton is doing nothing to discourage the rising clamor for him to run. His colleague and radio co-host Rick Green posted a note on Facebook urging supporters to like a “Draft David Barton for Senate” page. “If the draft page gets 5K likes in just a few days, then we’ll know people want him to run,” Green wrote.

By Sunday afternoon, the page had more than 1,900 likes. Another page launched by tea party activists seeking to draft Barton had more than 2,200 members. Allies have said he is seriously considering a run. “He’s going through his own due diligence,” Fleming said.

Barton, who currently serves as president of the evangelical organization WallBuilders, did not respond to requests for comment. Barton’s credibility as a historian has come under fire from both secular and conservative Christian academics. They accuse Barton of distorting facts and omitting context as he argues that the United States was founded as a Christian nation and must return to those roots.

In August of 2012, the crescendo of criticism grew so loud that the Christian publishing house Thomas Nelson pulled Barton’s latest book, “The Jefferson Lies,” from print. A senior executive told NPR at the time that the publishing house couldn’t stand by the book because “basic truths just were not there.”

But that blow barely dented Barton’s reputation among the religious right — or among tea party activists. This summer, he appeared with Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky at a conference in Iowa that brought conservative pastors together to work on boosting evangelical participation in politics. He’s also become a strong voice against the Common Core academic standards.

Meanwhile, discontent with Cornyn has been growing. His 12 years in the Senate are a liability, not an asset, in many quarters. Constituents complain that he has become part of the Washington establishment and hasn’t spent enough time talking to the folks back home.

“If there was ever any trust there, it’s gone,” said Julie McCarty, president of a tea party group in Tarrant County, Tex. She said she was especially irked by Cornyn’s recent round of TV ads, which carry the tag line: “Our John Cornyn. Conservative like you… like Texas.”

“We know he is not just like us, and we resent him claiming to be,” McCarty said. To Matt Mackowiak, a Republican political consultant based in Texas, the tea party quest for a Cornyn challenger seems more about style than substance. Cornyn is judicious, he said. Cruz is combative. And the tea party prefers combative. Yet Mackowiak said he doubted Barton could draw enough clear distinctions on the issues between himself and Cornyn to win over the masses. “You’ve got to have a controversy for these things to work,” he said.

If Barton does run, he will place Cruz in an awkward position. Just this week, Cruz sought to soothe strained relations with his Republican colleagues in the Senate, telling them that he would not support insurgent primary campaigns trying to knock them out from the right. A spokeswoman for Cruz, Catherine Frazier, said the senator will hold likely to that pledge. As for Cruz’s allegiance in a Cornyn-vs.-Barton race, Frazier was diplomatic: “He greatly respects and esteems both men,” she said, “and considers them friends.”