Senator Ted Cruz is fast becoming the new Tea Party brand name as he quickly begins to surpass Marco Rubio as the true arch teabagger. He's repeatedly said that illegal immigrants should not be given a true path to citizenship. That gives him a leg up over Rubio, in my book. In his 2012 Senate debate in Texas---this is what he believes:

When discussing what to do about the 1.65 million illegal immigrants living in Texas, Cruz weaved into the Second Amendment, alleging his opponent didn't support gun rights. "What does this have to do with the question?" Sadler asked before fiercely denying his opponent's allegation. Cruz again said he didn't support a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants living in America, while Sadler said the opposite, as expected.---Source: WFAA-TV Dallas-Fort Worth on 2012 Texas Senate debate , Oct 2, 2012

And as for his beliefs on the immigration compromise that is being hatched in Congress with Rubio at the head of the table:

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) says President Barack Obama wants to “scuttle” immigration reform by injecting a path to citizenship into the debate so Democrats can keep the issue alive for political gain.“The president has been focusing on amnesty — a path to citizenship that skips ahead of the line,” the freshman tea party senator said Wednesday at a speech in Dallas, according to The Dallas Morning News. “That, he knows, is a position not supported by a great many Americans and not a position that will achieve bipartisan cooperation. It’s designed to scuttle the bill.”

The Tea Party is firmly against a path to citizenship, so he jumps ahead of Marco Rubio, who appears to be leading the way to immigration reform for the Senate GOP in a more bipartisan fashion than the hardliners want.

Jane Mayer has a new article out that will give another big woody to the Tea Party: IS SENATOR TED CRUZ OUR NEW MCCARTHY?

Last week, Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s prosecutorial style of questioning Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee for Defense Secretary, came so close to innuendo that it raised eyebrows in Congress, even among his Republican colleagues. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, called Cruz’s inquiry into Hagel’s past associations “out of bounds, quite frankly.” The Times reported that Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, rebuked Cruz for insinuating, without evidence, that Hagel may have collected speaking fees from North Korea. Even if you don't believe in reincarnation, the resemblance between Ted Cruz and Joe McCarthy is startling.

---- Two and a half years ago, Cruz gave a stem-winder of a speech at a Fourth of July weekend political rally in Austin, Texas, in which he accused the Harvard Law School of harboring a dozen Communists on its faculty when he studied there. Cruz attended Harvard Law School from 1992 until 1995. His spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request to discuss the speech. [...] He then went on to assert that Obama, who attended Harvard Law School four years ahead of him, “would have made a perfect president of Harvard Law School.” The reason, said Cruz, was that, “There were fewer declared Republicans in the faculty when we were there than Communists! There was one Republican. But there were twelve who would say they were Marxists who believed in the Communists overthrowing the United States government.”

This man is either seriously deranged, or he truly believes what he's saying which is another way of saying he's truly deranged. But he's also very smart and politically dangerous in Congress. As for his allegations about Harvard, here the response that came out of Mayer's story:

“We are puzzled by the Senator’s assertions, as we are unaware of any basis for them,” Robb London, a spokesman for Harvard Law School, told me. London noted that Cruz had contributed “warm reminiscences“ of the school by video for a reunion of Latino alumni. “We applaud the fact that he has pursued public service, as so many of our graduates have done. We are also proud of our longstanding tradition of freedom of speech and the robust range of views and debates on our campus.” Harvard Law School Professor Charles Fried, a Republican who served as Ronald Reagan’s Solicitor General from 1985 to 1989, and who subsequently taught Cruz at the law school, suggests that his former student has his facts wrong. “I can right offhand count four “out” Republicans (including myself) and I don’t know how many closeted Republicans when Ted, who was my student and the editor on the Harvard Law Review who helped me with my Supreme Court foreword, was a student here.” Fried went on to say that unlike Cruz (or McCarthy, who infamously kept tallies of alleged subversives), he had never tried to count Communists. “I have not taken a poll, but I would be surprised if there were any members of the faculty who ‘believed in the Communists overthrowing the U.S. government,’” he said. Under the Smith Act, it is a crime to actively engage in any organization pursuing the overthrow of the U.S. government.

A Reagan Conservative refutes everything he says. Hah! But that's inconsequential. To the extreme right, reality means nothing. The fact that Cruz is willing to act like McCarthy in a Senate hearing is music to their ears. And he's framing every incendiary thing he says as an attack on liberals. The Tea Party revels in that kind of behavior.