Conservative Texas senator Ted Cruz is first to announce a run.

"I'm running for President and hope to earn your support!" Ted Cruz announced Monday via Twitter. Janet Hook, of the Wall Street Journal writes about Ted Cruz's politics.

By Janet Hook

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, whose combative approach to politics has helped guide the Republican Party’s right wing, entered the 2016 presidential race on Monday, kicking off a primary-election debate about how aggressively conservative the GOP should be as it seeks to recapture the White House.

“I’m running for president,” Mr. Cruz said in a Twitter post, becoming the first major candidate of either party to enter the race and heightening his national visibility.

The announcement by Mr. Cruz marks the beginning of the primary election battle to define a Republican Party that is divided about the balance between ideology and pragmatism, and which is uncertain about who should lead it. His candidacy comes as recent polls indicate that none of the likely candidates has yet emerged as a bridge-building consensus choice among the party’s factions.

Mr. Cruz will be planting his flag on the far right flank of what is expected to become a crowded primary field spanning an ideological spectrum from centrists, such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, to the libertarian Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and social conservatives like Mike Huckabee, a former governor of Arkansas.

Mr. Cruz stands for a brand of ideological conservatism that contrasts with former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who has said a successful presidential candidate must be willing to “lose the primary”—that is, risk angering the party’s most conservative followers—to succeed with the more centrist electorate in the general election.

By contrast, Mr. Cruz has sometimes angered congressional leaders by pushing for conservative goals, such as ending the Democratic-backed Affordable Care Act and President Barack Obama’s immigration policy, at the cost of provoking gridlock in Washington. He was widely blamed for helping to prompt the 2013 government shutdown, an effort to unwind the 2010 health law that many Republicans say wound up damaging the party’s image.

Mr. Cruz is scheduled to speak Monday at Liberty University, a Christian college in Lynchburg, Va., founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Mr. Cruz’s early presence in the field could pressure other potential candidates to move to the political right on fiscal policy, social issues and on the tactics for pursuing policy goals, particularly among contenders who are trying to establish themselves as the leading conservative alternative to Mr. Bush.

Sen. Ted Cruz announced his bid for the presidency on Twitter. Photo: Associated Press

“Cruz has the potential to take up quite a bit of space on the right in the conservative primary-within-the-primary,” said Kevin Madden, a veteran GOP campaign strategist. “The candidates looking to grab the mantle of being the antiestablishment choice for voters will certainly start to feel pressure to match Cruz step for step and not allow themselves to get outflanked to their right.’’

Mr. Cruz argues that the GOP repeatedly has lost the White House because it has rejected strict conservatives in favor of more centrist candidates.

“If we run another candidate in the mold of a Bob Dole or a John McCain or Mitt Romney, we will end up with the same result, which is millions of people will stay home on Election Day…If we run another candidate like that, Hillary Clinton will be the next president,” Mr. Cruz said in a 2014 CNBC interview.

By jumping in first for the most wide-open GOP nomination fight in a generation, Mr. Cruz is hoping to claim a measure of visibility. Other potential candidates are preparing to formally declare their bids in the coming weeks.

Well known public figures like Messrs. Bush and Christie seem to be in less of a rush to launch races and inaugurate a more intense stage of campaigning and scrutiny.

Still in his first term—he was elected in 2012—Mr. Cruz has used his place in the Senate to define himself as one of the most ardent conservatives and as more aggressive than party leaders in fighting for policy goals. One example came in 2013, when he delivered a 21-hour speech on the Senate floor to dramatize his opposition to funding for the health-care law.

He highlighted that contrast in a recent video he called “Truth,” which implied that other Republican candidates offer more talk than action.

“Obamacare: When have you stood up and fought against it?” Mr. Cruz said in the video. “President Obama’s illegal and unconstitutional executive amnesty: When have you stood up and fought against it?” he asked, referring to the president’s actions, without congressional approval, to shelter many illegal immigrants from deportation.

Mr. Cruz’s supporters contend he is in a good position to appeal to voters across party lines who are disillusioned with the political system. “There is clearly a frustration in this country with the status quo, and people are looking for something new and something different,” said Saul Anuzis, former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.

But Mr. Cruz’s Republican critics say he is too polarizing to be a strong general election candidate.

“He thinks he has a formula for energizing conservatives, but he doesn’t have the skill or inclination to reach out to other people,” said Pete Wehner, a Republican strategist who worked in the George W. Bush White House. “I don’t think he’s got much appeal beyond the core base of the Republican Party.”

A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll this month suggested that Mr. Cruz had work to do to boost himself among Republican primary voters. Some 40% said they could see themselves backing him for president, while 38% said they couldn’t.

Democrats already are criticizing Mr. Cruz as someone outside the mainstream on issues including climate change, which Mr. Cruz has said isn't supported by science.

“That man betokens such a level of ignorance and a direct falsification of the existing scientific data…[he] has rendered himself absolutely unfit to be running for office,” said California Gov. Jerry Brown, speaking Sunday on NBC.

Write to Janet Hook at [email protected]

National security need not become hyperpoliticized in today’s Washington

"Tuesday’s speech to Congress by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be half foreign-policy event, half partisan spectacle, which raises a question: Is this a sign that national security, once thought to be at least slightly above the political fray, is becoming just another exercise in today’s polarized Washington?"

Answer: not necessarily.

By Gerald F. Seib of the WSJ

Let’s be honest. Foreign-policy debates have always been tinged with partisanship. And on the key questions of the hour—a nuclear deal with Iran and the battle against Islamic State extremists—there’s more crossing of partisan lines than current rhetoric suggests.

Still, there’s a danger that this week’s spectacle will inject a big new dose of partisanship into areas where it’s better left at bay. Once Mr. Netanyahu leaves town, it will be time for cooler heads in both parties to prevent that from happening.

The danger arises for two reasons, unique to the Netanyahu visit. The first is that this week’s event is out of the norm. It isn’t routine for a House speaker of one party to invite a foreign head of government to address Congress without consulting with a White House controlled by the other party. That’s particularly true when everyone knows the point of the speech will be to try to stop a presidential initiative—in this case the nuclear deal with Iran that the administration is trying to negotiate.

So this was inevitably going to be seen as a partisan act, as it would have been if the roles were reversed. It’s not hard to imagine what the Republican reaction would have been if a House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had invited a European head of state to address a joint session of Congress to question President George W. Bush’s request for authorization to go to war in Iraq.

The second reason this moment feels different is that the controversy affects American support for Israel’s government, an area that both sides have at least tried to keep above partisanship.

Add to those factors the sometimes “toxic” relationship between the Republican Congress and President Barack Obama and you have the makings of a broader partisan overlay, says Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and one of the few figures who maintains good lines of communications with both parties. The danger, he adds, is that “resentment from one issue carries over into the other,” getting in the way of, for example, Republicans’ working with Democrats on free-trade issues.

That doesn’t have to be the case, though. History provides ample evidence that the country can move beyond partisan splits on big foreign-policy issues. Republican isolationists battled Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt over providing aid to Britain before the U.S. entered World War II, for example, and the historic congressional vote on the Lend-Lease Act authorizing the aid fell largely along party lines.

When Congress faced a similarly dramatic moment in relations with Israel, in 1981 at the dawn of Republican Ronald Reagan’s presidency, the debate again had political overtones. The issue then was the Reagan administration’s decision to sell advanced Awacs radar planes to Saudi Arabia, a move Israel vehemently opposed. The sale was approved in the Senate largely along party lines, when Mr. Reagan prevailed on fellow Republicans to fall in line. (Irony of the week: Today, Israel probably is happy Congress approved that Awacs sale because the Saudis now are aligned with Israel in staunchly opposing Iran’s growth as a regional power.)

And congressional votes authorizing both wars with Iraq—the first sought by President George H.W. Bush and the second by the younger Mr. Bush—fell heavily along partisan lines.

More telling are the times when partisanship has been shoved aside in big foreign-policy debates. During the Cold War, arms-control treaties were pushed through Congress by leading foreign-policy thinkers of both parties, working in unison. Democratic President Bill Clinton relied on Republican votes to get free-trade deals through Congress. By the end of his presidency, Lyndon Johnson could count more on Republicans than Democrats for support of his policies in the Vietnam War.

And in 2001, the resolution authorizing use of force against al Qaeda passed both houses of Congress on a combined vote of 508 to 1.

The key is to get past the partisan emotions let loose this week and back to a national-security debate driven as much by conviction as party loyalty. That should be doable.

On an actual Iran deal, for example, Mr. Obama may find himself in the odd position of being supported by Republican Sen. Rand Paul—and opposed by Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer. And on the equally important question of authorizing the fight against Islamic State, Republicans are more likely to back Mr. Obama than are many Democrats. Which isn’t a bad thing for the system.

Write to Gerald F. Seib at [email protected]