Ted Cruz handily wins Western Conservative Summit straw poll

Too much Cruz news? Bear with me, it’s July of 2013 and I’m talking about an election that happens in November of 2016 so the news picking is slim.

Over the weekend at the fourth-annual Western Conservative Summit, Ted Cruz took 45% of the vote giving him an easy first place of the 504 straw poll votes cast. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker took second place with 13% while Rand Paul and Allen West shared the third place spot garnering 9% of the vote.

Report from the Huffington Post:

The star speaker of the conservative conference, Cruz garnered 45 percent of the 504 votes cast and handily capturing the lead in the straw poll over Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — who delivered the keynote address at the summit and gathered 13 percent of the vote. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) and former Florida Rep. Allen West (R) both tied for third with only 9 percent of the vote.

Paul didn’t attend the summit while West was a featured speaker on Sunday.

So, with this level of support, would Cruz consider making a run for the 2016 GOP nomination for president?

“At this point, 100 percent of my focus is on the U.S. Senate,” Cruz said over the weekend, The Washington Times reports. “And the reason is simple: The Senate’s the battlefield. The Senate is where these fights are being fought,” Cruz added. “So I’m devoting my time, number one, to trying to stand up for free-market principles and the Constitution.”

Cruz, who spoke Saturday at the summit, drew standing applause for his plan to rewrite the nation’s tax code, abolish the IRS and defund Obamacare, The Colorado Independent reported.

Clearly Cruz is striking the right chords with conservatives in the Republican Party base. Time will tell whether he can roll this support into running a serious campaign in 2016. For the record, Herman Cain won the same straw poll in 2011 and fizzled out in 2012.