Ted Cruz described as ‘first top tier conservative since Reagan’ by Richard Viguerie

A seismic shift? Things will change now that Sen. Ted Cruz has entered the White House race, some say.

“Every Republican candidate for president will have to move significantly to the right, starting with Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. They’ll have to define their position on amnesty for illegal aliens, on fighting and winning the war radical Islam has declared on America, on spending, the deficit and the debt, and on repealing Obamacare - against the positions Ted Cruz will talk about and campaign on in the coming months,” predicts longtime conservative maven Richard Viguerie.

“They will all have to move right to respond to Cruz, or be left behind by a grassroots conservative electorate fed-up with Republican candidates who are merely principle-free messengers for an out of touch Washington elite,” he continues. “Cruz is the first top-tier movement conservative candidate since Reagan for three reasons that separate him immediately from the rest of the Republican pack.”

Mr. Viguerie says that the lawmaker-turned-presidential hopeful unites “the old Reagan coalition” - national defense conservatives, economic conservatives and social conservatives - with the constitutional conservatives of the Tea Party movement. He also feels that Mr. Cruz has “an almost spiritual bond with America’s country class” living their lives far beyond the Beltway.

Then there’s that fire in the belly part.

“Finally and perhaps most importantly, are Ted Cruz’s zest for the battle of ideas between conservatives and progressives in both political parties and his intellectual gifts for fighting it,” Mr. Viguerie observes.