Ted Talks In New Hampshire: Can Ted Cruz Cajole His Way Into 2016 Contention?

NASHUA, N.H. -- When he's out on the campaign trail in public view, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) likes his hair gel extra-shiny, his wife and two adorable daughters close to his side, and a microphone attached to his body at all times. The former college debate national champion knows a little something about presentation, and image-crafting was entwined in every movement he made during his first swing through New Hampshire as a newly minted presidential candidate on Friday and Saturday. At times, he risked laying it on a little too thick. During his first appearance at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Merrimack, for instance, Cruz was already decked out in a headset microphone as he waded through a crowd of supporters who wanted to talk to him one-on-one for a few moments before he took the stage. New Hampshire voters are used to seeing presidential candidates try to ingratiate themselves with locals by wearing plaid shirts, sweater vests and all other manner of hokey adornments, but the effect of Cruz's decision to glad-hand with headgear made him look more like a telemarketer than a White House aspirant. At no point during his two-day swing through the first-in-the-nation primary state did Cruz ever appear in public without a microphone attached to his person. But as strange as it looked, for Cruz, maintaining the ability to electronically amplify his voice at any moment is a crutch befitting his biggest asset as a candidate: his mouth. In what is expected to be an extremely crowded field of GOP contenders who will each bring to the 2016 table a set of unique strengths, Cruz can outtalk them all. The man knows how to give a speech, but how he ultimately fares in his uphill campaign climb remains an open question, as Cruz is perhaps the biggest wildcard, equally capable of flaming out or catching fire. He is a first-term senator with a negligible national organization, a shaky relationship with the party establishment that has determined each Republican nominee for the past half-century and a scant record of legislative achievement. In short, the current Republican candidate of the moment appears in some ways to be poised to fade from relevance in the presidential equation faster than you can say "Michele Bachmann." But anyone inclined to underestimate his chances would do well to remember Cruz's long-shot 2012 Senate bid that ended in a victory that shocked just about everyone but Cruz himself. As a Princeton and Harvard-educated lawyer, he is savvy enough to know that being the smartest guy in the room isn't necessarily the ticket to the top tier. For Cruz, it's all about playing the right tune to the right crowd at the right time. In watching him wow three entirely different Republican constituencies in New Hampshire over the weekend, it wasn't hard to imagine a scenario in which Cruz could use strong performances in the upcoming primary debates as a springboard to victory in Iowa and an ultimate emergence as the conservative alternative to whichever 2016 contender earns the GOP establishment's backing. His first stop in Merrimack on Friday provided a chance to thrive in his most natural environment: among a sea of mad-as-hell, hardcore conservative activists who were eager to be fed as many slabs of red meat as Cruz could pack into one speech. Setting the tone for the event was Jack Kimball -- the intensely controversial former New Hampshire GOP chairman, who has since mortified many of the Granite State Republicans he once presided over with his call to arrest President Barack Obama and penchant for spreading bizarre conspiracy theories online, including his belief that the Charlie Hebdo shootings in Paris were faked. Even some of Kimball's like-minded conservatives had heard enough, as he tested the upper levels of the public-address system's range while introducing Cruz. "Jack, you've got a microphone," one man in the crowd snickered to no one in particular.