Ron Paul and Sarah Palin Make Strange Bedfellows by Supporting Texas Tea Party Ted Cruz

Impact

Former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin and libertarian congressman and 2012 presidential candidate Ron Paul might not have a lot in common, but they both have joined forces to support Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz in the upcoming Texas Republican senatorial race.

Cruz is trying to fill the senate seat vacated by Sen. Kay Balley Hutchinson by waging a close and high-profiled battle with rival Lt. Governor David Dewhurst (second to governor of Texas and former presidential candidate Rick Perry), a race in which former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert and ESPN personality Craig James are also candidates.

In her endorsement, Palin highlighted what she thinks are Ted Cruz’s “conservative principles” and “passionate defense of the Constitution,” adding that conservatives’ shared goal this election season is to assure that a majority of “principled conservatives are fighting for us.”

Ron Paul joined the star of Sarah Palin’s Alaska last Thursday in standing behind Cruz, a position at odds with other conservative figures such as 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and Michael Reagan (the son of former president Ronald Reagan) both of whom preferred to throw their support behind Cruz’s rival Dewhurst.

Palin has been supportive of Ron Paul in the past when she declared, in January that, despite “his almost isolationist stance on international relations,” the libertarian icon was the only one “who’s been so adamantly passionate about doing something about the suffocating debt.”

However, recent comments from Bristol Palin (the daughter of Sarah Palin) who ripped President Obama for taking advice from his daughters regarding gay marriage, could hurt both Ted Cruz and Ron Paul if their brands are perceived as being too closely associated with the Palin family brand.