'Liberty is under assault today like never before,' Cruz says. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO In S.C., Cruz faces 2016 skeptics

CHARLESTON, S.C. — It didn’t take much for Ted Cruz to bring a crowd of conservatives to its feet here.

By the time the Texas Republican senator finished speaking Tuesday night, an adoring audience hailed Cruz and his no-compromise, combative style of conservatism that has made him the scourge of the GOP establishment but a hero of the tea party.


“Liberty is under assault today like never before,” Cruz said, pacing the stage like a televangelist.

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But even in deep-red South Carolina, a well-received speech full of Cruz’s signature flair is no guarantee that the firebrand politician could win the early primary state in a run for his party’s presidential nomination in 2016.

The Republican Party here, as in many other states, has many factions. And in interviews with activists and GOP leaders across the state, a common theme emerges: Cruz can clearly energize the far right, but he has yet to demonstrate he can pull together the necessary coalition of business-minded Republicans, libertarians, social and fiscal conservatives and moderate-leaning voters who are eager to see a Republican win the White House come 2016.

“Electability — that will be his challenge,” said Republican Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s senior senator. “He’s got to show he can put the patchwork together.”

The questions about Cruz also are a symptom of the ongoing debate consuming the GOP: Is it best to stick to an unyielding brand of conservative politics to win the hearts and minds of voters frustrated at both parties, or should Republicans be more willing to broaden their tent and work with Democrats in a divided Washington?

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Cruz, a first-term senator, has not officially said he’s running in 2016, but his close associates predict a White House bid is almost certainly in the offing for the 43-year-old, Harvard-educated lawyer.

If he were to run, he faces several prospective GOP foes who have sought to broaden their appeal by courting the party’s warring factions while pushing new policy agendas, such as Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. He also faces comparisons to past right-wing candidates, such as Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, who rapidly petered out in the 2012 race for the GOP presidential nomination.

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The Texas freshman compares his battles with the party establishment to Ronald Reagan’s before he became president in 1980, but plenty of people in South Carolina have doubts that Cruz could become a unifying Reagan-type figure for Republicans.

For instance, Rep. Mick Mulvaney said the Texas senator “fell flat” and “missed an opportunity” to show he can lead the country and the party out of the political wilderness when he spoke last May in Columbia, S.C., at the Silver Elephant Dinner. It was the first of Cruz’s three appearances so far in the Palmetto State since last year.

“It was the same old, same old,” said Mulvaney, a Republican who represents the northern part of the state and was elected in the tea party wave of 2010. “It’s the same thing you see on Fox News every single night. I guess that’s fine for a certain segment of the Republican primary base in South Carolina, but the folks who are going to make a difference in the outcome are the folks who follow the issues much more deeply, are much more educated on the challenges we face. They’ll press people.”

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Speaking to a handful of reporters before his Tuesday speech at an auditorium at The Citadel military college, Cruz signaled he plans to pitch himself as the Republican leader who is battling Washington, given that he has been on the front lines of virtually every major issue, such as gun control, immigration legislation and, of course, Obamacare.

When asked about doubts about his electability, he pointed to the grass-roots “army” and “diverse coalition” that propelled him to victory in his 2012 Senate race.

“We saw support from every spectrum of the Republican Party,” Cruz said.

Asked how he would sell himself to South Carolina Republicans, Cruz said, “It’s too early to worry about 2016.” But he added: “The person for whom I intend to vote is whoever is standing up and leading. Whoever is effectively making the case for free market principles — for our constitutional rights.”

“What I’m trying to do in South Carolina and across the country is really energize and mobilize the grassroots,” Cruz told reporters. “People understand the path we’re on isn’t working.”

Cruz alluded to those ideological battles during his 25-minute speech to some 100 conservatives at an annual awards dinner hosted by the Free Enterprise Foundation, a nonprofit research group promoting fewer regulations on businesses.

The “biggest divide,” he told the crowd, is between “entrenched politicians in Washington in both parties and the American people.”

After his speech, Cruz stayed and shook hands until everybody left the hall — and thanked each of the wait staff individually. Later that night, he met with a group of event organizers and area Republicans at a Marriott Hotel bar booth.

Cruz has now traveled three times apiece to the early caucus and primary states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina as well as twice to Florida. His aides note that he has also traveled across the country promoting his views in California, Illinois, Georgia, Michigan, New York, New Jersey and Ohio. But he’ll be back in New Hampshire later this month.

The intensity of early state travel is bound to pick up in the coming months for potential 2016 contenders.

Rubio, who has avoided visiting early primary states since heading to Iowa in November 2012, will drop by New Hampshire on May 9, for two events. He said in an interview last week, “You might see [me] in some early states because they have Senate races,” which would allow him to raise his visibility there.

Since last year, Paul has dropped by two times each to Iowa and New Hampshire and four times to South Carolina. Already, he’s having conversations with party leaders about building an infrastructure and a ground game, something he discussed with Mulvaney in an extensive conversation recently. (Cruz has yet to begin such groundwork.)

“I think the party has got to be big and diverse,” Paul said in a recent interview.

Last fall, Cruz experienced a surge in his popularity on the right. It was his 21-hour floor speech last September calling on Congress to defund Obamacare that prompted a heightened interest among conservatives in some early primary states at that time and boosted his fundraising numbers.

At the same time, that speech led to a cascade of events that prompted the government shutdown, which saw Republicans’ poll numbers plummet and infuriated many in a GOP already struggling with intraparty divisions.

Republican Rep. Tom Rice, a South Carolina freshman who represents Myrtle Beach, said the GOP would have been better suited to fight the health care law as problems with it grew more evident in 2014 — the year of its implementation.

Asked about a Cruz candidacy in 2016, Rice said, “I think Ted Cruz may be a little too extreme.”

Cruz’s extensive travels around the country have offered him the chance to build more support among the right while also courting donors — including some angered by the government shutdown as well as Cruz’s noncommittal stance to endorsing incumbent Republicans including his state’s senior senator, John Cornyn, in the Texas GOP primary. (He declined Tuesday to endorse Graham moments before the South Carolinian introduced him to the Citadel crowd and hailed him as a “fighter.” Cruz said he “likely” would sit out of the June primary.)

When asked whether Cruz has built his donor network through his travels, the senator’s spokeswoman, Catherine Frazier said, “With the territory has come the chance to build a lot of relationships.”

Cruz also has taken steps in some areas aimed at putting him well within his party’s mainstream — particularly on foreign policy. He has advocated toughening sanctions on Iran and taking a harder line against Vladimir Putin, and he recently won passage of a Senate bill banning the entrance to the United States of Iran’s controversial ambassador to the United Nations. He also voted for a bill to provide loan guarantees to Ukraine, while Paul was one of just two senators to vote against it.

By espousing more hawkish views, Cruz has broken from the more isolationist foreign policy stances espoused by Paul. Last month, Cruz took a mild dig at Paul’s views, prompting an angry retort from the Kentucky freshman. Since then, two senior aides of the senators — Cruz chief of staff Chip Roy and Paul senior adviser Doug Stafford — met, and the senators have chatted among themselves.

“We talk all the time, there’s not a problem,” Paul said. “I felt the need to correct the record.”

Here in South Carolina, there is a significant contingent of libertarian-minded voters, who are believed to make up more than 10 percent of the GOP primary electorate. In 2012, Paul’s father, former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, took 13 percent of the vote in South Carolina, only to lose handily to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, who romped his way through the primary.

Given that fact, Paul could be Cruz’s greatest threat here, especially considering the Kentucky senator’s ability to woo tea party activists, libertarians and now the party establishment.

“He can’t out-Rand Rand Paul,” Graham said.

State Sen. Lee Bright, one of the candidates vying to unseat the incumbent South Carolina senator in the June GOP primary, said he was worried both Cruz and Paul would pull from the same bloc during a presidential primary and allow a third candidate to sneak by.

“If both of them run, it gives the opportunity for somebody else to slip in,” Bright said. “I think there are some differences [between the two], but my concerns are they are going to be pulling from the same well.”

If that occurred, it could pave the way for any number of candidates — but Graham thinks the most likely winner could be the former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a devout Christian and social conservative who could appeal to the large Baptist population here.

He noted with a chuckle: “It’s hard to run against a Baptist preacher in South Carolina.”