On Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” former Clinton adviser James Carville said that Sen. Ted Cruz will be a force to be reckoned with should he decide to run for president in 2016.

The Canadian-born Cruz, Carville noted, hails from the more ideological wing of the GOP, while the last two Republicans to unsuccessfully run for president, Arizona Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, were both inherently moderate and compromise-friendly.

“I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years. I further think that he’s going to run for president and he is going to create something. I’m not sitting here saying he’s going to win. And I think Sen. DeMint is right. I’ve listened to excerpts of his speech in South Carolina. He touches every button. And this guy has no fear. He just keeps plowing ahead. And he is going to be something to watch. A lot of Republicans feel this way, George. And you hear this a lot. If we only got someone who was articulate and was for what we were for, we would win elections. We get John McCains and Mitt Romneys and squishy guys that cannot do anything. One thing he is not, he’s not squishy.”

Later Carville picked back up on his praise of Cruz, calling him “more talented than all of these other guys.”

“I am not rooting — I’m really sincere here,” Carville said. “Watch him. He does things — I mean when he started talking about William Travis in South Carolina and the Alamo, this is a guy — you go, this guy is something. I don’t agree with him. I think he’s out there. But I’m telling you, he’s more talented than all of these other guys.”

As for the Democratic side, Carville remained steadfastly loyal to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom he has long supported.

“I’ve not seen one Democrat in the country that does not want her to run. And literally, now they know I would be for her. And they come up to me — ‘God, just please tell her to run.’ I mean, look at Nancy Pelosi. Look at everything. And there’s never been a front-runner, a non-incumbent front-runner like her since probably Eisenhower. Both parties wanted Eisenhower to run. And once he said he was running as a Republican, it was all over. I’ve never seen — I can’t tell you if she ran who would run or not. She is the most prohibitive front-runner I’ve seen.”

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