The 2016 presidential race has officially begun – not with a bang, but with a tweet. Very early Monday morning Texas Sen. Ted Cruz announced via Twitter that he is running for president. 

I’m running for President and I hope to earn your support! pic.twitter.com/0UTqaIoytP

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 23, 2015

Between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s coyness and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s non-announcement announcement that he would be exploring the option of running for president, it is refreshing to see someone just come out and say “I’m running for president.”

Senior advisors to Cruz told the Houston Chronicle that the senator was done exploring the idea of running for president and wanted to become the first major Republican candidate.

In his very well choreographed announcement speech at Liberty University, Cruz kept saying “imagine.” Well since the senator likes to imagine he should imagine that he will not be elected president.

Cruz’s politics work great in Texas because Texas is a conservative state and Texans do not vote. It is easy to win an election in Texas. All a person has to do is be a severe conservative, Christian and win a GOP primary.

There are 49 other states that are not Texas. There will be people across the nation who will support Cruz for president. Many conservative people are on Cruz’s side — until the next conservative announces his intentions for running in 2016.

Cruz wants to reignite what he calls the promise of America by creating a grassroots army of millions of courageous conservatives to reclaim hope and stand for liberty.  That type of rhetoric only works for the conservative base of the Republican Party.

Abolish the IRS. Repeal Obamacare. Uphold the sanctity of marriage. Protect life. These are the red meat ideas Cruz will run on. All of these are ideas Republicans have run on before and they have never been accomplished.

Cruz is just the second coming of failed Republican candidate for president Barry Goldwater.

If the GOP decides to pick Cruz as its nominee for president they will lose.

Cruz is not the person who will unite the country and overcome the hyper partisan politics that own Washington, D.C. Cruz is apart that extreme partisanship.

He says he does not like many, if not all, of President Barack Obama’s ideas, but Cruz is following the same trajectory as Obama. Both decided to run for president after being in the senate for a hot second.

The difference between the two is that when Obama ran he wanted to unite red and blue America, not just strengthen his party’s base.

Cruz is no Obama.

What the country needs for its next president is someone with experience, big ideas and can unite the country. There’s only two people who meet these requirements: Clinton and Bush.