Cruz's ragged rollout shows why 2016 candidates in no hurry

Why are presidential candidates taking so long to announce their candidacies? Why has the timetable slowed considerably when it previously appeared the first declarations for 2016 might come as early as last December?

Well, beyond some of the games being played with campaign cash by those who are clearly ready to run (more on that later), Sen. Ted Cruz's big splashy presidential rollout on Monday may offer clues.

The first one out of the gate gets whacked fairly mercilessly. 

The Texas senator announced his candidacy on a slow-news Monday -- a smart move . But he became the focus of the day and took a pummeling, particularly on social media where his campaign team seemed unprepared to fight back (and had failed to accomplish such a basic move as buying  domain names, such as tedcruz2016.com, before the Internet trolls beat them to the punch.) 

On the cable TV circuit, Cruz, the first candidate officially in the 2016 race, landed a full-hour interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, who fawned over the senator's "adorable little kids."

Meanwhile, on Fox's "The Kelly File," Sen. Rand Paul stepped on his Texas colleague’s campaign rollout by questioning his electability, according to The Hill, a move that Cruz’s allies saw as a deliberate attempt to distract from his message. In the interview with Megyn Kelly, the Kentucky senator who will make his announcement on April 7 flatly stated that he doesn’t think Cruz has much appeal outside the party’s base.
Paul also said he was “glad” some Liberty students, who were required to attend Cruz's speech, showed up in the front row wearing “I’m with Rand” shirts, and during Cruz’s Monday morning speech he was encouraging people to retweet “Stand with Rand.”

Of course, that's mild stuff compared to the CNN interview with Republican Congressman Peter King, who called Cruz a "carnival barker" and a "counterfeit conservative."

"In his short time in the Senate, Cruz has arguably become the most polarizing figure in all of Congress" The Washington Post reported, as the inevitable analysis stories rolled out. "While he has won the loyalty of some rogue House conservatives and a small group of far-right senators, his tactics have angered many colleagues in both parties. Many Republicans and Democrats blamed the 2013 partial government shutdown on Cruz’s relentless effort to defund President Obama’s health care law, which they saw as a losing battle from the get-go. Republicans suffered politically in the wake of that fight, polls showed."

Critics also declared that, in his laundry list of political applause lines, Cruz continues to embrace a "phenomenally bad idea."
The tea party favorite routinely calls for an end to the Internal Revenue Service, a declaration made by many conservatives. But as he reaches for a higher plain, that line raises questions about whether he is a serious presidential contender.  
Cruz perpetuates the myth that a flat tax would lead to the abolishment of the IRS. In reality, income taxes represent less than half of the federal revenue stream. Does Cruz want to end Medicare and Social Security, which are funded by payroll taxes collected by the IRS? Of course not. Collecting corporate taxes and excise taxes also account for a portion of the IRS' role.

"Cruz says he wants to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service. This is a phenomenally bad idea, one so obviously wrongheaded it’s hard to believe he really means it," noted the Wonkbook blog in The Washington Post. 
"... One of the biggest, and silliest, applause lines was this: 'Imagine abolishing the IRS.' ... Sorry to say it, but someone has to collect the money that keeps our government up and running, funding everything from Medicare to the military. The IRS is a cash-flow-positive agency, collecting an estimated $255 for every $1 appropriated to it, and dumping it would vastly widen existing government deficits." 

Meanwhile, over at Politico they explained the most obvious, yet least reported, reason why candidates are avoiding their official announcements that they're running.
Paul S. Ryan from the Campaign Legal Center wrote that it's all about the Benjamins -- or stacks of Benjamins.
"Why do Bush, Clinton and nearly every other prospective 2016 candidate refuse to acknowledge that they are even 'testing the waters' of a presidential campaign? Because money spent to test the waters of a federal campaign must be raised under the $2,700 candidate contribution limit — and nearly every prospective candidate is raising funds outside the limit, sometimes even far outside that limit.
"... Any prospective presidential candidate who’s paying for testing-the-waters activities with funds raised outside the $2,700 per donor candidate limit is violating federal law."