Ted Cruz runs little risk of being called a "moderate Republican," and that is a good thing as far as he is concerned as the Texas senator believes that the GOP needs to stir away from the political center and pick a staunch conservative for its 2016 White House bid.

"If we nominate another candidate in the mold of Bob Dole or John McCain or Mitt Romney, the same people who stayed home in 2008 and 2012 will stay home in 2016, and the Democrats will win again," Cruz said according to Fox News. "There is a better way."

The 44-year-old senator is said to have his own White House ambitions, and his comments at Sunday's South Carolina Tea Party Convention in Myrtle Beach came days after Mitt Romney had said he was not ruling out a third presidential run. Sources close to the former Massachusetts governor said he has contacted former aides, donors and supporters, as well as GOP leaders in the critical primary state of New Hampshire.

"We just saw a historic tidal wave of an election," Cruz said in reference to the 2014 midterm elections, in which Republicans took control of the Senate and expanded their majority in the House of Representatives.

Cruz warned the "graybeards" still have not admitted their centrist calculus is wrong, Politico reports.

Cruz insisted that the two Republicans who have most inspired young people in recent history were former President Ronald Reagan, a conservative icon, and former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, an avowed libertarian.

Paul's son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, meanwhile, shared Cruz's assessment of a possible Romney bid.

"If we try the same thing again, we might get the same result," said Paul, who is considered a likely contender for the 2016 GOP nomination. "So maybe we need to keep looking."

Whoever its nominee might be, one thing the Republican Party ought to do is "lighten up a little," Cruz suggested.

"Would it kill Republicans to crack a joke?" Cruz said.

In that spirit, the Texas senator said he planned to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and reassign its 100,000-plus tax collectors to the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the Chicago Sun-Times said.

"I say that somewhat tongue-in-cheek," Cruz admitted.

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