Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) — who would be a Democrat’s dream Republican nominee for president in 2016 — has announced that he will visit New Hampshire in August, possibly to lay the groundwork for a run at the White House.

He will also be headlining the Iowa GOP’s summer picnic this Friday.

Cruz has already visited South Carolina, which will also hold a crucial early primary in 2016.

Texas’ junior senator has become a favorite of the Republican base and seems to be squaring off with Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) to be the populist candidate in the next presidential election.

Both Cruz and Paul opposed immigration reform and both senators make it a habit to be critical of their own party when not engaging in perpetual bashing of the “Democrat” Party.

“The senior senator from Arizona [John McCain] urged this body to trust the Republicans. Let me be clear, I don’t trust the Republicans,” Cruz said in May on the Senate floor. “And I don’t trust the Democrats.”

Iowa Republicans don’t seem to trust Cruz yet, either. He finished sixth in a recent poll in the Hawkeye State, 12 percent behind Paul, who led the pack.

Paul’s father Ron ran for the GOP nomination in 2008 and 2012 and built an impressive grassroots network that helped him finish third in Iowa and second in New Hampshire behind eventual nominee Mitt Romney. But there’s no guarantee that infrastructure will be inherited by the younger Paul, according to his father’s supporters.

“Some folks expect there to be an automatic rollover in support from his father, and I don’t think that is going to be the case,” said Joel Kurtinitis, Ron Paul’s state director in Iowa in 2012. “It’s not automatic. We feel like automatic loyalty has cost us—one Clinton is just like the last Clinton; one Bush is just like the next Bush. We are going to watch people.”

They’ll get a chance to watch Senator Cruz on Friday night.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.com