Conservative firebrand Ted Cruz, the Texas senator whose service in office is just four months long, is considering a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, according to a report on Wednesday by National Review.

The Texas Republican has quickly won the fervent support of grassroots conservatives since his election last November by breaking with Senate convention to aggressively challenge Democrats – and some Republicans, too. Citing anonymous sources, the National Review article suggested Cruz might look to quickly capitalize on his newfound fame, and rally conservatives behind his candidacy.

But there are significant barriers to Cruz winning the GOP nod in 2016, let alone winning the White House. Here are a few of them:

Mark Wilson / Getty Images file photo

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas

Cruz would face tough conservative competition
While Cruz has charmed figures ranging from conservative bloggers to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, he could encounter a Republican primary field that would hardly cede the most conservative bloc within the GOP to Cruz. 

It’s easy to conceive of a series of Republican presidential hopefuls – Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (and possibly more) – vying for the same segment of the Republican primary vote as Cruz. Any one of those candidates will almost encounter difficulty in harnessing the political power of the Tea Party, a movement that has never been particularly well-known for acting in concert.

Fantasy vs. reality
If Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s bid for the Republican nomination in 2012 taught political observers anything, it’s that being a potential candidate is always easier to execute than being an actual candidate.

Conservatives, searching for an alternative to the establishment-backed favorite, Mitt Romney, practically begged Perry to make a late entry into the primary. They extolled his conservatism and the positive jobs situation in Texas, arguing that his record, combined with a top-notch team of consultants, would make Perry the new favorite for the GOP nomination.

Of course, things didn’t turn out that way. Perry withered under the national spotlight and the scrutiny of rival Republican candidates. Recent history is littered with examples of similar primary candidates, like Democratic hopeful Wesley Clark in 2004, and former Sen. Fred Thompson’s foray into the GOP primary of 2008. Their candidacies fizzled after having won broad acclaim at their outset.

Cruz would almost certainly face stiff opposition in a Republican primary that could expose any of his flaws as a politician. Wednesday’s National Review article cited Cruz’s experience as an award-winning debater, but his performances in those contests have never been filtered through the prism of rival campaigns or the national media.

The establishment would strike back
Cruz’s path to the GOP nomination would almost certainly rely on an outside strategy in which he courts conservative activists and rails against the party establishment in Washington. But would the D.C. establishment necessarily take that kind of criticism while sitting down?

In 2012, the GOP establishment quickly rallied around Romney, if only after it became apparent that there would be no other serious contenders for the presidency available. And when it seemed as though the more conservative Rick Santorum might emerge to dethrone Romney during the primaries, there were serious rumblings that GOP money men might scramble to find an alternative candidate who they regarded as more formidable versus President Barack Obama in the general election.

Given Cruz’s conservatism, it isn’t tough to imagine the GOP establishment rallying around a candidate perceived as more electable to if a Cruz candidacy  came too close to victory.

It doesn’t help Cruz that he’s forged few alliances during his short time in the nation’s capital. He most recently derided many of his congressional colleagues as “squishes,” and spoke publicly about internal Republican debates that were supposed to remain confidential. Cruz has worked with a few fellow conservatives, but two of them – Paul and Rubio – could end up being rival candidates for the GOP nomination in 2016.

Oh, Canada!
The National Review article acknowledges that Cruz advisers are prepared for a legal challenge to his eligibility to serve as president, reminiscent of the “birther” attacks conservatives had leveled against Obama for much of his first term. 

At issue is Cruz’s birthplace. He was born in Calgary, Canada, the son of a Cuban refugee father and a U.S. citizen mother. Having been born outside the continental U.S., he would have to address questions about whether he is a “natural born” U.S. citizen, which the Constitution requires of a prospective president.

But even if Cruz is able to offer up all the evidence in the world of his eligibility, it’s not tough to imagine Democratic candidates and super PACs relishing in the chance to give a Republican his comeuppance, and turn the “birther” phenomenon back against a GOP hopeful. 

He’s barely a blip in the polls right now
Cruz could certainly raise his national profile in the next few years, but the Texas senator hasn’t yet registered as a contender for the GOP nomination in any credible poll testing the 2016 field.

A Quinnipiac University poll at the beginning of last month found that Rubio was the slight, early favorite among Republican primary voters; 19 percent of them said they would favor the Florida senator as their nominee in 2016. And while other contenders like Paul, Walker, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell all registered some level of support, Cruz did not.

Cruz still faces the challenge of building his reputation outside of conservative, Washington-focused circles. But he still has plenty of upside, too; having been a figure on the national stage for such a short period of time, Cruz’s name ID among primary voters has virtually nowhere to go but up.

This story was originally published on Wed May 1, 2013 12:42 PM EDT

Hours before President Barack Obama's official swearing-in to a second term, top Democrats predicted a victory for the broadest component of the White House's push to change the nation's gun laws. 

During an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," Sen. Chuck Schumer, N.Y., called legislation to institute universal background checks for gun buyers "the sweet spot." 

"In terms of actually making us safer and having a good chance of passing, this is it," Schumer said on Sunday. 

"I think you're going to see [the very likelihood] in the next week or two a proposal that has broad support for universal background checks," he added. 

Schumer's confidence echoed the comments of White House senior adviser David Plouffe, who said on CNN Sunday that he's confident the president will have the votes in Congress to pass key parts of his gun control agenda because public opinion has shifted in the wake of the Newtown school shooting last month. 

"Newtown has changed the debate," Plouffe said. "Sadly, it took a tragedy like that, but you’re seeing a lot of people -- by the way Democrats and Republicans -- think differently about this issue since this tragedy."

"I think there's 60 votes in the Senate and 218 votes in the House if votes will come up for some of these gun safety measures like clips, like universal background checks, absolutely," he added. "There is a consensus in America on this, and I think we can get there here on Capitol Hill."

Obama unveiled a sweeping proposal last week that included the background check measure, limits on the capacity of ammunition clips, and a ban on assault weapons. Supporters of the plan point to overwhelming public support for the background check legislation; the assault weapons ban is far more divided along partisan lines. 

Freshman Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican from Texas, said that Obama has exploited the mass shooting in Newtown in order to pass a pre-existing legislative agenda that caters to his political base. 

"This is not designed to actually solve the problem of violent crime. This is designed to assuage liberal partisans" on the issue of gun control, he said on Meet the Press. 

Cruz questioned the need to place further restrictions on gun shows, where critics say it is too easy to buy a firearm. 

"There actually isn't the so-called 'gun show loophole.' That doesn't exist," he said. "Any licensed firearm dealer who sells at a gun show has to have a background check." 

Another Republican senator suggested Sunday that the gun legislation may not even come up for a vote in the United States Senate, where Democratic leader Harry Reid faces tough politics when it comes to swing-state Democrats who are up for re-election in 2014. 

"I would really welcome the opportunity to have a fair and open debate on that in the United States Senate,"  said Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming on CNN.

"But I don't think Senator Harry Reid even brings it to the Senate floor because he has six Democrats up for election in two years in states where the president received fewer than 42 percent of the votes." 

Updated at 10:53 p.m. ET: Tea Party-backed Ted Cruz won the primary runoff contest for the Texas Senate seat Tuesday night with over half of the vote, beating Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who was the winner of a plurality of the vote in the initial primary election in June. Dewhurst conceded Tuesday night.

Cruz will face Rep. Paul Sadler in the general election, which will determine the successor to retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R). Sadler beat former educator Grady Yarbrough in Tuesday's primary with two-thirds of the vote.

But given the Republican dominance in Texas, the seat is seen as likely to remain in GOP control, which made Tuesday’s runoff a somewhat de facto general election.

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The Dewhurst-Cruz battle marked another chapter in the battle between the establishment and insurgent wings of the Republican Party, splitting Republicans along familiar dividing lines.

Dewhurst had been able to outraise his primary opponents in part thanks to his long time in government and his support from Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), whose highly-regarded staff had managed his campaign.

But after Dewhurst failed to win an outright majority in the June 2 primary – which would have secured for him the nomination – conservatives who had opposed the lieutenant governor rallied around Cruz as the conservative alternative in the primary runoff.

Familiar Republican figures who had propelled other upstart conservatives in primaries had rallied around Cruz. South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint endorsed the former solicitor general, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum each stumped for Cruz last weekend in Texas.

Cruz, a Cuban-American who had served as a onetime clerk to the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, had been the favorite going into the primary on Tuesday. But Dewhurst supporters held out hope that early voting might carry the day for his campaign.

Texas seems likely to have a more conservative senator in Washington come next January. The outgoing Hutchison is regarded as a generally Republican, but had drawn conservatives’ ire for supporting abortion rights and the 2008 Wall Street bailout program.