Elizabeth Warren isn't the left’s Ted Cruz. She's the left’s Jim DeMint.

This is much more like DeMint circa 2006 than Cruz in 2014. Cruz, long an establishment man, arrived late in the tea party movement, opportunistically embracing its themes to vault himself to power in 2012. His stands in Washington have been less about advancing a policy agenda than about causing mayhem and positioning himself to run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.

DeMint, by contrast, cared about policy and took a long view of politics. As a member of the House, he pushed back in 2003 against the Bush administration’s Medicare expansion. He fought Republican leaders in the Senate to get rid of earmarks in spending bills, and eventually prevailed. He established a Senate Conservatives Fund and was instrumental in getting colleagues such as Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) elected.

DeMint briefly considered a presidential run in 2011 after conservative leaders tried to draft him, but he decided against it within days; the next year he quit the Senate to run Heritage. Now, hundreds of former Obama campaign workers are urging Warren to run for president — and, though not formally ruling out a run, she has expressed no interest.