Posted on 05/19/2015 1:52:39 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Senator Ted Cruz, who appeared in Georgia over the weekend at the Republican state convention in Athens, sees his candidacy for President of the United States as Reaganesque. Comparing the 1980 and 2016 election cycles, he noted the similarity between incumbent Democratic presidents Jimmy Carter and Barack Obama. And in an interview late Friday afternoon, he told me how he hopes to win the presidency in 2016.
Cruz noted that since World War II, the GOP has only won the presidency when they ran on all three legs of the proverbial Republican Stool. The winning candidate has been a fiscal conservative, a social conservative, and a national security conservative. Bringing up a phrase Reagan used during a 1975 speech at CPAC, Cruz said that in order to win, a candidate must speak in bold colors, and not pale pastels. Republicans will win in 2016, Cruz said, if they nominate a strong conservative with a positive, optimistic, hopeful vision.
The Senator spoke of a need to bring in the old Reagan coalition of conservatives, libertarians, evangelicals, young people, Hispanics, African Americans, women and Reagan Democrats. In order to do that, Cruz said, the candidate must appeal to shared values. He noted his success in doing that when he was elected as Senator in Texas in 2012, saying he was able to get support from each of those groups, along with “hard working men and women who want to believe again in the miracle of America.”
The theme of Cruz’s campaign is “Reigniting the Promise of America.” It will be based on broad, unifying issues that resonate with a majority of Americans and fit within the three legs of the GOP stool. On fiscal issues, Cruz plans tax and regulatory reform to bring back jobs and economic opportunity. On social issues, Cruz emphasizes defending Constitutional rights, including the Bill of Rights. And he wants to restore America’s leadership in the world; an issue appealing to national security conservatives.
Cruz told me that all three of these principles are not narrow 51% wedge issues. Instead, they are based on the same path Ronald Reagan used to take the country back.
Our conversation turned from broad campaign themes to specific issues that could be important to Republicans who will decide next winter and spring who will represent them in November 2016. One issue, which had been expected to have been debated as part of a convention resolution was religious liberty.
Cruz pointed out that not too long ago, religious liberty was a unifying issue. He cited the bipartisan passage of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act 20 years ago, which Republicans and Democrats came together to pass almost unanimously. Things have changed, though.
“The reason this has become controversial is not because the values of the American people have changed,” Cruz explained. “It is because the modern Democratic Party has become so extreme and radicalized. Democrats have made a determination that their partisan devotion to mandatory gay marriage in all fifty states trumps any willingness to defend the religious liberty of American citizens under the first amendment.”
Senator Cruz told me the story of an Iowa couple who own property including an historic church. The couple hosted and catered weddings in the church to supplement their income. A few years ago, after refusing to allow a gay couple to use their facility for a marriage ceremony, the couple was sued and paid a large fine as a settlement. They no longer hold marriages on the property.
The 2016 presidential candidate continued,
What’s odd about this issue is that there’s a liberal fascism, an intolerance. Some of the Christians who have been persecuted have been florists or bakers who were asked to provide their services for a gay wedding that contradicted their faith, and so they declined. They are being persecuted and fined and threatened with legal action.
None of us have a right to demand of another that they embrace our lifestyle. Imagine for example a gay florist who was asked to provide flowers for the wedding of two fundamentalist Christians. Now if that florist decided, “this is contrary to my beliefs, and I’m not going to support this Christian marriage,” that florist has the right to do that. We are a free country, and there is no power of government to demand that the faith and individual conscience of citizens be crushed under the jackboot of government.
That’s what’s at issue here, and when it comes to issues of religious liberty, with the people, religious liberty is a powerfully unifying issue.
Chiding Republican politicians who he said were afraid to engage in defense of religious liberty, including some 2016 presidential candidates, Cruz noted that he had spent 20 years, both in private practice and as the Solicitor General of Texas, winning religious rights cases. And as our conversation drew to a close, Senator Cruz again made an analogy to President Reagan.
“I think Indiana was historical. It was, as Reagan put it, a time for choosing. Some leaders chose to stand up and say, ‘I will stand with the first amendment religious liberty rights of Americans.’ Other leaders made different decisions, and I think the voters are going to remember who stood where.”
“If we ever forget that we are “One Nation Under God,”
then we will be a nation gone under.” - RONALD REAGAN
“We are never defeated unless we give up on God.” - RONALD REAGAN
“The Constitution was never meant to prevent people from praying; it’s declared purpose was to protect the freedom to pray.” - RONALD REAGAN
“Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all problems men face, if we’d only look there.” - RONALD REAGAN
“The future does not belong to the fainthearted,it belongs to the brave.” - RONALD REAGAN
“We are a nation of freedom,living under God, believing all citizens must have the opportunity to grow,create wealth,and build a better life for those that follow.” - RONALD REAGAN
Without God, a democracy cannot and will not long endure. - RONALD REAGAN
Note that he said the key is to appeal to shared values of the groups he mentioned-—not pander to them and pretend he has false values.
He gets it.
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