Cruz hones pitch as he visits rural New Hampshire voters

LINCOLN, N.H. — Ahead of his expected presidential campaign, Sen. Ted Cruz is banking on his hopes that rural New Hampshire voters and his home state of Texas share a similarly dour view of government.

He is promising to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and scrap the Education Department. He vows to curtail federal regulators, likening to locusts that deserve to be killed. And his standard campaign-style speech includes a zinger about the Second Amendment.

"I'm pretty sure, here in New Hampshire, y'all define gun control like we do down in Texas: gun control is when you hit what you aim at," Cruz said Sunday during the first of a two-day visit to New Hampshire.

It's all part of the pitch Cruz is making to rural voters, here in New Hampshire and in other early nominating states with vast stretches of farms and forests. All candidates make such efforts, and frequent stops at county fairs and farm stands will be a staple of campaign schedules by the time there are declared candidates.

Even before he becomes an official candidate, Cruz is crossing off one item on every contender's to-do list: make a visit to the sparsely populated northern one-third of the state called the North Country. The rural region is home to less than a tenth of the state's population and its economy struggles to survive.

But candidates — like would-be-aspirants like Cruz — ignore the region at their peril. While there are fewer voters here than in the populous southern tier of the state, they are vocal. Candidates cannot be perceived as writing off the North Country in favor of the southern region, which is home to newcomers from neighboring Massachusetts.

"If we must have an enemy at the head of Government, let it be one whom we can oppose, and for whom we are not responsible, who will not involve our party in the disgrace of his foolish and bad measures." - Alexander Hamilton

"We don't intend to turn the Republican Party over to the traitors in the battle just ended. We will have no more of those candidates who are pledged to the same goals as our opposition and who seek our support. Turning the Party over to the so-called moderates wouldn’t make any sense at all." -- President Ronald Reagan

"A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice." - Thomas Paine 1792

"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men." - Samuel Adams

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams

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