Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz served up a big helping of red meat for his Tea Party base in Washington on Thursday, with a pugilistic speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Taking aim at the political establishment on both the left and right, the Texas senator told the crowd the biggest divide in the US was “not between Republicans and Democrats; it is between the career politicians in Washington and the American people.”
In a speech that was almost a point-for-point rehash of his address at the Iowa Freedom Summit in January, Cruz set out his stall for the far right of the base, hitting all the touchstones along the way.
As in Iowa, Cruz quoted Ronald Reagan, saying: “The path to victory … lies in painting with bold colours, not with pale pastels.”
Pastel colours are certainly nowhere to be found in Cruz’s rhetorical palette. “Obamacare is a trainwreck – and that’s actually not fair to trainwrecks,” he boomed, promising to repeal “every blasted word” of Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reforms.
Cruz was interviewed by Sean Hannity of Fox News, with whom he joked convivially. “I’m asking you this next question because I know the liberal media will,” said Hannity. To general mirth, Cruz responded: “No, I have not stopped beating my wife.”
Low-balled a question on the subject by Hannity, without a flicker of irony Cruz slammed “birthers” who claim that since he was born in another country – Canada – he would be ineligible to run for president. “Under law I am a natural-born citizen,” he said.
Asked what the first five actions on the agenda of a Ted Cruz presidency would be, he said: repeal Obamacare; abolish the Internal Revenue Service (“Take all 125,000 IRS agents and put them on the southern border”); stop “out of control regulations” by the Environmental Protection Agency.
By item No 4, he seemed to be running out of steam. “Constitutional rights!” he shouted, after a brief pause. “All of them!”
He ended with a slightly hammy, almost tearful setpiece on American exceptionalism. “This country is the greatest country in the history of the world,” he intoned, his voice cracking for maximum emotional effect.
