Free Republic

This is the most hilarious interview with Ted Cruz I’ve seen thus far. Thank you CNN, for delivering this epic bit of blowback: [IVDEO] Please, somebody, help me, I can’t stop laughing. Bash tried to smack Cruz around by comparing him to Obama (funny, she didn’t have a problem with the current president having no executive or much political experience when he ran for the White House in 2008), hoping it would silence and embarrass the senator from Texas. She got a healthy dose of “you’ve got to be kidding” me instead. Two years in the Senate, not much experience...

Repair and realignment of our federal government The size of the federal government has exploded over the last century. The legislative and judicial branches of government have grown to serve the increased number of states and its growing population. The size and scope of the executive branch has grown to reflect an expanded role of the federal government over the last 100 years. Apparently the staffing of fourteen separate Cabinet Departments were not enough to manage the current executive branch, so Barack Obama felt the need to appoint a number of “czars” to focus on special emphasis areas. Recent studies...

(AUDIO-AT-LINK)On Monday, The Chad Hasty Show was joined by GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak to recap the last week and weekend in state and national politics. Mackowiak talked about Ted Cruz’s announcement that he is running for president, and discussed standings of Cruz (R), Martin O’Malley (D), Hillary Clinton (D) and Elizabeth Warren (D). When asked how he thought Cruz’s campaign is going so far, Mackowiak replied, I think fairly well. Particularly the first two or three days, he earned a lot of media. Looks like he’s raised about three million dollars so far. He said he wanted to raise about...

In questions of powers, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution. — Thomas JeffersonDon’t be embarrassed if you don’t instantly recognize those words from Thomas Jefferson. They’re not etched in marble on his memorial in Washington. While they express a common sentiment of the founding generation — that since men are no “angels,” the Constitution is necessary to control their baser acts — the occasion for Jefferson’s “chains” was anything but common. The words come from Jefferson’s draft of the Kentucky Resolutions, in which he...

4. She created jobs. During her tenure as governor, Alaska was 2nd in job growth compared to all other states. Obama’s definition of job creating is changing the definition of “unemployed.” See, you’re no longer considered “unemployed”… you just don’t care anymore. Read more at http://www.westernjournalism.com/top-5-reasons-sarah-palin-still-make-better-president-barack-obama/#O4ou4QOAXOWbKTOo.99

Past performance is no guarantee of future results: Mr. Cruz knows his reputation as the angry, surly face of the dark side of conservatism. He’s the government-shutdown artist*, the living answer to the question “What if Joe McCarthy went to Harvard Law?” He says it’s a caricature.**He once noted to me in conversation that when people on TV call him angry and snarling, they never show video to illustrate the point. He says there is no angry, snarling video because he isn’t angry and doesn’t snarl. He never throws mud, he says, and won’t. He sees himself as a...

DANA BASH, CNN: I want to read to you a description, a Harvard law graduate, 40 something years old, two young daughters, in the senate for only two years who thinks he can be president. I could be describing you; I could be describing Barack Obama. SEN. TED CRUZ: True enough, but I think there are a lot more notable differences between us than the similarities. DANA BASH: That is true, but, you know, one of the key things that we're already hearing is you don't have a lot of experience when it comes to being in federal office or...

In 1979, the year before Republicans nominated Ronald Reagan as their presidential candidate, the Rev. Jerry Falwell and conservative activist Paul Weyrich founded the Moral Majority. It was at the Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia, Liberty University, founded by Rev. Falwell, where Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) just announced his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. Although Cruz made no reference to the Moral Majority in his remarks, his thinking clearly is where Falwell’s and Weyrich’s was when they founded that organization. That getting a widely politically inactive universe of church going evangelical Christians politically engaged can change America. Cruz made...

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wasn’t taking any chances the other day when he announced he will seek the Republican nomination for president in 2016. Cruz launched his bid at what for him was the friendliest of venues: Liberty University in Virginia, a Christian school founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell. It would have been difficult for Cruz to pick a more receptive crowd for his announcement. And he didn’t disappoint. He asked Christian conservatives in the audience and across the nation to imagine a United States without the IRS, without Obamacare and without abortion rights. Said Cruz: “I believe...

NEW YORK – Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas, stressed during a closed-door meeting with New York City Christian leaders earlier this week that for the first time in history an astounding 65 percent of Americans do not think that their children will have a better life than them. Cruz, who is the first in an expected crowded Republican field to officially launch a presidential campaign, said that this depressing outlook is unacceptable and that there is a need to restore hope for those who have lost their faith in America's leadership. "America wants to believe that America has...

Regarding your editorial “The Cruz Candidacy” (March 24): Shades of 1964! For those of us old-timers who worked in the Barry Goldwater camp during that campaign, we see an ominous parallel shaping up because all of the ingredients are there. As ardent conservatives we admired the charismatic retired Air Force general who projected all of our conservative values. Sadly, as history reminds us, he attracted far too few votes from centrist and liberal Republicans, from the independent sector and from middle America in general during the 1964 campaign. This led to one of the worst electoral debacles in our country’s...

Says loyalty bound him to his lieutenant governor, says more of this quality is needed in US politics.Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry told a tea party group Sunday that he supported his lieutenant governor against Ted Cruz in the 2012 Republican primary for the U.S. Senate out of loyalty — a characteristic, he said, that is sorely missing in American politics. During a conference call hosted by Tea Party Patriots, Mr. Perry said he endorsed then-Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst because of the strong relationship they had developed over the years. “If nothing else, I am a principled, disciplined and loyal...

As we have discovered since he jetted from the starting blocks as 2016’s first declared presidential candidate, Ted Cruz seems to be a lot of things: scholar, radical (or patriot), genius (or know-it-all), upstart, loner, throwback (or traditionalist) and all-around lightning rod. Unproven, however, is that Cruz, a devoutly conservative Republican, is not qualified to seek the presidency, which was the position staked out by feather-trigger snipers even as Liberty University students showered his announcement with standing ovations. (Yes, they sort of had to be there, but they didn’t have to be enthusiastic about it.) Cruz, 44, is a first-term...

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) may be gaining ground as the conservative favorite for 2016. The Tea Party-affiliated Republican has long been one of the more vocal and intense individuals on the GOP’s side of the aisle. Many on the far right would be pleased to see him run, and he’s likely to have a flood of Tea Party support. “Many social conservatives feel their issues have been kicked to the side, and they are frustrated. Someone like Cruz taking the nomination in 2016 would give them a voice again. It’s still early, and there are many potential candidates that could...

NASHUA, N.H. -- When he's out on the campaign trail in public view, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) likes his hair gel extra-shiny, his wife and two adorable daughters close to his side, and a microphone attached to his body at all times. The former college debate national champion knows a little something about presentation, and image-crafting was entwined in every movement he made during his first swing through New Hampshire as a newly minted presidential candidate on Friday and Saturday. At times, he risked laying it on a little too thick. During his first appearance at a Veterans of Foreign...

As you may have heard, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) this week officially joined the 2016 GOP primary scrum (or, if you've a yen for parsing narrow legal definitions, leaped past that scrum), in a fancy to-do at Liberty University -- a fitting venue for Cruz to lay down the foundation of his pitch to the conservative base, in which he adopts the persona of Jesus H. Reagan. Or, if you prefer, Ronald H. Christ -- it's essentially the same concept, and I am not a picky man. But what Cruz did next was very puzzling: He signed up for Obamacare....

The left lost its collective grip last Monday, when Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas announced he was running for president. Really, it was the mirror image of the visceral way Republicans react to Hillary Clinton. It’s no overstatement to say that Cruz is absolutely hated by the left, loathed as the embodiment of right-wing insanity. Which, of course, makes conservatives love him even more. Following Cruz’s announcement, lefties comforted themselves by reassuring everyone within earshot that Cruz has no chance of winning. “It will never happen,” was the title of a post on the Talking Points Memo blog by...

WASHINGTON (CNN) — They’re both Harvard Law School graduates, constitutional lawyers and senators who launched presidential campaigns during their first terms.But Ted Cruz has little else in common with Barack Obama, he said Sunday.“I think there are a lot more notable differences between us than the similarities,” the Texas Republican told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”He said he’s had much more influence in the Senate than Obama, who he said was a “back-bencher” during his four years there.“He had not been leading on issues of any significance,” Cruz said. “In my time in the Senate, you can...

From the New Hampshire Union Leader: MANCHESTER – In his first visit to New Hampshire as a declared candidate for President, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz drew a line in the sand, one that he hopes will separate him from the rest of the pack in a crowded Republican primary.He embraced his reputation as the most conservative candidate as his surest path to victory.

Appearing on Fox News’ MediaBuzz on Sunday, Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker demonstrated a complete 180 degree change of heart surrounding Senator Ted Cruz’ presidential prospects. At first, Parker argued that “he’s obviously not going to win the presidency” before insisting that when it comes to Cruz “the Washington media are really out of touch with real America.” Parker’s comments came during a panel discussing surrounding the media’s treatment of Ted Cruz in which liberal journalist Juan Williams insisted that Cruz received just as much criticism from conservatives as he does from the liberal media. (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Parker went on to argue...