Conservative Ted Cruz Calls His Rivals ‘Campaign Conservatives’
Texas Senator Ted Cruz points out he is unique among the huge field of 17 GOP candidates for president; he walks the walk while the others merely talk the talk in time for the campaign. Speaking at the RedState gathering, Cruz called them “campaign conservatives,” Time magazine reported. He suggested that they play as conservatives during the campaign while having had a more moderate record in office.
“I’m pretty sure not a single (candidate) in the debate stood up and said, ‘I am an establishment, moderate, squish. I stand for nothing,'” Cruz said before an audience of more than 1,000 at the RedState Gathering in Atlanta, “Have you noticed that they run as us! That’s how they run.”
Cruz talked about how the more moderate, establishment supported candidates being to talk more like conservatives, even calling themselves such, during debate and during the campaign. Critics have suggested that even the moderate Republican Jeb Bush talked a more conservative line in the Fox News sponsored debate last Thursday night.
“We’ve got to distinguish between campaign conservatives, who on the campaign trail suddenly discover they are the most conservative soul who has ever lived,” Cruz said, about the moderate candidates attempting to sound conservative.
Ted Cruz has alleged most of his GOP rivals have supported an “amnesty” policy on immigration and the Tampa Bay Times’ Politifact.com web site reports this to be “mostly true.”
“A majority of the candidates on this stage have supported amnesty,” Cruz said Thursday night during the debate, “I have never supported amnesty, and I led the fight against Chuck Schumer’s gang of eight amnesty legislation in the Senate.”
After defining “amnesty” as meaning a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, which Sen. Cruz strongly opposes, Politifact concluded that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is the only other candidate among the 10 participating in the evening debate Thursday night, that does not support “amnesty” as defined as a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants.
Ted Cruz disputed the perception that a conservative candidate like himself can’t win, stating, “The media, and the Democrats…although I repeat myself — they love to tell us a conservative can’t win. Every time we nominate someone who’s not a strong conservative, we lose.”
“Don’t let the name fool you, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does little to protect consumer,” Cruz said in a statement about the legislation to eliminate the CFPB. “The agency continues to grow in power and magnitude without any accountability to Congress and the people. The only way to stop this runaway agency is by eliminating it altogether.”
Proposing to eliminate the CFPB is one instance of many in which Cruz has stood for consumer and against unaccountable, big government. The ratings of the 17 Republican candidates for president by Conservative Review shows Ted Cruz to be the most consistently conservative candidate in the 2016 race for the GOP nomination.
Will the Republican voters choose a solid conservative candidate, such as Ted Cruz, as their nominee for 2016? That will soon be answered in the coming months.
[Photo of Ted Cruz by AFP/Getty Images.]
