Photo Credit: Joshua L. Jones
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz (left) after being introduced by Georgia Sen. David Perdue.
Capping off a day filled with red meat for the Republican base, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz tossed the audience a few raw ribeyes during his Georgia GOP Convention speech at the Classic Center.
“We should adopt a simple flat tax,” Cruz said. “Let every American fill out his or her taxes on a postcard. And when we do that, we should abolish the IRS.
“Take all 90,000 of them and put them on the border… Imagine if you were swimming the Rio Grande, and the first thing you saw was 90,000 IRS agents. You’d turn around and go home.”
Cruz also said he supports repealing “every word of Obamacare,” as well as “every word of Common Core,” even though the school curriculum was formulated by governors and is not a federal law.
“Instead of unelected bureaucrats in Washington, it needs to be at the state level or, even better, the local level,” he said.
To even greater extent than Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, Cruz waded into the debate over a controversial religious liberty bill that opponents say would sanction discrimination against the LGBT community. Democrats supported a similar federal law in the ‘90s, he said, but now they’re so “radical” that “their commitment to mandatory gay marriage” trumps religious liberty, he said.
Liberals and big business have conspired to defeat such bills in states like Indiana and Arkansas, he said, as well as Georgia.
“I will always, always, always defend the religious liberty of every American,” he said.
Convention delegates are expected to take up a resolution calling for a religious liberty law on Saturday.
As president, Cruz also said he would “defeat radical Islamic terror” and never allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.
Early in his speech, Cruz praised the “amazing” field of Republican presidential candidates, which includes earlier speakers Rubio and (potentially) New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. But he later asked the crowd to demand that those candidates show, rather than tell, how they’ve stood up for conservative ideals.
“Show us your record of standing and fighting and leading,” he said.
Alone among Friday’s speakers, who mainly focused their attacks on President Obama, Cruz had harsh words for presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“Right now, the Democratic field includes a wild-eyed socialist with dangerous views on foreign policy—and Bernie Sanders,” he said, referring to the socialist Vermont senator who’s also running.
He ended by touting his fundraising (and thus, his perceived electability) and bragged about the New York Times predicting he can’t win because the establishment loathes him.
“I thought that was the point of the whole campaign,” he said.
Like what you just read? Support Flagpole by making a donation today. Every dollar you give helps fund our ongoing mission to provide Athens with quality, independent journalism.
