Sen. Ted Cruz speaking at the Heritage Foundation’s 2015 Conservative Policy Summit Monday, January 12, 2014.
Speaking at the Heritage Foundation’s 2015 Conservative Policy Summit Monday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called on the party to offer a bold, positive agenda in the new Congress.
The Texas senator warned the party against reading too much into their 2014 victory, stating without an agenda or offering the American people a choice, they will lose in 2016.
“These are extraordinary times,” he said. “Just last week, walking down the hallway at the capitol, I ran into a janitor carrying a screw driver coming to change the sign on Harry Reid’s door.”
Cruz is widely expected to make run for president in 2016, though the field will be very crowded. Former 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney recently told a group of supporters to hold off on getting on the Jeb Bush bandwagon, because he was thinking serious about making another run in 2016. What is often overlooked is how much such a dynamic could help Cruz and other more conservative candidates, who favor upending the status quo in Washington D.C.
He favors ending “corporate welfare,” banning lobbyist influence in Washington and passing term limits for members of Congress.
“Serving in Congress should not be a lifetime job,” he said in his speech. “But what should be banned is members of Congress becoming lobbyist and coming back after serving in Congress.”
Battling for the establishment donor money won’t be the only prize Romney and Bush would have to split, but also actual votes. If, and this is a big if, conservatives would coalesce behind a particular candidate, then the conservative candidate could put together a winning coalition in early states.
However, a new Gravis Poll released Tuesday found Cruz with just 7 percent of the vote in Iowa, behind libertarian-leaning Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (8 percent) in the first-in-the-nation caucus. However, the field is crowded and early polls have little predictive value.
In the meantime, Cruz said he will focus on advancing common sense proposals that impact the lives of everyday Americans. After having a laugh at the expense of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), he advocated in favor of a flat tax that is “fair and simple,” stressing that GOP leadership in the new majority need not wait for a Republican president to advance an agenda.
“If you’re a single mom trying to pay the bills and the cost of everything keeps going up and up and up, and the one thing that doesn’t move is your paycheck every two weeks, you’re feeling the consequence of Washington’s easy money policy,” Cruz said. “We need stable, consistent, strong monetary policy.”
Conservative voters, activists and members of Congress have grown frsutrated with Republican leadership, who seem to have one excuse after another for not taking a stand against the Obama agenda. For the senator from Texas, the party’s focus should be reclaiming congressional power and setting the agenda for the next two years.
“It’s time to usher in a new phase in American history, it’s time to do something revolutionary—go back to the most fundamental ideas: jobs, liberty, and security,” the Cruz camp echoed in an email to PPD. “Republicans most lead with bold reforms that will get us back on a course of opportunity, and that will empower entrepreneurs, young people, single parents, and those struggling the most under the Obama economy.”
