Ted Cruz at CPAC 2016: Same as He Always Was

Cruz Attempts to Unite Splintered Party with Soaring Rhetoric

by Josh Guckert

The first word out of his mouth was “God,” and for this faux televangelist, nothing was more fitting. Ted Cruz spent his speech roaming the stage in jeans and a sports coat, doing his best to seem relatable. However, the truth seemed all too apparent: this United States Senator is too worried about his own political future to care at all about the principles of liberty.

In his opening, he spoke in jest about the possible reasons why Donald Trump had decided to skip CPAC this year. Notable is that during this attempt at humor, Cruz made sure to mention the libertarians in the audience, likely making an appeal to the same group with which he has thus far failed to pry from the suspended campaign of Rand Paul.

Cruz went on to mention his common talking points on immigration, repeatedly denigrating “amnesty,” which for Cruz has seemingly come to encompass anything other than mass deportation of all twelve million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States.

He next made references to his stances on “religious freedom,” including his defense of Ten Commandments statues outside government buildings.

Cruz continued onto the same statements that nearly all Republicans have insisted upon during President Obama’s tenure: that the military has been “shrunk” and disarmed around the world. He went on to suggest that American soldiers have been sent to fight wars in “politically correct” ways and that they are asked to follow rules of engagement that “tie their arms behind their backs.”

It is not all clear what Cruz means by this refrain, which leaves one to wonder whether he is suggesting something along the lines of violating the Geneva Conventions or other international laws. He also condemned liberals for refusing to say “radical Islamic terrorism.”

Cruz also took umbrage with Donald Trump’s statement that he would stay “neutral” between Israel and Palestine, making it clear that conversely, he, as President would stand definitively on the side of Israel.

Senator Cruz concluded his speech by coming full-circle, stating that the United States need to return to the “Judeo-Christian values” upon which he claimed it was founded.

During the after-speech interview with Sean Hannity, Cruz again affirmed that, having beaten Trump in five of fifteen contests, he is worthy of facing Trump head-to-head. He also name-dropped nearly every candidate who has suspended his or her campaign thus far, predictably starting with Rand Paul. He stated that he planned to put all of the former candidates in his eventual Presidential Cabinet.

Cruz next decried Democrats for refusing to state that “all lives matter,” before claiming that thousands of black Americans have been murdered in the inner-cities. Though this would apparently reveal a certain amount of insight, he next used this data point to merely suggest the “law and order” talking point that black Americans should be thankful for the police, because police have saved black lives by being so active, concluding that instead we should instead insist that “blue lives matter.”

Cruz then spoke of “peace through strength,” reminiscing that Iran released its American hostages in 1981 because of the “strong” rhetoric of Ronald Reagan.

In total, though well-received by many in the audience, Ted Cruz’s speech exemplified everything about him which is so reviled by so many who would otherwise agree with him on so many of the issues. Cruz may be fiercely conservative, but his attempts at authenticity clearly fall short of the mark.

He may believe that he can form a coalition of conservatives and libertarians to defeat Donald Trump, but the reality may be not so convenient. Though he enjoys paying lip-service to the liberty movement, Ted Cruz’s true colors have shone brightly when it has mattered, and libertarians will not so easily forget.