Story from the non-partisan The Hill.
Excerpt:
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said late Tuesday that Donald Trump’s fear of defending his record is behind the GOP front-runner’s boycott of the next Fox News GOP presidential debate.
“The reality is, the reason Donald is doing this – I actually don’t think it’s because of [Fox News host] Megyn [Kelly] at all,” he said on Fox News’s “Hannity.”
“I think it’s because he’s afraid to defend his record, that he knows he can’t defend his record and he’s trying to hide from the voters of Iowa,” Cruz said six days from the early voting state’s caucuses next Monday.
“He’s not willing to stand up and explain why he supports Bernie Sanders-style, full-on socialized medicine, expanding ObamaCare so the federal government is in charge of our healthcare,” he said, tying Trump with the Democratic presidential contender.
“He can’t explain why today he supports taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood,” the Republican White House hopeful added.
“He can’t explain why he supported [President] Obama’s stimulus plan and supported Obama’s TARP bail-out of the big banks. He doesn’t want to answer those questions, and he refuses to show up.”
[…]Trump announced late Tuesday that he is skipping the seventh GOP presidential debate in Des Moines, Iowa Thursday evening.
I really hope that Trump does agree to a formal debate with Cruz, but honestly, he doesn’t have the balls for it.
Endorsements that matter
I don’t usually blog about endorsements for any candidates, but I will note that Ted Cruz picked up the endorsement of the president of the conservative Family Research Council think tank.
Washington Times reports:
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, has endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas for president, calling Mr. Cruz “a constitutional conservative who will fight for faith, family and freedom.”
“I trust Ted to fight to pull America out of the political and cultural tailspin that President Obama’s policies have put us in,” Mr. Perkins said. “This is no normal election; this election is about the very survival of our Constitution and our republic.”
Mr. Cruz said he was “honored” to have Mr. Perkins’ endorsement, calling him “a man of incredible principle and faith.”
Mr. Perkins is currently president of the FRC, which promotes socially conservative values and is one of the most influential conservative advocacy groups in the country.
[…]The Texas senator has also been endorsed by Dr. James Dobson, another social conservative leader, and past FRC President Gary Bauer.
Cruz also has the endorsement of Focus on the Family founder James Dobson. Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council are the groups that most informed my views on social issues, like marriage and right to life. They have an evidence-based approach to social issues. It’s much easier to debate these issues if you use their studies and materials. I can only guess that they think that Cruz is the candidate who is most capable of this style in the public square.
Ted Cruz’s achievements
For those looking for a good summary of Ted Cruz’s achievements as a conservative, there was a good article at Legal Insurrection.
It says:
Prior to winning that senate seat with conservative grassroots and TEA Party support and becoming the first Hispanic to serve as a senator from Texas, Cruz was also the first Hispanic—and the longest-serving person in Texas history—to hold the office of Solicitor General of Texas.
Cruz joined the George W. Bush campaign in 1999 as a domestic policy adviser and advised then-candidate and Governor Bush on a wide range of policy and legal matters, including civil justice, criminal justice, constitutional law, immigration, and government reform.
During the Bush administration, Cruz served as associate deputy attorney general at the DOJ and as a policy adviser on the Federal Trade Commission. While at the FTC, Cruz was an avid free-market crusader—an extension of his high school participation in the Houston-based Free Market Education Foundation, a program Cruz entered at the age of 13.
At Princeton, where Cruz obtained his bachelor’s degree in Public Policy and shone as a star debater, he wrote his senior thesis on the separation of powers in which he argued that the Founders provided a means, in the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, of protecting the people from a totalitarian central government.
After graduating with honors from Princeton, Cruz attended Harvard Law School, where he not only served as an editor on both the Harvard Law Review and the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy but was also a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review.
In his role as Solicitor General of Texas, Cruz successfully defended the constitutionality of the Ten Commandments on the Texas capitol grounds, defended the Second Amendment by arguing that the DC handgun ban infringed on the rights of the people to bear arms, and he defended Texas against an attempt to re-open the cases of 51 Mexican nationals, all of whom were convicted of murder in the United States and were on death row.
[…][H]e ably fought the Rubio-Schumer immigration bill, has repeatedly worked to repeal ObamaCare (including a memorable filibuster in the Senate), and has been vocal in calling out even other Republicans as “campaign conservatives.”
Let me tell you how I would like my life to be like. I would like it if I could open the newspaper and see someone articulate and intelligent advocating for the conservative principles that were built into this country at the Founding – federalism, freedom of speech, the rule of law, judicial restraint, limited government, and so on. I would like to see Supreme Court nominees who interpret the Constitution instead of legislating from the bench. I would like to see fewer regulations and a lower tax burden on working individuals and private sector job creators. I would like to see smaller government and the abolition of public sector unions. I would like to see respect for the religious liberty of Bible-believing Christians.
I don’t think we are going to see any of these things if we nominate Donald Trump instead of Ted Cruz.
WINTERY KNIGHT 