The Ricochet Podcast - Live From CPAC: Senator Ted Cruz

Episode Date: February 26, 2015

We’re not doing a Ricochet Podcast today; instead, we’ll be posting short interviews live from CPAC. In this first installment, Jay Nordlinger interviews Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. He discusses Obama’s constitutional violations, relations with Iran, and yes, his presidential aspirations. Source

I'm Jay Nordlinger of National Review and I'm sitting here with the junior senator from the great state of Texas, Ted Cruz. I won't pretend that I don't know Ted and that I don't love Ted. I've known him for years, support him to the hilt, but I'll ask a few questions anyway. Hello, Ted. Jay, it's great to be with you. Jay is an old and dear friend, and I'm always happy to spend time with you. So Republicans have control of the Congress, both chambers, and yet not the presidency. And the presidency, like it or not, we're great believers in the separation of powers

and wonderful American pluralism, blah, blah, blah. But the presidency is the big enchilada. It's hard to get stuff done without it, isn't it? It is very difficult to accomplish meaningful change without the White House. And that is especially true when you have a president who's willing to violate the law and violate the Constitution. But when you have a president like Barack Obama who openly defies federal law, who claims the unilateral authority to alter it at whim, that makes it all the more dangerous. I would note that that is all the more so true

with regard to foreign policy. And as we survey the wreckage and devastation domestically, the wreckage that the lawlessness and abuse of power and usurpation domestically under the Obama administration, what's happened abroad is, if anything, even more perilous because the Obama-Clinton foreign policy of leading from behind, of receding from the world, has meant that enemies of liberty are on the march across the globe. And in Congress, we can do what we can to ask questions. We can do what we can to provide

scrutiny. We can do what we can to try to provide some semblance of sanity to our foreign policy. But at the end of the day, there's only one commander-in-chief. There's only one human being on the face of the planet who can order our armed forces into combat. And with a president who is unwilling to effectively lead, for example, to stand up and destroy ISIS, we will remain for the next 20 months in a time of enormous peril. You think President Obama is a lawbreaker? I think he is a recidivist lawbreaker. And what he is doing is unprecedented. Jonathan Turley, liberal law professor,

used to support President Obama, voted for President Obama, has testified before Congress that President Obama has become the embodiment of the imperial president. Professor Turley explained Barack Obama has become the president Richard Nixon always wished he could be. You made a reference to the Obama-Clinton foreign policy, I think, not Obama-Biden or Obama-something else. Why do you say this? Well, as you might surmise, that was not accidental. In 2016, Hillary Clinton, I think, is likely to be the Democratic nominee. And if she is, she is going to do everything she can to run away from Barack Obama's failed presidency. She is going to disclaim any responsibility for the disaster that is the Obama economy, even though her singular domestic initiative in public life was HillaryCare,

the obvious predecessor for Obamacare. And she's also going to try to run away from the manifest disaster that is President Obama's foreign policy. And in that, I think she cannot do it. She was his Secretary of State from day one. She was charged with formulating and implementing the policy of leading from behind from day one. You know, in her book, she described her greatest achievement as secretary of state as the Russia reset.

And I have to admit, Jay, ironically enough, I probably agree with that. That was devilish. I suspect the people of Ukraine might have a different view. Can we stop Iran from going nuclear? Yes, but this president's unwilling to do so. Ben Rhodes, the president's deputy national security advisor, said at the beginning of the

second term that an Iranian nuclear deal would be the Obamacare of the second term. What we are doing is foolhardy and reckless. I think the prospect of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons capability is the single gravest national security threat facing this country. And right now, the Obama administration

is negotiating with Iran in a way that is facilitating and accelerating their gallop towards acquiring nuclear weapons capability. And I believe we are repeating the mistakes of the Clinton administration with respect to North Korea. In the 1990s, the Clinton administration led the world in relaxing sanctions against North Korea. Billions of dollars flowed into North Korea, and they used that money to develop a nuclear weapon. We're doing the same thing. In fact, ironically, astonishingly, tellingly. The Obama administration went and recruited Wendy Sherman, the diplomat who led the failed North Korea deal, to be our lead negotiator with Iran.

They literally found the one person on earth who's already screwed this up once and brought her back to cut the same lousy deal. Well, that's only poetic. And with Iran, the stakes are qualitatively worse. Both Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un were and are radical, extreme, unpredictable. But they're fundamentally megalomaniacal narcissists, which means some degree of rational deterrence is possible.

Both father and son understood if they ever used nuclear weapons, that day their regime would end. The danger with Iran is they are led by radical religious theocrats. Khomeini and the mullahs embrace death and suicide. And I think the odds are unacceptably high that if Iran acquires a nuclear weapon,

that it would use that nuclear weapon in the skies of Tel Aviv or New York or Los Angeles. Let's – this is quite a pivot. Let's talk grubby domestic politics. Indeed. You're a hit in Texas, but can you play in Peoria and our kind of politics play elsewhere? You know, that is, I think, an important question, and it is a subset of a broader question that conservatives all across this country are asking, which is how do we win? The most important political question is very simple. How do we win in November 2016? Because I think there is an urgency to politics that, frankly, we've never seen.

It is now or never. I don't think we've reached the point of no return yet, but we are close. Four or eight more years of this, and, Jay, we risk losing the greatest country in the history of the world. So how do we win? There are a lot of voices in Washington, a lot of consultants in Washington who keep running national campaigns. They keep losing.

And then they keep coming back to donors and conservatives saying, support us again to go make the same mistakes again and go lose again. Forty years ago, at this gathering at CPAC, President Reagan stood up and addressed this very same question. And he said, how do you win? We paint in bold colors, not pale pastels. What the Washington consultants believe is that you win by running to the mushy middle, by blurring the distinctions. Now, I understand that theory. And in the abstract, you could understand how someone

could think that theory would make sense. But we've tested it. We keep trying it over and over and over again. And every time we do it, we lose. If we nominate another candidate in the mold of a Bob Dole or a John McCain or a Mitt Romney, and let me be clear, all three of those are good, honorable men. They're patriots. They love their country. But what they did didn't work. It was a failed electoral strategy. And if we go do it again,

the same voters who stayed home in 2008 and 2012, the same millions of conservatives who stayed home will stay home in 2016. And Hillary Clinton is the next president. How do we win in 2016? We draw a line in the sand. We stand and fight for working men and women. We run a populist campaign that stands with the people against Washington, that stands with the people against the bipartisan corruption in Washington, career politicians in both parties. And, you know, your question about Peoria,

I'll tell you one of the things that's most striking as I travel the country. The people who most frequently stop me are valets and bellhops, waiters and waitresses, taxi cab drivers, the conductor on Amtrak. And over and over again, they say the same thing. I remember there was one fellow, an African-American gentleman parking cars outside of a hotel in New York. He was an immigrant from Haiti in his 60s. He stopped me, grabbed me by the shoulders. He looked me in the eyes.

He said, thank you for fighting for me. Nobody else is fighting for me. Look, the working men and women of America are getting screwed right now. The rich and powerful, those who walk the corridors of power in the Obama administration, they're getting fat and happy. Ted, deal with this. You're too young. You're too green. You need more seasoning before national leadership.

Well, you know, it's interesting. If you look at history as a guide, since World War II, the Democrats have elected to the presidency four different men who did not achieve the presidency because their predecessor died or resigned. The average age of those four men was 47. John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama. 47 was the average age since World War II. Now, it's true, Republicans have had a habit of sometimes nominating septuagenarians who've been around a long, long time. And it hadn't proven a very good electoral strategy.

You know, what I would suggest on the question of age and on the question of, you know, let's wrap it into a related question that gets rolled in, which is this cycle a lot of people are talking about. We need a governor. We need a governor, not a senator. That's a popular talking point. On the latter point, I'll point out that that is an historically flexible argument. In 1980, when the strong conservative candidate was Ronald Reagan, a governor, none of those Washington voices said we need a governor. And then we needed a congressman named George Herbert Walker Bush. That's what we needed then. In 2008, when the moderate choice was John McCain, no one then said we need a governor. Everyone then said, oh, we need the senator. And yet this cycle, the voices in Washington see their champions in the governor's offices, and suddenly all of those voices have decided what

they need a governor. Look, the reality is about half the presidents we've been elected have been governors, about half have been senators. There have been governors who were fantastic presidents. There have been governors who were horrible presidents. Jimmy Carter was a governor and was a manifest disaster. In fact, is the president most like Barack Obama. In my view, what's not particularly relevant is what specific job the person's held, governor or senator, nor is it particularly relevant whether they're 45 or 55 or 65. What is relevant is are they standing up and leading? And one of the things that I'm going to share today at CPAC is how do we differentiate? You know, there are some wonderful speakers here. that I'm going to share today at CPAC is how do we differentiate? You know, there are some wonderful speakers here.

In 2016, we're going to have some fantastic candidates, some people that are inspirational, that make your heart flutter. How do we differentiate? And we've all seen that every year, candidates come along and they say, I'm the most conservative guy who ever lived. Who did, Lee, I'm conservative?

I promise you there's not a person that's going to stand on that stage out there at CPAC and say, I'm a squishy moderate who'll stand for nothing. Every one of them will claim they are a rock-ribbed conservative. What we need to ask every one of them is don't tell me, show me. Show me where you've stood up and fought. So the test I would suggest for all of us as conservatives to ask of every candidate is show me. If you say you oppose Obamacare, show me where you've stood up and fought against it. If you say you oppose the debt that's bankrupting our kids and the debt ceiling, show me where you've stood up to fight it. If you say you oppose President Obama's illegal and unconstitutional executive amnesty, show me where you've stood up and fought it.

If you say you support the First Amendment, free speech, religious liberty, show me where you've stood up and fought it. If you say you support the First Amendment, free speech, religious liberty, show me where you fought to defend it. If you say you stand with the nation of Israel, show me where you've actually stood up and fought. If you say that you stand against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities, show me where you've stood up and fought. That's the test we ought to apply. And I think that's the test in 2016 Republican primary voters are going to apply. We have time for one more question, and I have about 100. I think I'll ask this.

You're pro-life or anti-abortion. Why? Because every human life is a gift from God. Jay, as you know, Heidi and I, we have two little girls Caroline and Catherine they are the joys of our lives I still remember holding my breath

as I saw the first sonogram of Caroline inside her mommy I still remember when Caroline was two and a half she had this blanket called called B Bink. It's a nasty little thing. She chewed on it constantly. It was practically alive. It, she dragged it everywhere. It was filthy no matter how many times you washed it. And I remember at two and a half, Caroline coming up to my wife Heidi's tummy and talking to her little baby

sister, Catherine, who was still in the womb. And even at two and a half, Caroline knew that she wasn't talking to a lump of flesh, that she was talking to her baby sister, that she was talking to a precious baby girl made in the image of God. And Caroline held up bink to Heidi's stomach and said, Catherine, want to chew on bink? And she was offering her baby sister the most precious thing she had in the world. We need to move to a society where we protect, where we celebrate human life

from conception until natural birth every life is valuable every life is precious in every society throughout history that has devalued life that has failed to stand up and protect the most vulnerable

that has inevitably led to the devaluation of the values of the strength of the society. Ladies and gentlemen, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. Thank you. Thank you, Jay. Ricochet. Join the conversation.