Cruz draws crowd, hammers Obama, Clinton, Iran pact
More than 400 cheer GOP hopeful at Columbus church
By TIM CHITWOOD
tchitwood@ledger-enquirer.com
More than 400 people packed Solid Rock Church Saturday night in Columbus as Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz hammered Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and a proposed nuclear pact with Iran.
"To make perfectly clear, if you elect Hillary Clinton, Iran will acquire a nuclear weapon," Cruz said as some in the audience shouted their agreement. "And if I am elected president, under no circumstances will a nation led by a theocratic zealot who chants 'Death to America' be allowed ever to acquire a nuclear weapon."
If sanctions against Iran are lifted as part of a nuclear weapons agreement, millions of dollars will flow through the country to radical Islamic terrorists, Cruz said.
"It is an incredible blessing that Iran has not yet acquired nuclear weapons. It is only because America has been cutting off the financial resources, cutting off the technology. Israel has been incredibly effective at engaging in sabotage," the candidate said, drawing laughter and applause.
The nuclear deal, negotiated by Secretary of State John Kerry, will only "accelerate" Iran's acquiring atomic weapons, and "a nuclear Iran is the single greatest national security threat to America," he said.
He compared the United States today to the late 1970s, when former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter was president.
"I think the parallels between Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter are uncanny," Cruz said. "The same failed economic policies; the same misery, stagnation and malaise; the same feckless and naïve foreign policy -- in fact the very same countries, Russia and Iran, openly laughing at and mocking the president of the United States."
He again drew laughter when he added, "You know, the one person in America thrilled with the job Barack Obama's doing is Jimmy Carter."
Comparing the 1970s to today gives him hope, he said, because of the "Reagan Revolution" that followed Carter's presidency.
"It awakened a grassroots movement that began sweeping this country: Millions of men and women came together and became the Reagan Revolution, and it didn't come from Washington. Washington despised Ronald Reagan," said Cruz, amusing the crowd again by adding, "If you see a politician that Washington embraces, run and hide!"
Though a U.S. senator from Texas, he posited himself as a renegade who from the inside sees the government is on the brink of disaster.
"If you think it's fundamentally broken, that there is a bipartisan corruption, that government grows and grows and grows and debt grows and grows and grows and our liberties keep receding, if you think we need to bring power out of Washington and bring it back to 'we the people,' then that's what this campaign is all about," he said to cheers.
He said he worries what kind of nation his daughters, age 7 and 4, will inherit, and he talked about his father, who fled Cuba after he was imprisoned and tortured at age 17. He traveled to Austin, Texas, where he got a job washing dishes for 50 cents an hour.
"He worked seven days a week, and started a small business," Cruz said of his father, who's now a minister.
"When I was a kid, my dad used to say to me over and over again, 'When we faced oppression in Cuba, I had a place to flee to, but when we lose our freedom here, where do we go?' We are here because we will not go quietly into the night. We will not give up this nation. We will stand for faith. We will stand for the Constitution. We will stand for liberty, and together we will restore that shining city on a hill that is the United States of America."
This story was originally published August 8, 2015 at 10:45 PM with the headline "Cruz draws crowd, hammers Obama, Clinton, Iran pact ."