Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz served up a rousing battle cry to open this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, calling for conservatives to "bring back morning in America" by ending Washington "corruption" and Obamacare.
"We need to end the corruption. We need to eliminate corporate welfare and crony capitalism," said the tea party favorite, outlining his plan for restoring America to an enthusiastic CPAC audience Thursday. "We need to tell the truth. The truth is, Washington is corrupt."
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The nation's capital is full of a "corrupt and interlocking system of lobbyists and lawyers who are suckling off of Washington, and people in Washington and Wall Street are making a great deal of money," Cruz said.
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"How do we win elections in the contrast between Washington and the American people? We stand with the American people."
Cruz drew perhaps his largest cheers when he called for "repealing every single word of Obamacare," which he complained is a "massive wealth transfer" from the nation's young adults to the rest of the country. Further, he insisted that his push against Obamacare that led to the federal government's shutdown last fall was worth it.
He also called to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and adopt a flat tax that is "simple enough for Americans to fill out on a post card."
In addition, he said, President Barack Obama's policies are destroying the nation's young people.
"If you were to sit down and hammer the living daylights out of young people, you couldn’t do better than the Obama administration," Cruz said.
"We need to stop bankrupting our country,” he said. “What we’re doing to our kids and grandkids is morally wrong. If we don’t change course, they will be left working to pay off the debts their deadbeat parents and grandparents stuck them with."
"I'm going to suggest a radical suggestion to you. Hope and change," he said.
The Texas freshman senator, who is often mentioned as a potential 2016 presidential contender, called for more U.S. energy production, which would allow the nation to stand up against threats from "petro-tyrants like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin."
"You want to lose elections, stand for nothing," he told the CPAC crowd, saying that in recent years the GOP was only successful in 2010, when tea party supporters rallied against Obamacare. "We said we stand unequivocally against Obamacare... we won a historic tidal wave come the election."
"We will bring back morning in America," Cruz said. "That's why we're here and that's the future for the young and everybody else in this country."
Cruz also joked about some recent presidential candidates who were considered moderate and ended up losing their elections.
"Of course all of us remember President Dole and President McCain and President Romney,” he said.
But he praised former President Ronald Reagan and former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the father of Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who could be one of Cruz's rivals in 2016.
He said both Reagan and the elder Paul were not young men, but they energized young people when they "painted a bold inspiring picture of America of how we can all do better."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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