At Saturday’s Family Leadership Summit in Iowa, Texas Senator and Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz defended his Obamacare filibuster and the government shutdown, while criticizing “about every graybeard in Washington” who critiqued him during the shutdown.
Cruz said of the shutdown, “Just about every Republican in Congress campaigned saying they would do everything humanly possible to stop Obamacare. When I promised 27 million Texans that I meant it, and I am proud of standing and fighting to honor that promise.”
He added, “in the midst of that fight to defund Obamacare, just about every graybeard in Washington went on television and said, ‘This is a disaster. You are dooming the Republican Party. As a result of you and Mike Lee fighting to stop this law, Harry Reid’s going to be reelected. Republicans are going to get killed in the 2014 election.’ Well, you know, a funny thing happened on the way to the election booth. Now, I guarantee you, if that had happened, if we’d gotten clobbered in the 2014 election, every Republican greybeard would have gone on television and said, ‘You see? It’s Cruz’s fault we got killed.’ But, instead, not only did we not get killed, we won an historic tidal wave victory, the biggest majority in the house since the 1920’s. … And the number one issue in the country, if you look at the ads and messages Republicans used, the number one issue was Obamacare. I think mobilizing and energizing millions of conservatives against the train wreck that is Obamacare was a major victory to winning the Senate in 2014. ”
Cruz concluded, “2016 is going to be a referendum on repealing Obamacare. And if I am elected president in 2017, a Republican president is going to sign legislation repealing every word of that failed law.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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