News & Politics

The father of 2016 Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz says they both get ‘energized’ by political attacks and he believes motivated Christian voters will be the deciding factor in this campaign.

In a wide-ranging interview, Rafael Cruz also explained his son’s path to becoming a staunch conservative and what separates the senator from his GOP rivals.

Mr. Cruz  is an ordained minister and is the author of “A Time for Action: Empowering the Faithful to Reclaim America.”

Leading up to Saturday’s South Carolina primary, the rhetoric got very heated among the the three most prominent candidates.  Donald Trump called Cruz a “total liar” and threatened to bring a defamation lawsuit over a Cruz ad showing 1999 interview in which Trump calls himself “very pro-choice.”  Trump insists that does not represent his current opinion.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has also labeled Cruz a liar for misrepresenting both of their positions on immigration in recent years, on social issues and for not coming clean on an obviously doctored photo showing Rubio and President Obama shaking hands, among other issues.

Former President George H.W. Bush said it was much tougher to watch his sons endure political attacks than to go through them himself, but Rafael Cruz loves it.

“Both Ted and I get energized by the attacks,” said Cruz.  “If you’re not making an impact, nobody’s going to attack you.  They are attacking because he is making a difference and because they fear him.”

He sees the scorn of both parties aimed at his son and they also see that as a badge of honor.

“The reason why you see the Republican establishment so much against my son is because my son is against preserving the status quo, against what he calls the ‘Washington Cartel,’ corrupt career politicians in both parties,” said Cruz.

And Cruz says the more nasty the label opponents throw at his son, the Cruz team knows they’re on the right path.

“He has conducted a campaign of absolute integrity.  Unfortunately, you hear a couple of politicians talking about lies and lies and lies.  When they claim lies, it’s because Ted is pointing out things in their campaign that they don’t want to come to the forefront, so they deflect,” said Cruz.

In analysis that echoes what Sen. Cruz frequently says on the campaign trail, his father says some political figures talk the talk and others walk the walk.

“Don’t listen to what these candidates say.  Look at what they do and what they have done.  If they tell you they’re pro-life but they’ve been promoting abortion for decades, don’t believe them,” said Cruz, in a reference to Trump.

“If they tell you they are against amnesty but they have been promoting amnesty for years, don’t believe them,” said Cruz, alluding to Rubio.

Protecting the traditional family and religious freedom are among the highest priorities for Mr. Cruz.  He says the reaction among GOP candidates after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage in 2015, should serve as a stark contrast.

“When the June 26th decision came out of the Supreme Court, everyone on that stage except Ted Cruz said, ‘It’s the law of the land.  Let’s move on.’  Ted was the only one who said, ‘No, it’s not the law of the land.  This is an unconstitutional, unlawful decision,'” said Cruz.

Speaking of the high court, the elder Cruz also believes his son is the best candidate to trust to pick conservative justices for the high court.

“With one more liberal justice on the Supreme Court, it will take 30 years to correct that mistake.  A lot of our freedoms will disappear with five liberals on the Supreme Court,” said Cruz.

He believes his son has experience no else in the race can match on this front, including clerking for the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist and arguing nine cases before the justices.

Ted Cruz is only 45 years old, but his father says the senator has been immersed in conservative thought since he was a small boy, thanks in large part to Rafael Cruz being very active in the 1980 campaign through a group known as the Religious Roundtable.

“When Ted was nine years old, every day for a year, we talked around the dinner table as to why we had to get rid of this socialist progressive, Jimmy Carter, and replace him with a constitutional conservative like Ronald Reagan.  So he got a dose of conservative politics from a Christian worldview every day for a year when he was nine years old,” said Cruz.

From there, the young Ted Cruz immersed himself in the writings of Adam Smith, John Locke, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and others.  When he turned 13, the future senator was chosen for a prestigious project for the Free Enterprise Institute.

“This organization created a group of five kids.  They called them the ‘Constitutional Corroborators.’  Ted was one of those five.  They hired a memory expert and taught these five kids to memorize the U.S. Constitution,” said Cruz.

“During the next four years, my son, Ted, gave approximately 80 speeches on free market economics and the Constitution,” said Cruz.

Rafael Cruz says his son was passionate as a teenager about the founding principles of limited government, the rule of law and free markets.  He says Sen. Cruz has that same “fire in his bones.”

Ted Cruz won in Iowa and finished in a better-than-expected third place in New Hampshire.  But the road ahead looks challenging as Trump holds commanding leads in many of the upcoming states.

His father is confident the votes will be there for his son when it matters.

“The body of Christ if going to rise up.  Believers are coalescing around Ted Cruz.  I think the people of God realize that we need a man of faith, a man of integrity and that you can trust his word,” said Cruz.

“So I encourage each and every one of your listeners to stand behind Ted Cruz and let’s together again make America that shining city on a hill to the glory of God,” said Cruz.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cross their fingers and hope that the South Carolina primary will lead to fewer GOP candidates going forward.  They also slam two major school districts in Northern Virginia that are cancelling school on Super Tuesday to avoid congestion at polling places, but we explain why it’s good for kids to be there on Election Day.  And we wade into the Pope vs. Trump debate.

In order to win a sixth term in the U.S. Senate, John McCain faces the gauntlet of battling a feisty conservative challenger just to get to a November showdown with the Democrats’ top recruit for the race.

McCain, who will turn 80 the day before the Aug. 30 primary, was first elected in 1986.  But while he is among the best known senators and a one-time Republican presidential nominee, the senator may no longer be the toast of his own constituents.

“Arizona deserves to have a Republican senator who represents their values.  We aren’t getting that right now,” said Dr. Kelli Ward, an osteopathic physician and a former Arizona state senator, who says the disgust voters are expressing for Washington on the presidential campaign trail is also palpable in her state.

“They’re looking to change the status quo in Washington, D.C.  Truly the only way we can do that is by changing the people we send there.  We can’t keep sending the same people back and expect a different result,” said Ward.

The 47-year-old Ward won a special election to the state senate in 2012.  She won re-election unopposed in 2014, but resigned the seat in December to focus on the U.S. Senate race.

She says the list of reasons McCain needs to be retired is long and clear.

“Just in the last few years, he voted for tax hikes, he voted for bailouts, he voted for massive new spending.  He voted for amnesty.  He voted for liberal judges.  That’s on everyone’s mind right now.  He mocked the conservatives who wanted to stop Obamacare, calling Sen. Cruz, Sen. Paul and Sen. Lee ‘wacko birds.’  He’s voted 15 times to increase the debt ceiling,” said Ward.

She wasn’t done.

“He’s supported the Democrats’ efforts to infringe on our second amendment rights.  He’s been willing to bend the Constitution regarding our fourth amendment privacy rights.  The list goes on and on and on,” she said.

How would Ward be different?

“I’m a small government Republican.  I want smaller government, lower taxes, less regulation, a strong defense and a strong military.  I want personal responsibility across the board and I want us to get back to following our Constitution,” said Ward.

Ward says her brief time in the state senate is proof that she’s not just talk on these issues.

“Last year I was able to get 19 bills signed into law, common sense bills that did shrink the size of government, that lowered our taxes, that took the heavy hand of government off the heads of small businesses and let them thrive,” said Ward.

“I worked on welfare reform, health care reform, education reform, all of those things I want to take to Washington.  I also stood up to my party at times and to the executive branch at other times,” said Ward.

She offered a recent example of how she rebuffed GOP Gov. Doug Ducey.

“He sent me some nominees for the state board of education when I was the education chair.  They were unacceptable to me and to the people I represented because they were pro-Common Core,” said Ward, vowing to bring that same level of scrutiny to federal nominations if elected to the U.S. Senate.

Whether Ward has a decent shot of beating McCain depends upon which poll you look at.  Late last summer, a Gravis Marketing survey showed Ward leading McCain 45-36 percent and both of them ahead of likely Democratic nominee, Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick.  In that poll, McCain led Kirkpatrick 48-35 percent, while Ward held a 43-38 percent edge.

However, a new Rocky Mountain Poll has McCain with a commanding 47-11 lead over Ward.  It also shows him in a statistical dead heat with Kirkpatrick with just a 38-37 margin.  The Rocky Mountain Poll did not ask about a potential Ward-Kirkpatrick match-up.

Many more polls will emerge in the coming months to flesh out the state of the race.  For her part, Ward believes she presents unique problems for McCain.

“Senator McCain has never faced a well-educated, well-spoken, down-to-earth, Constitution-loving woman.  It is going to be very difficult for him, especially in this time of upset with career politicians and the political elite ruling over us, rather than allowing us to have government of, by, and for the people,” said Ward.

But this is not just about unseating McCain.  Ward is also confident she could keep the seat in GOP hands if she advances to face Kirkpatrick in November.

“She votes with Barack Obama nearly 100 percent of the time.  Arizona is still a conservative state, so I don’t think Ann Kirkpatrick will fare very well against me, a constitutional female,” said Ward.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review welcome two national polls showing the public evenly divided on whether the Senate should confirm a Supreme Court justice this year.  They also rip Obama for traveling to Cuba next month to celebrate ties with the Castro regime, which still brutalizes political opponents.  And they discuss President Obama’s decision to pay respects to Justice Antonin Scalia at the Supreme Court on Friday but not attend Scalia’s funeral on Saturday.

The father of presidential hopeful Ted Cruz says our most fundamental freedoms are under assault and pastors need to engage believers to fight for our most cherished rights, including the freedom to preach the gospel.

Rafael Cruz, an ordained minister, is also author of “A Time for Action: Empowering the Faithful to Reclaim America.”

The story of the elder Cruz is one that his son has told many times on the campaign trail: how he escaped from Batista-ruled Cuba in the 1950’s with just $100 and the clothes on his back and worked as a dishwasher until he could go to school and start a better job.

He says even as a teenager, he knew America was a “bastion of freedom.”

“Horatio Alger stories were things that everybody read.  They were very inspirational because in many countries of the world those things are impossible.  To think that anyone could achieve their dreams is not something that people in the majority of countries of the world see as remotely possible,” said Cruz.

Since he knows what life is like without the freedoms we enjoy, Cruz says it is vital that Americans understand they are at risk.

“Too many people in America think that we could never lose our freedoms.  The reality is we’re losing our freedoms more and more every day.  I must have told my son a dozen times when he was a kid, ‘You know, Ted, when I lost my freedom in Cuba, I had a place to come to.  If we lose our freedoms here, where are we going to go?'” said Cruz.

Which freedoms are under assault?  Cruz starts with the Obama approach to the second amendment.

“Every time there is any kind of massacre or any kind of a shooting, immediately the first thing that comes out of their mouths is gun control.  We saw it after Newtown.  We saw it after San Bernardino.  The second amendment right to keep and bear arms is to protect us from excesses by the government,” said Cruz.

He says the history of gun control in authoritarian regimes is a bloody and tragic tale.

“You look at every tin horn dictator, whether it was Stalin or Mao or Pol Pot or Castro, every time a dictator has taken the guns from the population, then they have used the guns against the population,” said Cruz.

Another major concern for Cruz is the left’s use of the phrase “freedom of worship.”

“It sounds okay but we need to realize that freedom of worship is not the same as freedom of religion.  The way socialists or communists define worship is that’s what you do inside a house of worship,” said Cruz.

He says history is a stark guide on this issue too.

“In Cuba and other communist countries, you have freedom of worship.  You can worship inside the four walls of a church.  You can even preach the gospel.  You have spies there, but you can do it inside the four walls of the church.  If you do it out on the street, you’re put in jail,” said Cruz.

He says to pay close attention because slick language can lead to repressive policies.

“When they replace ‘freedom of religion’ with ‘freedom of worship,’ they’re basically saying you keep your religion inside your church.  But once you step out the door, you’re coming into a 100 percent secular country,” said Cruz.

As a result, Cruz says Christians and all people of faith need to stand up to defend their rights and pastors need to lead the way.

“It is time they become biblically correct instead of politically correct,” said Cruz.

He point to a study from Barna Group, showing 90 percent of pastors believe the Bible addresses all of the problems addressing society but only 10 percent say they preach on those things.

“We can’t divorce ourselves from what’s happening in the civic society.  If we do not bring the moral fiber and the moral character of America to the forefront, America’s going to crumble,” said Cruz.

Some pastors don’t want to get mixed up in the sordid arena of politics, while others insist their mission is not to influence elections but to build believers to the glory of God and to reach unbelievers with the gospel of Christ.

While he applauds the latter stand in part, Cruz says those pastors need to consider the impact of losing core freedoms.

“For pastors that say, ‘My greatest responsibility is to preach the gospel,’ I agree with that.  But the second greatest responsibility is to preserve the freedom to do the most important thing.  Our freedoms are getting to the point if we do not have a change of course, it will become impossible to preach the gospel,” said Cruz.

He says there is historic evidence to back up his position, nothing that the preaching of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield in the Great Awakening heavily influenced the American founders decades later.  He also points out that colonial preachers were railing against the very same grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence as much as a decade earlier.

Cruz says believers are looking to pastors to provide guidance and will look elsewhere if they don’t get it from the pulpit.

He says if pastors and believers cede the political stage to those hostile towards them, the eradication of rights will come as no surprise.

“If those people are not running for office, are not even voting, what is left?  What is left is those who trample those principles are voting for those who trample those principles.  So we get what we deserve,” said Cruz.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy watching President Obama squirm as he demands Senate consideration for his eventual Supreme Court nominee but tried to filibuster Samuel Alito back in 2006.  They also like a new poll showing Nevada to be  a dead heat between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.  And they discuss the new book from liberal commentator Bill Press that calls President Obama a disappointment and says Obamacare and the stimulus were not successes.

A former law clerk for the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia remembers his friend and boss as legally brilliant, unfailingly gracious and a man who will be regarded as one of the very best justices in U.S. history.

“I think on any list of the top five, he’s on the list,” said Ethics and Public Policy Center President Ed Whelan, who clerked for Scalia during the 1991-92 court session.  “People may have different lists depending on what their criteria are, but in terms of brilliant legal analysis, Justice Scalia ranks right at the top.”

Scalia was nominated for the high court by President Ronald Reagan in 1986 and confirmed 98-0 by the U.S. Senate.  He served more than 29 years on the Supreme Court and was the longest-serving among the nine justices at the time of his death on Saturday.

In interview after interview, Scalia referred to himself as a textualist and an originalist.  And what exactly is a textualist?

“Textualism is so common sense that it might puzzle people that there could be anything else.  What a textualist does is look at the text of the law to determine what the law means,” said Whelan.

“The judge’s obligation is to construe the meaning of a legal provision as it was understood at the time it was adopted, focusing on text and of course context too.  This isn’t hyper-literalism.  We look to the actual law and not some presumed intent that we can concoct to lie behind the law,” said Whelan.

While Whelan says textualism should seem like common sense, Scalia’s approach actually seems radical after decades of liberals pushing their agenda through the courts.

“Somehow in the 1950’s and 1960’s and 1970’s the left, not liking what the law actually said because it didn’t sufficiently promote it’s own agenda, started reading all sorts of purposes into the law and adopted an approach that looked heavily to legislative history so it could manipulate the law to reach whatever result it wanted,” said Whelan.

As Scalia evaluated laws and the Constitution to determine which way to vote on a given case, Whelan says the justice would engage his clerks in a vigorous, “nerve-wracking” discussion to test their skills and sharpen his arguments.

“We learned on that he loved vigorous debate.  He really wanted to make sure he got things right and the only way to do that was to test them.  Some of that was done orally.  A lot, obviously, was done in writing,” said Whelan.

He was also fascinated watching Scalia wrestle towards and reach his conclusion on a case.

“You could just see him as he worked his way through problems.  You could see the muscles of his face move as his brain exercised.  And then the wonderful ‘a ha’ moment when he reached clarity on a difficult legal issue,” said Whelan.

Once Scalia reached an opinion, he often expressed it with far more color than justices before or since.  Scalia was known to use colorful phrases or stinging rebukes to his colleagues on the other side of the ruling.

“He loved language.  He particularly loved using figures of speech or phrases that would really distill or capture exactly the point he was making.  His colorful language isn’t just excess but it really focuses the mind on exactly what he’s saying,” said Whelan.

Whelan says that approach often confounded those embracing the opposing opinion.

“You read so many of his dissents and look back and see, ‘What did the majority have to say in response to that?’  You discover it said nothing because it had nothing to say and it ended up being the brute power of five justices, or more, deciding a case without engaging his counter-arguments.  That was very frustrating at times but he was writing for the ages,” said Whelan.

As a result, Whelan says Scalia’s writings will be textbook material for generations of students.

“Generations from now, if we’re lucky to have this republic survive that long, so long as people are reading Supreme Court decisions, they will savor Justice Scalia’s opinions, both his majority opinions and his dissents,” said Whelan.

And which cases over nearly 30 years stand out strongest for Scalia?  Whelan cited three, starting with a landmark second amendment case.

“The majority opinion in the second amendment case in 2008 in District of Columbia v. Heller is a model of originalism.  Justice Scalia got a majority on board for his originalist approach there.  Of course, some of them have wandered off on other cases when they haven’t wanted to go where originalism would take them.  [But this was] a very very powerful reading of the second amendment,” said Whelan.

Two dissents also stand out to Whelan, including Morrison v. Olson in 1988, which dealt with the independent counsel statute.

“He was alone in dissent, saying that that statute violated separation of powers.  Years later, virtually everyone agrees with the wisdom of his dissent,” said Whelan.

The third case referenced by Whelan is Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a critical abortion case decided while Whelan clerked for Scalia in which the court effectively upheld it’s rulings in the 1970’s.

“He said this is a matter that the Constitution leaves to the political processes to decide through the democratic processes in each state.  By taking this away from the people, by making this judicial power grab, you are corrupting the whole political process and extending the agony here,” said Whelan.

Whelan says Scalia has been proven right.

“Justice (Anthony) Kennedy and the others in the majority pretended that they were resolving the issue for good.  I think history has already shown that judicial power grab hasn’t silenced the defense of the unborn and it won’t.  He’s been proven right although the majority hasn’t yet accepted his wisdom,” said Whelan.

In recent days, scores of personal stories have emerged about how Scalia easily made friends from across the ideological spectrum, was big-hearted and unfailingly kind.  That was certainly Whelan’s experience.

“Sorry I’m pausing.  It’s a question that causes me to reflect on his many kindnesses to me,” said Whelan, fighting back tears.  “He was present at my wedding.  I’m very grateful for that.  He was just a generous mentor throughout my career.”

“Whenever I needed sage advice, he was there.  I’m just deeply grateful to him,” said Whelan.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review enjoy watching Hillary Clinton lower expectations in Nevada and feud with Harry Reid.  They also laugh as Sen. Chuck Schumer claims this Supreme Court vacancy is a totally different situation than when he urged Democrats to block any nominees from George W. Bush in the final 18 months of his presidency.  And they discuss the latest sordid tale involving former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer and are relieved that Spitzer is not running for president right now – which he likely would be if not caught up in his original sex scandal.

The latest round of embarrassing federal data breaches struck the very agencies charged with protecting us, evidence one leading member of Congress believes is proof that throwing money at a problem doesn’t solve much unless there’s accountability to go with it.

Last week, the personal data of some 20,000 FBI employees and more than 9,000 Department of Homeland Security workers was released.

Days later the story took on additional embarrassment when authorities arrested the perpetrator, a 16-year-old boy in Great Britain.  The teen said he gained access to the information through weak security in the Department of Justice email system.

House Oversight and Government Reform Subcommittee on Government Operations Chairman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., says this case offers another sobering national security reminder.

“It shows two things.  One is that no agency is immune from the attacks.  But, more specifically, in spite of spending some $80 billion a year in IT provisions, that that money is not necessarily directed towards not only the most up-to-date encryption but cyber defenses,” said Meadows.

As the details of the attacks on the FBI and Homeland Security emerged, President Obama spelled out his prescription for shoring up U.S. cyber security efforts.

“I’m announcing our new Cybersecurity National Action Plan, backed by my proposal to increase federal cybersecurity funding by more than a third, to over $19 billion. This plan will address both short-term and long-term threats, with the goal of providing every American a basic level of online security,” wrote Obama in the Wall Street Journal.

“First, I’m proposing a $3 billion fund to kick-start an overhaul of federal computer systems. It is no secret that too often government IT is like an Atari game in an Xbox world. The Social Security Administration uses systems and code from the 1960s. No successful business could operate this way,” he added.

Meadows agrees that U.S. infrastructure is badly in need up an upgrade and that will cost money, but he says just spending more money isn’t going to solve the problem.

“Some $80 billion is spent annually on IT.  That doesn’t include some of those offline budget items that some would suggest is another 20 billion.  A hundred billion spent and yet what we’re seeing is the resources that could be deployed have not been,” said Meadows.

“We found that tools were available for use yet weren’t turned on,” said Meadows, who will be holding hearings on the subject soon.  “It’s time that we not only get serious about it but we have to be more prudent in where we put our resources.”

Meadows believes the president is serious about beefing up our cyber defenses but two major problems are impeding any progress.  The first is simply the realities of Washington.

“Obviously, bureaucracy and politics get in the way of almost everything in Washington, D.C.  So to suggest that did not have a role would be disingenuous,” said Meadows.

But he says there are some more deliberate sticks in the mud too.

“Where we have a real breakdown is with some of our CIO’s, our chief information officers,” said Meadows, noting he was particularly unimpressed with testimony following the massive breach at the Office of Personnel Management in 2015.

He says across the government the performance levels are very poor.

“We give them a grade and most agencies got an ‘F’ initially.  So we’re not only going to be tracking this on a quarterly basis but holding hearings every sixth months to make sure that we make progress,” said Meadows.

The congressman says achieving results all comes down to a simple concept.

“It’s really more accountability from an oversight standpoint, but also making sure those doing a good job are rewarded and those who don’t actually are held accountable,” said Meadows.

And improving competence and performance, says Meadows, starts with appreciating the scope of the threat.

“My trouble with so much of this is that the attacks continue to come on a daily and hourly and minute-by-minute basis.  Yet, what we’re doing is assuming we’re immune to those attacks from our foreign enemies,” said Meadows.

If the federal government, at all levels, truly committed to addressing the cyber threat, Meadows believes it wouldn’t take long to put us on much more solid footing.

“There’s enough, not only financial resources, but commitment there that we could see drastic improvement in a very short window, six to nine months,” said Meadows.

Meadows says the FBI and Homeland Security breaches only intensify an existing commitment from congressional Republicans to protect the American people and their information.

“Chairman (Jason) Chaffetz and myself are committed, both at the subcommittee level and the full committee, to continue to keep the pressure on until we get this problem resolved so that all Americans and our federal records can rest assured that we’re being vigilant about it,” said Meadows.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review mourn the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and remember him as faithful to the Constitution, a towering intellect and a larger than life personality.  They also shake our heads as the Republican front-runner uses the latest debate to say Planned Parenthood does wonderful things for women – except for the abortions – and that 9/11 was George W. Bush’s fault and that he lied to get us into the Iraq War.  And they express disgust at the left’s horrific reaction to Scalia’s death and the instinct by some on the right to conclude that Scalia’s death was the result of foul play.