Ted Cruz rouses overflow crowd in Trussville for campaign rally; says Alabama 'going to play a c
Howard Koplowitz | hkoplowitz@al.com
Trussville, AL
He didn't watch last night's Democratic debate, but Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said he didn't need to tune in to CNN to figure his time was better spent catching "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," gushing to the media about how "awesome" the latest installment of the movie franchise was.
"I'm glad somebody was watching," Cruz joked during a press gaggle in Trussville shortly before he took the stage at the Trussville Civic Center for a campaign rally that was filled with standing ovations as the 2016 Republican presidential candidate got into his stump speech. "I actually went to watch last night the opening of "Star Wars," which frankly was a reality far more realistic than whatever was said in the Democratic debate."
The Texas senator, who is a big movie buff and recalled going with his father to see the earlier Star Wars films, said "The Force Awakens" was "awesome." But there was a part of the film that Cruz said didn't appeal to him as a Star Wars fan.
"I'm not going to spoil what it is but it was highly traumatic," he said.
Cruz didn't get into whether he thought Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton's suggestion that ISIS was using Donald Trump's rhetoric on Muslims as a recruiting tool, instead using the question to attack the former secretary of state.
"It's not unsurprising that her natural instinct is [to] pass the buck," he said. "Last I checked, Donald Trump was not designing the catastrophic foreign policy of the last seven years -- it was Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. When they went busy dismissing ISIS as the junior varsity, they were toppling the government in Libya, setting the stage for radical Islamic terrorists to take over there."
Cruz's stop in Trussville came a day after his campaign visited Daphne. About 1,500 people were at the Trussville Civic Center for an event that grew so large that some 400 people had to watch the speech in an overflow room.
The crowd got to its feet as the surging Republican presidential candidate said he would "rip to shreds this catastrophic nuclear deal" with Iran on Day One of his administration, which he said would also include moving the American embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Other priorities included repealing "every word of Obamacare," abolishing the IRS and undoing President Barack Obama's executive actions, which got the most boisterous response from the audience.
Two of those executive actions revolve around immigrants who illegally came into the country. Rep. Mo Brooks, who earlier endorsed Cruz, warmed up the crowd by saying that the Texas senator would be tough on immigration, and went into a policy speech about how illegal immigrants drive down wages and take jobs away from Americans.
Meanwhile, Cruz repeated a line from his Daphne stop when he said he had three words for hose who doubt that the border can't be secured: "Secretary Jeff Sessions."
Although Cruz twice mentioned the Alabama junior senator's name in reference to a position in a potential Cruz administration, he told the media at the Trussville event that naming cabinet secretaries would be jumping the gun.
"It is premature to start rolling out cabinet appointments," he said. "I've yet to win a state first. We need to win the nomination and then name a vice president."
The conservative firebrand also criticized the Paris Climate Summit and Obama for calling the climate change meeting a "rebuke" to the terrorists who committed the attacks in the French capital, suggesting the administration was misplacing its priorities.
"What kind of numbskull believes the SUV in your driveway is the biggest threat to your security" than ISIS, he said.
Cruz said what separates him from the rest of the Republican field is that "with me, when I tell you I'm going to do something, I'm going to do exactly what I said I would do."
It was that kind of attitude that some of those waiting in line at the civic center cited as their reason for supporting the Texas senator.
"He does what the Constitution says, unlike our current president," said Carolyn Grace Phillips, an 18-year-old from Trussville who is casting her first ballot in Alabama's March 1 primary.
"We think that he's uniquely suited to lead our country back to our roots," said Betty Zeitz of Columbiana. "He knows the Constitution. He'll get back to the rule of law."
Cruz has made several stops to the Yellowhammer State since declaring his run for the Republican nomination at the beginning of the year. He said Alabama and other southern states holding their primaries on March 1, including Georgia, Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee, are a key part of his strategy to getting to the general election.
"Alabama's going play a critical role," he said inside the civic center, adding that the state is very much like his home state of Texas in that voters agree on pretty much everything "well, except football. ... I'll tell you the role that Alabama will play is ensuring that the next nominee for president and the next president of the United States is going to be a strong conservative," he said.
Ed Sheahan of Homewood said Cruz's rally was the second held by a Republican contender in Alabama that he's attended after showing up to Trump's October rally in Birmingham. Sheahan, who didn't give his age but said that he got to shake Cruz's hand, probably because his white hair stood out in the overflow room, said he's never experienced Alabama getting so much attention from candidates.
"I love the SEC Primary," he said, the name given to the contests in other March 1 states because many of them belong to the NCAA football conference. "It's the best thing we've ever done."