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Cruz Outlines Plans for First Day as President
Tuesday, December 29, 2015 12:30 PM
By: Cathy Burke
White House contender Sen. Ted Cruz is laying out a first-day Oval Office agenda to unravel the Obama presidency – by ripping up the Iran deal, moving the Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, scrapping the president's executive actions, investigating Planned Parenthood and ending the "persecution of religious liberty."
Writing the epilogue for his preacher dad Rafael Cruz's new book, "A Time for Action," the Texas lawmaker, who's surged to No. 2 in national polling averages in his GOP presidential nomination bid, makes the case for an aggressive first day if elected, the Washington Examiner reports.
"The left, and the media (who are in cahoots), try to convince us that nothing can change," Cruz writes in an excerpt posted by the Examiner.
"They want us to give up. But strong presidential leadership, backed by the American people, can usher in dramatic change."
The to-do list includes top priorities Cruz has championed previously.
But he also lays out a short term goal to press even further, the Examiner reports, including:
Repealing Obamacare;
Expanding school choice;
Moving to "rebuild our military" and to further reforms at the Veterans Administration;
Hitting ISIS with more force; and
Ending the sanctuary city system that protects illegal immigrants who are wanted by federal authorities.
"Our country is in crisis," Cruz writes. "I am convinced, it is now or never. There comes a point where the hole is too deep, the debt is too great, our liberties are too receded, and there is no going back."
Cruz's Cuban-born, evangelist pastor dad has raised some eyebrows on his son's campaign trail, including for remarks made last June, when he claimed both Jews and Catholics in the Northeast place their allegiance to the Democratic Party ahead of their religion.
But in other controversial remarks he's also declared at a conservative gathering in April 2013 that President Barack Obama should "go back to Kenya."
And in February 2013, he told an audience of conservatives that black voters were "uninformed" and had been "deceived" by Democrats into thinking that the party was the best choice in representing their interests.
In the preacher's new book, the Examiner reports, he exhorts other evangelical leaders to get their followers to vote, noting 54 million stayed at home on Election Day in 2012.
"Imaging if those people registered and voted," he writes, the Examiner reports.
According to the Washington Post, Rafael Cruz means his new book to be a companion to his son's book, "A Time for Truth," which came out in June.
"Part one is my story; part two is the American story and the involvement of pastors in the American Revolution," Cruz said in Knoxville, Tenn., the Post reports.
"I wanted to talk about the religious involvement, the involvement of pastors in the American Revolution and also why pastors and Christians in general need to be involved in the civic society, both from a historical standpoint and also from a biblical standpoint."
"And then the third part of the book is where do we go from here?"
