Sen. Ted Cruz rejected the idea that he was once part of the “Washington cartel” he now castigates, saying Tuesday he has always considered himself a conservative even if not a “firebrand.”
The Republican presidential candidate disputed the idea that because he had represented now-House speaker John Boehner and worked in the George W. Bush administration that he was somehow a moderate In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “The Lead.”
“I think what people will see reading the book is consistent principles through every stage of my life,” said Cruz as he promoted his new book, “A Time for Truth,” which hit bookshelves Tuesday.
“I get that in Washington people like to play the cynical games, and they like to impugn people’s motives, and that’s the way the ‘Washington Cartel’ works,” he said. “It projects almost in a Freudian projection what they’re doing on other people.”
Cruz refuted Tapper’s assertion that he was a “firebrand,” responding he had never maligned a fellow senator.
But many of his colleagues feel differently — Sen. John McCain once called Cruz a “wacko bird” — and the freshman Texas senator is deeply disliked by many in Washington power circles.
Now though, Cruz is looking to turn that frosty relationship into a selling point on the stump. Cruz lumps together much of his party into the “Washington Cartel” he ridiculed this past weekend in Iowa, and his new book criticizes GOP leadership as often spineless and feeble.
Cruz has also thrown the Supreme Court — whose recent decisions he excoriates — into that lot. Cruz has called for judicial retention elections that would subject justices to the voters every eight years.
When asked by Tapper if he would vote for Chief Justice John Roberts in a hypothetical election, Cruz declined to answer.
“One step at a time,” Cruz told Tapper. “If they were doing their job, if they were honoring their judicial oaths, then it wouldn’t be necessary. Unfortunately the justices have injected themselves into politics.”
Roberts — who Cruz has spoken very highly of until recently — voted to uphold the subsidies that lie at the heart of Obamacare last Thursday. Cruz said President Barack Obama mischaracterized the law’s impact by saying it would reduce the average American family’s premiums by $2,500 a year.
“Listen, any family who’s premiums have dropped $2,500, you should vote for Hillary Clinton. I’ll take everybody else,” Cruz told Tapper. “And you know we’ve never had a presidential election decided 100 to nothing, I’m happy to start with 2016.”