Texas will lead fight for freedom, Cruz tells GOP convention

By Kevin Diaz

FORT WORTH – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz told an ecstatic crowd at the Texas Republican Convention that their freedom is being threatened by a lawless president who has shown weakness abroad and overstepped his boundaries at home.

The first-term Texas senator, an oft-mentioned potential White House contender, offered up a full-throated indictment of President Obama and the Democrats in Congress, prompting sustained cheers and calls of "Run, Ted!"

"Today liberty is under assault like never before," Cruz thundered as he paced the large, open stage. "And again today Texans will stand up and lead the fight for freedom."

The line could serve as a reference to Cruz and fellow Texas native Rand Paul, the Kentucky senator who will follow him on the stage later in the day as a possible rival for conservatives' affection in the run-up to the battle for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016.

In a speech studded with historical references, from the Alamo to D-Day, Cruz gamely included Paul in a pantheon of Texas heroes ranging from Dwight D. Eisenhower and Gov. Rick Perry. "Texans have always led the way in the fight for freedom," he said.

"He's got potential," said Sherman delegate Ira Moore, speaking with intentional understatement.

Many in the crowd also took Cruz's convention speech as a precursor to his own political ambitions.

Cruz generally stuck to familiar themes and lines he has used in speeches in the early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire. He highlighted how Texas remains a place for jobs and growth, and a stronghold of opposition to the Obama agenda on health care, the economy and foreign policy.

He called for the repeal of "every blessed word of Obamacare," an audit of the Federal Reserve and the abolition of the Internal Revenue Service, all core tea party causes.

"There's a whole lot of mischief going on in Washington right now," he said. "We need to defend the Bill of Rights" and in an apparent reference to the Second Amendment debate over gun control, he added, "all of the Bill of Rights."

He also invoked President Ronald Reagan's iconic call to tear down the Cold War era Berlin Wall.

"Every generation must stand and defend liberty," he said, inviting delegates to send the word "growth" to a campaign text number to help build a "grass-roots army" of potential supporters.

He criticized Obama for failing to speak out about victims of oppression abroad, defended Israel, and took aim at Common Core educational standards that are unpopular on both ends of the political spectrum.

"We already have a common core," he said, "It's called the Constitution of the United States."

Cruz was introduced by his wife Heidi, who defended him against his critics in Washington and invoked his softer side as a family man. "He's not a wacko bird," she said, "He is simply 'Daddy' to our two little girls."