Given that it was overshadowed by the most astonishing political story of our lifetimes–the now undeniable ascent of Donald Trump to be the GOP's presumptive nominee–Senator Ted Cruz's speech last night hasn't received the attention it deserves.
It was a very good speech, steeped in conservative values and patriotism. Cruz, who is said to be one of the least likable figures in public life, also came across as likeable last night. Here is how his remarks began:
Let me tell you about the America that I love. Our nation is an exceptional nation. We were founded by risk takers and pioneers, brave men and women who put everything on the line for freedom. We began with a revolutionary idea that our rights don’t come from kings or queens or even presidents but from god almighty.
That every one of us has an unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
And that to protect those rights the constitution serves as change to bind the mischief of government.
For more than two centuries, we have protected those rights. We believe in equal rights for everybody — that everybody deserves dignity and respect whether they agree with you or not. That there will always be evil in the world and injustice in the world but America stands up to it and confronts it.
Even from a Montgomery jail our voice for justice and equality rings out for the ages. America is hopeful, optimistic. America is kind. We are not boastful or mean spirited. America is brave. We keep our word and we believe in peace through strength.
We have spilled more blood, spent more treasure in defense of liberty than any country in history yet we do not engage in wars of conquest. We do not seek to enrich ourselves at our neighbors’ expense. America is the land that gave my mom, an Irish Italian girl growing up in a working class family the chance to be the first in her family ever to go to college, to become a pioneering computer programmer in the 1950s.
I love you, mom. America is the land that welcomed my father as a penny immigrant. He’d seen oppression, prison and torture in Cuba and for him America was hope. It was opportunity. In 1957, if someone had told that teenager washing dishes for $0.50 an hour that one day his son would be elected to the Senate and he would get a chance to cast his ballot for his son to be president of the United States …
This hits a lot of high notes–that we have as a nation taken risks and that we have relied on the Constitution to protect us from arbitrary government. It also seemed an old-fashioned speech, harkening to an America that was based on the particular ideals of our Revolution.
Cruz also tried to take a long view of history and to reclaim his party as the party of Ronald Reagan:
Ronald Reagan spoke of the next 100 years and of the generations of Americans who would come to know whether our nation had escaped the existential threat of nuclear war, who would know whether our party had succeeded in its fight against the erosion of constitutional freedoms that only grow and multiple under rule of the Democratic party. Ronald Reagan spoke of the purpose that defined our party then and that must unite and drive our party now.
The Republican Party of Ronald Reagan and of George Herbert Walker Bush ensured that thousands of nuclear missiles that the Soviet Union and the United States had targeted each other were never fired and that Soviet communism was consigned to the ash heap of history.
They fought hard so that our American freedoms were not lost to any foreign foe nor sacrificed in pursuit of any domestic agenda of the Democratic party.
Read the transcript of Cruz's remarks here.
Carly Fiorina, Cruz's running mate (who will be honored at the IWF's Woman of Valor dinner this year), was gracious to the Hoosiers who dealt the Cruz campaign a fatal blow:
We came together as fellow warriors — warriors in a cause to save the soul of our party, the character and the future of our nation. And that cause continues and you are warriors still.
You know — you know what makes this country extraordinary. You know that we are extraordinary because while people are gifted by god all over the world it is only in this nation that so many people have been given the opportunity to realize their god given gifts. And we’ve been given that opportunity because we were founded on two powerful ideas. One, that each of us have a right to find and use our god given gifts, a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
I always hate to hear a concession speech from good people, but I was still proud of these two patriots last night.