Cruz finds deep support in Kalona

KALONA — In his cowboy boots, denim jeans and Lone Star belt buckle, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz looked right at home among the crowd who came out to see him in Kalona Wednesday morning.

His rhetoric was welcome, too, prompting frequent applause and 'amens' as he skewered the Obama administration, his liberal adversaries and, at times, his rivals for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination.

Cruz said he would spend his first day as president undoing what Obama and his federal agencies have done for the past seven years — rescinding every illegal and unconstitutional action Obama took.

'If you live by the pen, you die by the pen, and my pen's got an eraser,' he said.

He would direct the Department of Justice to investigate Planned Parenthood and the 'horrible videos' suggesting the organization was illegally selling fetal tissue, instruct the IRS and justice department that 'persecution of religious liberty ends today,' rip up the 'catastrophic' Iranian nuclear pact and order the American embassy in Israel be moved to Jerusalem.

'That's Day One,' he said. 'There are 365 days in a year, four years in a presidential term and four years in a second term.'

That sounded good to Carlene Murphy of Kalona.

'I think he'll go to Washington and do exactly what he said,' said Murphy, who plans to caucus for him Feb. 1. She believes he'll stand up for the middle class and the Constitution. 'That's what matters to me.'

Assessing America's current state of affairs — unchecked spending, the assault on constitutional rights and America receding from leadership in the world — Cruz saw a parallel to the late 1970s under President Jimmy Carter's administration.

'That analogy gives me hope,' Cruz said. 'We know how that story ends.

'All across the country millions of men and women rose up and became the Reagan Revolution,' he said. 'It didn't come from Washington. Washington despised Reagan. It came from the American people and turned this country around.'

That scored with Murphy.

'He's hated in Washington. Reagan was hated, too and look at the effect he had,' she said.

Murphy wasn't the only one who already has decided who she will support in the first-in-the-nation caucuses.

'He's the only candidate I'm convinced will fight for what I believe in' such as religious liberty, said John Dayton of Williamsburg. 'Basically, all of the big issues out there, he sides with what I think from amnesty to, well, everything.'

Cruz is 'very, very optimistic' because of that sort of grass roots support.

'How do you win an Iowa caucus?' he asked. 'You're all looking at it right here … with the man and woman sitting on your right and your left.' His is the only campaign that has chairs in all 171 counties in the four early states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada. Cruz also compared his 360,000 contributors to Jeb Bush's 10,000 as evidence of his grass roots support.

He praised Iowans and the Iowa caucuses as the best people and place to begin the nomination process.

'You all approach politics in Iowa like Texans approach football,' Cruz said. 'If we started this presidential race in the big states — New York, California or Texas — the whole races would be decided by a bunch of slick, Hollywood-produced TV ads.'

'The fabulous thing about the state of Iowa is every one of you takes seriously your obligation to look a candidate in the eye and determine 'Are you telling the truth or are you blowing smoke.''