After Senator Ted Cruz won the Iowa Caucus with support from evangelicals, as a Christian I am blowing the whistle. The above verse from 2 Corinthians weighs on my mind as I have evaluated his records and traits. Ted Cruz puts his faith in the spotlight. Not to promote Jesus, but to promote Ted Cruz and beguile evangelical voters. I for one feel you walk a fine line when questioning a person and their faith which is why I have been apprehensive to write this piece. However the Cruz campaign has continually engaged in deceptions, including deceiving Iowa voters on the night of the caucus to benefit directly.
The media began reporting that Ben Carson would fly home to Florida following the Iowa Caucus rather than going straight to New Hampshire to campaign. The New Hampshire caucus takes place on February 9th and one would think that a single day off the trail in the course of a week wouldn't be detrimental. Perhaps this is not the smartest move Carson has made, but there isn't any reason to think that a campaign suspension is imminent considering that Carson was projected to do well in Iowa. This however did not stop the Ted Cruz campaign from capitalizing on opportunism and instructing their Precinct Captains to deceitfully spread rumours that Ben Carson's campaign was being suspended. The following day Ted Cruz issued a "heartfelt" apology, the kind where it really doesn't matter because he won Iowa after syphoning Carson supporters. Cruz as well thanked God for his win; the kind of win I hardly believe God could condone. This is insincerity at its finest.
The day before the Iowa Caucus, Cruz was rebuked by Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate for deceptive mailers sent out to Iowa residents claiming they committed "Voter Violations" based on poor caucus attendance of previous elections. Pate stated, “Today I was shown a piece of literature from the Cruz for President campaign that misrepresents the role of my office, and worse, misrepresents Iowa election law." An article from The New Yorker further elaborates on how the mailers were deceptively designed to appear to be official mail from the Secretary of State. These voter violations are rather hypocritical given Ted Cruz's own poor voting attendance in The Senate, ranked 97th even before candidates were engaged on the campaign trail.
Cruz and his deception with Audit The Fed is a large point of contention that Cruz supporters should stop defending. At the CNBC Debate Ted Cruz came out in strong support of auditing the Federal Reserve, stating "I was a Co-Sponsor of Ron Paul's Audit The Fed legislation." There are several deceptions with this statement. First, Cruz was not a sponsor of Ron Paul's legislation. Ron Paul's bill HR1207 "The Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009" was introduced in... you guessed it. The year 2009. A companion bill was introduced in the Senate by Bernie Sanders in 2009, S.604. It was passed in The House but not in the Senate that year of 2009. Ted Cruz did not arrive in The Senate until 2012. Ted Cruz however did Co-Sponsor the Audit The Fed bill introduced by Senator Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul. Cruz supporters have chalked it up to Ted simply misspeaking the name, despite being in the Senate with Rand. The more likely reason is that in the debate by "misspeaking" the name, Rand was not given an opportunity to respond because his name was not invoked. This is much more in line with Cruz's deceitful behavior I have come to recognize. In doing so, Cruz was taking credit for Rand's work without allowing Rand to speak on the subject of Audit The Fed in the debate. To make matters worse that despite being a self appointed white knight of auditing the Federal Reserve, Ted Cruz skipped the vote in The Senate to campaign for himself instead.
Continuing with the trend that Ted Cruz enjoys all the glory for himself, Ted wrote in his book ironically titled "A Time For Truth" that Rand Paul did not join in the fight against Obama Care, speaking of his 21 hour filibuster where he read Green Eggs and Ham and shut down the government. Cruz wrote “I marveled that Rand had decided not to be with us in this fight” however perhaps Cruz may have been so distracted by reading a childrens book that he must not have noticed that Rand Paul indeed was involved in that filibuster. I can hardly take Ted Cruz and his “Trust Ted” slogan seriously as he has an abysmal record on Politfact and tells false and deceptional statements more often than not. I can no longer trust a single word he says as a candidate. Cruz is legitimately two faced and loves nothing more than smiling to a cheering crowd while he deceives them.
Ted Cruz has often pretended to care about the privacy of Americans, and in campaign rallies has railed against the NSA. This is the same NSA that Ted Cruz allowed to remain in operation by voting for the Freedom Act. When the Patriot Act was allowed to expire, the Freedom Act was voted on which revived the NSA, and revived the Patriot Act through 2017. Ted Cruz called this a win for American privacy when in actuality it was anything but. The Freedom Act when drafted in The House was drafted with the intention of ridding America of NSA spying, but was quickly destroyed by other members of Congress as Justin Amash, one of the original authors of The Freedom Act shared on Facebook. This bill rather allowed business as usual to continue while he smiled to his supporters and told them he won a battle for them.
If you want to know where a man stands with his faith, listen to him carefully. Listen to him say "I don't know if sand glows in the dark, but we're going to find out" and ask yourself if a man bent on indiscriminate carpet bombing is indeed a God loving man. Matthew 5:9 says "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God." Ted Cruz's actions do nothing to glorify God, but rather glorify Ted Cruz. I am truly terrified for any Christian who would follow Ted Cruz, and am saddened that they have been fooled in ways The Bible has strictly warned about. If only more Christians would read their bibles.