Saturday evening at the Villages Savannah Center, the Tri-County Tea Party hosted Pastor Rafael Cruz, father of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas). After an invocation by Rev. Gerald Bustin of Open Door Community Church, and the singing of ‘God Bless America’ by Carol Hoffman, Pam Robin, the Tri-County Tea Party president, and State Sen. Alan Hays, introduced Pastor Cruz.
“Pastor Cruz and I are no strangers to controversy,” Hays quipped. “We both have scars from our detractors ‘ arrows in our backs.” Pastor Cruz described The Villages as a beautiful, beautiful community. “You who live here are very blessed,” he said. “After what happened on November 4th,” Cruz began, “we now know there is still hope for America.”
“I lost my freedom once in Cuba to an oppressive dictator and I don’t want to lose it again,” he emphasized with passion. “Fidel Castro spoke about ‘hope and change.’ We thought he was going to be our liberator — but instead, he taught us the rich were evil and he would re-distribute the wealth. They confiscated people’s homes and businesses. That’s why there are so many Cuban-born doctors in Miami! They took away freedom of the press, and replaced it with the Ministry of Propaganda. I call it mis-information. In America, it is the liberal press. CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC — their talking heads all have the same identical messages, with no concern for the truth.”
“They taught kindergarten children to close their eyes and pray to Fidel Castro, not to God,” he related. “Communists need to destroy the concept of God, so they can become the god. In America, the attack on religion in schools and the military is unmistakable. They even want an atheist chaplain — that’s an oxymoron. This is all classic Marxist doctrine.”
“I am so honored to be an American,” Rafael Cruz said, in charmingly accented English. “Here, there are so many Horatio Alger stories. No matter how big your dream, with hard work and perseverance, you can obtain it. We need a government that will restore individual responsibility, so we can restore the dream. Creating a dependent society destroys the dream. Two years ago, I had tears in my eyes when I watched my son sworn in as a Senator. How dare this President tell us we are not an exceptional country?” he demanded. “We are the only country in the world founded on the Word of God.”
“Many of you may not know this,” Cruz continued. “The first settlers in Plymouth, Massachusetts, tried a commune, working together to share what the land produced. It failed miserably because some worked harder than others, and the hard workers lost their motivation. Some starved. The next year, they each tilled their own small parcel of land, and everyone prospered. If communism didn’t work 200 years ago, why would we want to try it again?” Cruz asked, with a perplexed look on his face.
Cruz slammed former president, Jimmy Carter’s, weak foreign policy for the Iran hostage situation, and asserted it was no coincidence the hostages were immediately released when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1981. “Christians and Jews mobilized with the Moral Majority to elect Reagan,” he explained, “and got rid of Carter’s progressive society. We need to do this again!” He explained his son, Ted, had doses of conservative ideas from childhood at the dinner table. “When I lost my freedom in Cuba, America’s door was open to me. If we lose our freedom here, there is no other place for us to go.”
“Our Constitution and Declaration of Independence are long lasting documents because their framers sought wisdom from above,” Cruz said. “Authority must flow from God to the people and then to the government. Every tyrant has deceived the people, saying his power came from God. But the Constitution is a Divinely inspired document, which passes the power to ‘we the people.’ We have the solemn responsibility to elect righteous leaders. “When the righteous reign, the people rejoice,” he quoted Scripture. “When the wicked rule, the people mourn.”
Since his Republican son took office, the elder Cruz has toured Texas and beyond with a conservative activist message. He quotes statistics which suggest only half of evangelical Christians were registered to vote — and only half of those actually voted. “The numbers for the Catholics are approximately the same,” he reported. “The Jews vote in larger numbers, but unfortunately, some Jews in the Northeast are Democrats first and Jews second. We must awaken our pastors, priests and rabbis to support people who espouse Biblical principles. Politicians cannot legislate morality. We must get the people of faith and Judeo-Christian principles engaged in the political process. Saying ‘politics is a dirty business’ is not a good excuse to sit in your pews,” he said.
“Don’t blame God for putting Obama in power,” he said. “Blame righteous conservatives who didn’t bother to vote. Silence in the face of evil is evil itself. The president in office is a tyrant who disregards the Constitution and our separation of powers. He is totally lawless and the country is bordering on anarchy.We need to seek wisdom. The Bible actually tells us whom to vote for. In the Bible, God spoke to Moses through his son, Jethro: ‘Select from among the people able men who love God — who believe in truth and hate covetousness’ — and covetousness doesn’t just mean money — it means power and control. We need to stop electing ‘Village idiots’ and choose those who obey God’s precepts.”
“Aren’t we tired of men and women in government who lie? Fast and Furious? ISIS? Bengazi? the NSA? the IRS? Jonathan Gruber just told us they had to lie to get Obamacare passed. The people were stupid. If they knew what was in it, they would have said ‘no.’ Don’t listen to politicians’ rhetoric — look at what they do — their records.” he admonished. “…and we shall know them by their fruit,” the Bible says. Well, we need to do some fruit-checking!”
Rafael Cruz and his son, Ted, believe in limited government. If a power isn’t expressly given to the federal government in Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution — like education, the environment and health care — they believe the Federal government has no business there. Those are rights reserved for the States. “Obama, Reid and Pelosi passed Obamacare so we could read it and find out what was in it — and when they read it they didn’t like it,” Cruz reminded the audience, “so they exempted Congress from it, and exempted big business, the IRS and the unions’ foot soldiers. This is why my son did a 22-hour filibuster — to fight for the rights of ‘we the people.'”
Socialized medicine delays needed treatments for the elderly and veterans in other countries — and will do the same if it is enacted here — this is a criminal travesty to those who served their country .”