Senator Ted Cruz says his colleagues Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are sincere in their goals of implementing socialized medicine, the Green New Deal and other socialist policy proposals they’ve embraced to power their campaigns. It’s not just campaign rhetoric designed to inspire the Democratic base.

“Yes,” the Texas Republican replied when New Hampshire Journal asked him if Warren was serious about her $52 trillion #MedicareForAll proposal.  “She and Sen. Sanders are absolutely sincere when they say they want a plan that takes away private health insurance from more than 180 million people, a plan that would make it illegal for you to buy health insurance, a plan that would force taxpayers to pay for free health insurance for illegal immigrants, yes.”

 

Sen Ted Cruz and Andrew Cline of the Josiah Bartlett Center hold an onstage discussion of American politics at the 2016 JBC dinner in November.

Cruz was in Concord, NH Thursday night speaking at a fundraiser for the Josiah Bartlett Center (JBC), a free-market think tank based in New Hampshire.

During his onstage conversation with the JBC’s executive director Andrew Cline, Cruz said that one reason Democrats were able to make such unrealistic spending proposals was because “nobody knows what a ‘trillion’ is.  Trillion, billion, million–anything with an ‘illion’ sounds big.” Cruz said he explains it this way: “The Green New Deal’s $92 trillion is more than all the federal government spending in the entire history of the country.”

The 2016 GOP presidential candidate, who finished in third place in the New Hampshire GOP presidential primary behind Donald Trump and Gov. John Kasich, was well received by a crowd that included NH Gov. Chris Sununu.

Cruz noted how much American politics has changed in just a few short years. “What I find most dismaying is how the Democratic Party has galloped to the left. It used to be Bernie [Sanders] was the lone socialist and nobody else would admit it. Bernie was kind of out there,” Cruz said.

“You look at the Democratic Party now, and they’re all running on socialism.  What used to be extreme has become the new baseline.”

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz at the Josiah Bartlett Center dinner.

Cruz argues that Democrats’ hatred of President Trump has pushed them to the extreme and you can see that in the impeachment process underway in Washington.

“It’s a sham,” Cruz told NHJournal. “It’s like the Queen of Hearts in Alice In Wonderland: ‘Verdict first, trial later.” And I can tell you that Senators aren’t paying any attention to these hearings,” Cruz told NHJournal. “Now, if the House votes out articles of impeachment, we will do our duty under the Constitution and give them their due consideration.”

As for the Democrats’ push for extreme proposals and embrace of socialism, Cruz quoted Thomas Jefferson: “If the nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be.”

What’s amazing about socialism today, Cruz said, is “that they manage to be ignorant and give everything away for free. It doesn’t work that way.”