Ted Cruz: ‘Courageous Conservatives’ Can ‘Reignite the Promise of America’

On Sunday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who is expected to be the first candidate to formally enter the 2016 campaign on Monday at Liberty University, called on “courageous conservatives” to help take back the country from elites who place their faith in government instead of the American people.

Appearing on Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot channel 125, Cruz told host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon that Democrats like “Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama believe in government” more than the American people.

“They believe that elites in Washington can govern every aspect of our life, Washington knows better and it needs to control the economy–it needs to control every basic detail of our lives,” he said.

In contrast, Cruz, whom the late Andrew Breitbart viewed as the future of the conservative movement, said, “I believe in the Constitution. I believe in the unlimited potential of free men and free women.”

He said “the miracle of America” is that “we have been a land for centuries where millions of people have come from all over the world with nothing and have been able to achieve anything.” Cruz added that “we need to reignite the promise of America” and “there is an incredible potential to do so if courageous conservatives will simply stand up.”

“I am convinced that courageous conservatives coming together can bring us back to the free-market principles and constitutional liberties that this country was founded on,” Cruz said.

When Bannon asked the Texas Senator — who has taken heat from the D.C. establishment for not wavering from his conservative principles, especially in his opposition to amnesty for illegal immigrants and Obamacare — how someone who graduated from Harvard and Princeton can resonate like he does with working-class Americans, Cruz said it is because he always remembers where he came from.

Cruz said that his mother is of Italian and Irish descent, grew up in a working-class background, and was the first person in her family to go to college. His father fought in the Cuban revolution and was imprisoned and tortured before eventually coming to America. His parents experienced the “miracle of America,” and Cruz told listeners that his father always said, “when we faced oppression in Cuba, I had a place to flee to. If we lose our freedom here, where do we go?” Cruz said he is “blessed to be the child of two parents who love this country so much” and that that “grounding, and that appreciation for the incredible liberty we have” that his parents instilled in him as a child still guides him today.