Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz appeared on Fox News’s “The Kelly File,” where he was asked by host Megyn Kelly to discuss her recent interview with former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who is expected to announce that he will be running for president in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.
Cruz said, “I am a fan of Jeb Bush. I’ll give him credit for candor and consistency. He is running based on his views, his views are different from that of an awful lot of Republican primary voters, but he is honest about it.”
Kelly told Cruz that Bush was unwavering in his support for Common Core education standards and asked Cruz what his views on the federal education standards. Cruz, like his fellow colleague in the Senate and 2016 Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio, has taken a strong anti-Common Core position. He reaffirmed his position to Kelly, telling her that he wanted to “repeal every single word” of the those federal education standards, aka Common Core.
“Education is far too important for it to be governed by unelected bureaucrats in Washington. It should be at the state level, but even better, it should be at the local level,” said Cruz.
Cruz stated that “the Obama administration has used Race to the Top money—federal money— to force states to adopt Common Core standards,” adding that there were “a lot of dollars connected” between the education program and the states.
“It’s just like the drug dealer that goes to the junior high and gets a kid hooked, saying, ‘just try it once.’ The federal government does that to the states with dollars—there are so many strings attached,” Cruz said about Common Core standards.
After discussing his views on immigration reform, where he stated that many of current and potential Republican presidential candidates have at one point supported a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens, he has been consistent with his views and has not changed his mind like the others.
When asked about his views on foreign policy, Cruz stated the following:
I think foreign policy ought to be dictated by the vital national security interest of the United States.
If and when military action is required, number one, we should be reluctant to use military power—America always has been. You know it is worth noting, the biggest country Reagan ever invaded was Grenada.
But if and when we’re required to use military force, it should be with a clearly defined objective, it should be with overwhelming force, and then we should get the heck out. It is not the job of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines to transform foreign nations into democratic utopias. It is their job to hunt down and kill terrorists who want to murder Americans before they can carry out jihad.
The latest polls have Cruz trailing both Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush by at least 5 points, but like many people will agree, it is way too early to start picking a winner in this soon-to-be hotly-contested 2016 Republican presidential race.
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