Sen. Ted Cruz said Thursday the annual State of the Union address is nothing but a performance, and he’s getting flashes of the circus.
“I’m having visions of going to the circus and seeing clowns juggling things on fire,” Cruz said on Glenn Beck’s radio show on Thursday, according to a show transcript.
Beck agreed, saying both parties know what to expect and that the annual speech by President Barack Obama to Congress is “nothing real.”
“Particularly with this president,” Cruz said. “This president consistently is not addressing the challenges facing this country. I mean, we know what’s going to come next week. He’s going to propose raising the minimum wage. He’s going to propose more government spending. He’s going to propose more debt. He’s going to propose more taxes. He’s going to propose all of the policies that he’s been doing for the last five years that aren’t working and they are making the problem worse.”The Texas Republican said the president is ignoring the issues he should be talking about.
“He’s going to ignore the enormous harms that people are suffering because of Obamacare, that are suffering because we have the lowest work force participation in decades, because the Obama economic policies aren’t working,” Cruz said. “And he’s certainly going to ignore the scandals of IRS and Benghazi.”
Beck also brought up Cruz’s effort last year to defund Obamacare through the budget, a tactic that resulted in a government shutdown in October, saying Cruz was “destroyed by your own party.” He said for once, the major conservative radio personalities were all in agreement that the Republican Party either needs a new focus or a new challenge.
“For the first time ever, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Glenn Beck, and hopefully Rush Limbaugh, are all on the same page,” Beck said. “We’ve all come to the same understanding ourselves … and we’re all moving in the same direction. And none of us are moving in the direction of the GOP. For the very first time, all of talk radio, which is supposed to be this GOP organ, is the furthest thing from a GOP organ.”
Beck told Cruz he thought the party could benefit from more people like the senator.
“I think you and Mark and Sean and Rush are like Paul Revere and Patrick Henry,” Cruz said. “You are sounding the alarm, and you’re speaking the truth. And that is powerful. It’s critically important. But I think the answer is to bring the Republican Party back to the principles we should have been standing for.”
Cruz said he hoped for a time like the 1970s when Ronald Reagan was able to unite the GOP, but played coy when Beck and his co-host suggested Cruz may be the answer as the Republican presidential candidate in 2016.
“I’ll say this: I think every person who might be thinking about it, the path that they ought to follow is to stand up and help lead the fight,” Cruz said.
The president will deliver his State of the Union on Tuesday.
