TEA TALK: Highlights from the Sunday convention speeches of Ted Cruz and Ben Carson
Headliners Ben Carson and Ted Cruz each received bursts of applause during their speeches at Sunday’s S.C. Tea Party Coalition Convention.
Here are some of the highlights from their remarks:
Carson on welfare:
“I believe in a safety net for people who need a safety net. But I do not believe in a system that chronically places people in a state of dependency.”
On his interest in politics:
“A lot of people say, ‘Carson, come on now. You don’t have any political experience, and why would you be thinking about doing anything in the political realm?’ Guess what? It’s not about me. It’s about we the people. This country was designed around we the people and the government is supposed to conform to us. We’re not supposed to conform to them.”
On health care:
“You’ll never be successful in repealing Obamacare unless you have a replacement for it. … There are a lot of very good alternatives and they cost much less money, but the principle must be to put healthcare back in the hands of the patients.”
On the economy’s recent growth:
“Some of the progressives, they’re going to say, ‘Look at how well the economy is doing. And they want to say they’re responsible. You know what’s responsible the small increase in good that we see? It’s the fact that we have an incredibly strong economy and we can’t knock it out, even with all of these horrible policies that are going on.”
Cruz on speaking in South Carolina:
“I spent most of last week in Washington D.C. and it is great to be back in America.”
On the IRS:
“Now I’ll tell you the simplest and most important tax reform: We need to abolish the IRS. We need to move to a simple flat tax that is fair. … You know, there are 110,000 employees of the IRS. We need to padlock that building and put all 110,000 IRS agents on our southern border. Now I say that somewhat tongue and cheek. Think about it for a minute: Suppose you had spent weeks crossing the hot, hot land, going through the desert sun, swimming through the Rio Grande and the first thing you see is 110,000 IRS agents. You’d turn around and go home, too.”
On regulations:
“We need to remove the thousands of regulators that have descended on small business like locusts. Only thing is, with regulators, unlike locusts, you can’t use pesticides.”
On the response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks:
“This weekend … 40 world leaders marched arm in arm. After 9-11, France stood with the United States of America. What a graphic, powerful illustration as 40 leaders marched and yet nowhere in their midst was the United States of America. You cannot win a war on radical Islamic terrorists if you are unwilling to utter the words ‘radical Islamic terrorists.’ This administration has banned those words from our lexicon. But let me point out, the men who flew those planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, they weren’t a bunch of ticked off Presbyterians.”
This story was originally published January 18, 2015 at 11:02 PM with the headline "TEA TALK: Highlights from the Sunday convention speeches of Ted Cruz and Ben Carson."