Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz told a cheering crowd of conservatives Saturday night that the next U.S. president should shutter the much-maligned Internal Revenue Service and turn the agency's 110,000 employees loose to police the U.S.-Mexico border. 'That's slightly tongue-in-cheek,' he said in Denver at the Western Conservative Summit. 'But think about it for a second: You travel thousands of miles, you cross over and see 110,000 IRS agents? You'd turn around and go home!' His speech before a partisan crowd of hooting and hollering Republicans was the main draw at a conference that brought an estimated 3,500 to hear pols including former VP candidate Sarah Palin, U.S. Sen. Mike Lee and rising right-winger Dr. Ben Carson. Cruz delivered a speech full of anti-Obama barbs Saturday night, touching on immigration, education, foreign policy and religious freedom . Thousands came to Denver, the site of President Obama's 2008 presidential nomination, cheering for the man they hope will win the White House in 2016 . But Cruz brought down the house with a speech that sounded as much like practiced campaign stumpery as a laundry list of grievances with Barack Obama's administration. The normally stolid and bloated GOP establishment, Cruz hinted Saturday, is dismayed at his rise to prominence among tea party sympathizers and other grass-roots conservatives, and he wore his outsider status like a badge of honor. 'I spent most of the week back in Washington, D.C.,' he began. 'So it's great to be back in America.' Cruz described American politics as a cross between 'poly, meaning many, and tics, meaning blood-sucking parasites.' His biggest applause line: 'If you see a candidate that Washington embraces, run the other way.' He called for the abolition of two conservative bugaboos – Obamacare and the Common Core education standards. 'Education is too important to be left to bureaucrats in Washington,' said Cruz. 'Besides, we already have a "common core" in this country: It's called the Constitution of the United States.' But the Texan reserved a special brand of ire for the Obama administration's management of America's southwest border, where more than 90,000 unaccompanied children from Central America will have streamed into the U.S. illegally by the end of the government's fiscal year on September 30. Fresh from a visit to a U.S. Border Patrol station in MacAllen, Texas, he said agents told him they apprehended 622 illegal immigrants on Friday at that location alone. 'That was yesterday,' he said. 'And roughly 25 per cent of those coming in are unaccompanied minors – little kids brought in by violent drug cartels.' When he asked his hosts why they thought the flood of immigrants were risking life and limb to make harrowing journeys northward, Cruz said, 'every single border patrol agent sitting in the room said the same thing: "They're coming because the believe they will get amnesty".' Cruz's prescription for what Obama has acknowledged is a 'humanitarian crisis' is to deport as many of the children back to their home countries as possible, and as soon as possible. 'The compassionate thing to do is, humanely and expeditiously, to reunite them with their families back home, so we don't have next year tens of thousands of little boys and little girls being victimized.' Animated: A high-energy Ted Cruz told reporters after his speech Saturday night that President Obama was to blame for providing families with an incentive -- immigration amnesty -- to send their children thousands of miles to the United States . With the children have come reports of sexual abuse, hostage taking, and worse. On . Saturday Cruz re-told anecdotes he has shared publicly before, . describing 'coyotes' – paid human traffickers – extorting money from . families in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, and sending home body . parts of their children when they can't pay. In . some cases, he said, the coyotes threaten some children with instant . death if they refuse to cut off fingers and ears of others. 'The people who are bringing these kids are not well-meaning social workers in Birkenstocks with long beards,' he charged. 'These are vicious, hardened, transnational drug cartels.' Obamacare is a Republican hobby horse Cruz rides almost as much as immigration policy. On Saturday he ripped into the White House for pressing the position in court that religious organizations shouldn't be exempt from the health insurance law's requirement to cover abortion-inducing drugs as part of qualifying policies they offer employees. In one case wending its way through the judicial system, the Little Sisters of the Poor are opposing that mandate. ''Let me give you a simple rule of thumb,' he cracked: 'If you're litigating against nuns, you've probably done something wrong.' Rock star: In conservative circles, the 43-year-old Cruz is seen as the Barack Obama of 2016 and signs autographs wherever he appears in public . Near the end of his remarks, Cruz bulked up his arsenal of foreign policy critiques with broadsides about what he called Obama's 'return to Jimmy Carter.' The two presidents, he claimed, advanced 'the same feckless and naive foreign policy, making the world much, much more dangerous.' 'In the last five years we've seen America recede from leadership in the world,' said Cruz, 'and into that vacuum have stepped nations like Iran and Russia and China. And the world is a whole lot more dangerous place.' 'If there's one principle from time immemorial,' he said in a line that Republicans will likely hear in Iowa and New Hampshire, 'it is that bullies and tyrants don't respect weakness or appeasement.' 'And when you have the President of the United States being openly mocked by leaders of nations like Russia and Iran, it is profoundly dangerous.' In one momentary lapse that seemed almost scripted, Cruz transposed Obama and President Ronald Reagan, putting the former in Berlin in April 1987 to challenge the Soviet Union. 'We all remember,' he said, 'when President Obama stood before the Brandenburg Gate and uttered the most important words uttered by any leader in modern times: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall".' After audience members in the front row told him what he had just said, he conceded that it was 'an interesting slip.' Recovering quickly, Cruz asked: 'Can we possibly imagine president Obama uttering such words?' 'Look,' he said, head suddenly bowed. 'it is heartbreaking, the absence of leadership.'
Texas GOP senator ripped into Barack Obama's stewardship of the U.S.-Mexico border and said the next president should shutter the IRS .
Called for the abolition of Obamacare and Common Core school standards, saying 'education is too important to be left to bureaucrats in Washington'
Blamed Obama for incentivizing Central American families to send their children across the U.S. border with drug-cartel 'coyotes'
Laughed at the White House for taking the Little Sisters of the Poor to court over Obamacare birth-control drug requirements .
'Let me give you a simple rule of thumb,' he cracked: 'If you're litigating against nuns, you've probably done something wrong'
Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz told a cheering crowd of conservatives Saturday night that the next U.S. president should shutter the much-maligned Internal Revenue Service and turn the agency's 110,000 employees loose to police the U.S.-Mexico border. 'That's slightly tongue-in-cheek,' he said in Denver at the Western Conservative Summit. 'But think about it for a second: You travel thousands of miles, you cross over and see 110,000 IRS agents? You'd turn around and go home!' His speech before a partisan crowd of hooting and hollering Republicans was the main draw at a conference that brought an estimated 3,500 to hear pols including former VP candidate Sarah Palin, U.S. Sen. Mike Lee and rising right-winger Dr. Ben Carson. Cruz delivered a speech full of anti-Obama barbs Saturday night, touching on immigration, education, foreign policy and religious freedom . Thousands came to Denver, the site of President Obama's 2008 presidential nomination, cheering for the man they hope will win the White House in 2016 . But Cruz brought down the house with a speech that sounded as much like practiced campaign stumpery as a laundry list of grievances with Barack Obama's administration. The normally stolid and bloated GOP establishment, Cruz hinted Saturday, is dismayed at his rise to prominence among tea party sympathizers and other grass-roots conservatives, and he wore his outsider status like a badge of honor. 'I spent most of the week back in Washington, D.C.,' he began. 'So it's great to be back in America.' Cruz described American politics as a cross between 'poly, meaning many, and tics, meaning blood-sucking parasites.' His biggest applause line: 'If you see a candidate that Washington embraces, run the other way.' He called for the abolition of two conservative bugaboos – Obamacare and the Common Core education standards. 'Education is too important to be left to bureaucrats in Washington,' said Cruz. 'Besides, we already have a "common core" in this country: It's called the Constitution of the United States.' But the Texan reserved a special brand of ire for the Obama administration's management of America's southwest border, where more than 90,000 unaccompanied children from Central America will have streamed into the U.S. illegally by the end of the government's fiscal year on September 30. Fresh from a visit to a U.S. Border Patrol station in MacAllen, Texas, he said agents told him they apprehended 622 illegal immigrants on Friday at that location alone. 'That was yesterday,' he said. 'And roughly 25 per cent of those coming in are unaccompanied minors – little kids brought in by violent drug cartels.' When he asked his hosts why they thought the flood of immigrants were risking life and limb to make harrowing journeys northward, Cruz said, 'every single border patrol agent sitting in the room said the same thing: "They're coming because the believe they will get amnesty".' Cruz's prescription for what Obama has acknowledged is a 'humanitarian crisis' is to deport as many of the children back to their home countries as possible, and as soon as possible. 'The compassionate thing to do is, humanely and expeditiously, to reunite them with their families back home, so we don't have next year tens of thousands of little boys and little girls being victimized.' Animated: A high-energy Ted Cruz told reporters after his speech Saturday night that President Obama was to blame for providing families with an incentive -- immigration amnesty -- to send their children thousands of miles to the United States . With the children have come reports of sexual abuse, hostage taking, and worse. On . Saturday Cruz re-told anecdotes he has shared publicly before, . describing 'coyotes' – paid human traffickers – extorting money from . families in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, and sending home body . parts of their children when they can't pay. In . some cases, he said, the coyotes threaten some children with instant . death if they refuse to cut off fingers and ears of others. 'The people who are bringing these kids are not well-meaning social workers in Birkenstocks with long beards,' he charged. 'These are vicious, hardened, transnational drug cartels.' Obamacare is a Republican hobby horse Cruz rides almost as much as immigration policy. On Saturday he ripped into the White House for pressing the position in court that religious organizations shouldn't be exempt from the health insurance law's requirement to cover abortion-inducing drugs as part of qualifying policies they offer employees. In one case wending its way through the judicial system, the Little Sisters of the Poor are opposing that mandate. ''Let me give you a simple rule of thumb,' he cracked: 'If you're litigating against nuns, you've probably done something wrong.' Rock star: In conservative circles, the 43-year-old Cruz is seen as the Barack Obama of 2016 and signs autographs wherever he appears in public . Near the end of his remarks, Cruz bulked up his arsenal of foreign policy critiques with broadsides about what he called Obama's 'return to Jimmy Carter.' The two presidents, he claimed, advanced 'the same feckless and naive foreign policy, making the world much, much more dangerous.' 'In the last five years we've seen America recede from leadership in the world,' said Cruz, 'and into that vacuum have stepped nations like Iran and Russia and China. And the world is a whole lot more dangerous place.' 'If there's one principle from time immemorial,' he said in a line that Republicans will likely hear in Iowa and New Hampshire, 'it is that bullies and tyrants don't respect weakness or appeasement.' 'And when you have the President of the United States being openly mocked by leaders of nations like Russia and Iran, it is profoundly dangerous.' In one momentary lapse that seemed almost scripted, Cruz transposed Obama and President Ronald Reagan, putting the former in Berlin in April 1987 to challenge the Soviet Union. 'We all remember,' he said, 'when President Obama stood before the Brandenburg Gate and uttered the most important words uttered by any leader in modern times: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall".' After audience members in the front row told him what he had just said, he conceded that it was 'an interesting slip.' Recovering quickly, Cruz asked: 'Can we possibly imagine president Obama uttering such words?' 'Look,' he said, head suddenly bowed. 'it is heartbreaking, the absence of leadership.'
next U.S. president should shutter the the U.S.-Mexico border. 'That's slightly with Barack Obama's administration. The normally Obamacare and the Common Core education standards. 'Education is too important to be left to bureaucrats in Washington,' said Cruz. immigration amnesty -- to send their children the White House for pressing the position in system, the Little Sisters of the Poor are opposing that mandate. ''Let me give you a simple rule of thumb,' he cracked: 'If you're litigating against nuns, you've probably done something