Washington Examiner - Cruz: GOP Sheds Big 'Crocodile Tears' on Same-sex Marriage

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By Barbara Boland

Presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, accused Republicans of doublespeak and shedding "crocodile tears" over Friday's Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.

Many in the Republican party are "popping champagne" after the decision, Cruz said at stops across Iowa Friday, accusing Republicans of issuing deceptive press releases at odds with what they truly believed.

While other Republican candidates are happy to leave the controversial same-sex marriage issue behind, Cruz made a purposeful appeal to evangelicals and others displeased by Friday's ruling, in an apparent effort to garner more votes from Iowa's conservative base. He slammed fellow GOP candidates former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., for tightly-parsed language on "religious freedom" in the wake of the Friday ruling, and criticized Ohio Gov. John Kasich for urging Republicans to ditch the issue altogether.

"As much as there were crocodile tears shed in Washington yesterday on Obamacare, there were even bigger crocodile tears shed in Washington today on marriage," Cruz said, reported local station KSPR.

"This is not a typical moment in American history," he told a crowd of over 100 gathered on a baseball diamond in the small town of Pierson, Iowa, KSPR reported. "The last 24 hours at the United States Supreme Court were among the darkest hours of our nation."

Cruz castigated long-time friend Chief Justice John Roberts. "His decision yesterday and his [Obamacare] decision a couple of years ago violated his office," Cruz told Iowans. "He knows full well that he's changing the law and not following it." Roberts joined the liberal wing of the Court in a Thursday decision upholding Obamacare subsidies.

While rival candidate Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker had previously called for a constitutional amendment to protect marriage, Cruz proposed to voters a constitutional convention amendments could be passed. Cruz proposed the constitutional convention idea again in a National Review op-ed that night, suggesting that judges should have term limits.

"In order to provide the people themselves with a constitutional remedy to the problem of judicial activism and the means for throwing off judicial tyrants, I am proposing an amendment to the United States Constitution that would subject the justices of the Supreme Court to periodic judicial-retention elections," he wrote in the op-ed. "Every justice, beginning with the second national election after his or her appointment, will answer to the American people and the states in a retention election every eight years."

Cruz received his loudest applause when he brought up both ideas with Iowa voters, and inveighed against the unelected Supreme Court judges.

"When they violate the constitutional amendment and the law, the American people can remove them," said Cruz. "We are not governed by a judicial priesthood. We are not governed by judicial tyranny."

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