An early draft of Ted Cruz's presidential campaign stump speech

"Unhappy With a Moderate Jeb Bush, Conservatives Aim to Unite Behind an Alternative" — New York Times headline

"[Ted Cruz] doesn't just match up with [the activist base of the GOP] on policy, he matches up with their brashness, their yearning for someone who loves the taste of blood in his mouth." — Ben Domenech

"[In order to win the Republican nomination, Cruz] needs a way to make his rivals seem a lot more ideologically suspect to primary voters than they look right now... [He needs to turn] any kind of tepidity and trimming by his opponents...into a sign of their ideological untrustworthiness, their secret RINO spirit." — Ross Douthat

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Shortly after Ted Cruz announced at Liberty University that he intends to run for president, his staff began the process of transforming his remarks into a campaign stump speech. Here is an early draft.

Thank you for coming today, my fellow Americans. God bless you.

I'd like to tell you a story this morning. It's a story about the promise of America — an indispensable nation, a unique nation, an exceptional nation, a shining city on a hill, a land of liberty, of freedom and opportunity, of hopes and dreams, the greatest darn country in the history of the human race, a place God cares about more than any other nation in the world — today, 240 years ago, or ever, from the dawn of time until the end of time. Am I right? You bet I am.

I want to ask each of you to imagine millions of courageous conservatives, all across America, rising up to say in unison to say, "We demand our liberty."

Imagine this America with me.

Instead of economic stagnation and small businesses going bankrupt, like they do in places like Wisconsin and New Jersey, imagine small businesses growing and prospering and hiring young people for a minimum wage kept nice and low. Imagine young people coming out of school with four, five, six job offers — and all of them together adding up to a salary that will make ends meet and make it possible for them to pay off hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loans.

Imagine in 2017 a new president signing legislation repealing every word of ObamaCare, except for the part about not dropping people because of pre-existing conditions. Imagine market-based health care reform that is personal and portable and affordable, and that gives you complete choice over who your doctor will be, and a free lunch, and allows doctors to make enormous salaries and encourages boundless medical innovations while not requiring higher taxes, or any taxes.

I like the sound of that. How about you? [Pause for whoops and hollers.]

Instead of a tax code that crushes innovation, that imposes burdens on families struggling to pay the bills, imagine a flat tax that makes poor people pay more and millionaires and billionaires pay far, far less. Because freedom, and liberty, and America.

Imagine every American filing his or her taxes on a postcard. Imagine abolishing the IRS and having all those postcards ending up in a giant room where they will sit and collect dust and be forgotten — which is as it should be. Because government is far too big and burdensome. Except for Social Security, which will never be touched as long as I'm in charge, and defense spending, which needs to go way, way up.

Instead of the lawlessness of the president's unconstitutional executive amnesty, imagine a president who finally, finally, finally secures the borders, rounds up the illegal immigrants, ships them back to where they came from, and dumps them in a big ol' ditch in the Mexican desert while broadcasting through a bullhorn, "Hasta la vista, baby!" and "Don't let the door hit you on the way out!"

This makes me very different than some of my friends in the Republican Party. Jeb Bush, for example, has sometimes said some nice things about immigrants. I have, too. But only about my father, who fled Cuba to escape Fidel Castro's Communist dictatorship. He taught me to love freedom, and liberty, and America.

Marco Rubio even seemed ready to help pass an immigration reform bill in the months after the 2012 election. That didn't go so well. [Pause for laughter and applause.] You want to know why? Because conservatives stood up and said, "We believe in freedom and opportunity — but, duh, only for immigrants who came here in the past, not the ones here now."

Instead of a federal government that works to undermine our values, imagine a federal government that takes a stand in defense of the moral and religious views of a rapidly shrinking segment of the American electorate by upholding the sacrament of marriage and inviting heterosexual couples to get married in the National Cathedral in Washington where the federal government can oversee and verify that the sacrament had been properly administered.

Instead of a government that works to undermine our Second Amendment rights, that seeks to ban our ammunition and our flamethrowers, imagine a federal government that protects the right of all (so far law-abiding) Americans to keep and bear and brandish and use arms in self-defense in private and public spaces, at their own discretion, any time they damn well please.

Instead of a federal government that seeks to dictate the school curriculum through Common Core, imagine a truly conservative school policy — one that gives every child in America a quality education, and a pony, merely by allowing parents to withdraw their kids from the public schools and leave them to crumble and decay from neglect and lack of funding. Which is as it should be. Because freedom, and liberty, and America.

Instead of a president who boycotts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, imagine a president who stands unapologetically with the nation of Israel on every issue, at every moment, in every circumstance, without even the least bit of independent thinking and reflection.

Instead of a president who, like Barack Obama and my friend Rand Paul, believes the United States should be as weak as possible, imagine a strong America, an America that will stop apologizing and start fighting, so we can finally defeat Islamic terrorism.

Now, I know all of this sounds difficult. But since the dawn of this country, America has enjoyed God's providential blessing at every stage of its history. And I believe God isn't done with America yet. No, siree! God has plans, and we're a part of them. Heck, we are them! Whatever we do, God willed it. Yes, even when Americans elected Barack Obama, and re-elected him. This was God's will — to bring us low, so he could bring us high — to prepare the way for brighter days, to prepare the way for…me, and my campaign for president. I stand humbly before you today as a man utterly certain that he and he alone has been chosen by the creator of the universe to do His bidding in rising to the leadership of the greatest nation on the greatest planet in the greatest solar system in the greatest galaxy in all of creation.

It is time for truth. It is time for liberty. It is time to let the rich get richer, and to let the poor struggle on without help, like food stamps, as the poor were meant to do. That's what God wants. That's what I know America wants, too.

Follow me and we will get back to the principles that have made this country great. We will replace all the burned out lightbulbs in that city on a hill so it can shine again as God's beacon to all nations. And we'll use good old-fashioned incandescent bulbs, too, not those crappy new-fangled, tree-hugging, government-mandated fluorescent or LED bulbs. (Ask Jeb Bush which president is responsible for that nonsense.)

Thank you, and God bless you.