Glenn talked about how thrilled he was to be in Texas - especially considering voters appear to be voting on principle not party politics. In Massachusetts, noted liar Elizabeth Warren is somehow still leading in polls despite being caught in the humiliating ‘Cherokee’ fib. It’s a different story in Texas, where voters are going after the GOP establishment. Glenn interviewed candidate Ted Cruz on radio today for an update on his race.
Transcript of the interview is below:
GLENN: 150 hours to go before the very first Restoring Love event and that is Freedom Works. Freedom Works is having their Free PAC event and one of the guys who is going to be there is Ted Cruz. He is running for Senate here in Dallas, Texas. And what is the latest poll, Stu?
STU: The last one I saw was Cruz up 5, I believe.
GLENN: Ted Cruz is on the phone with us now. Hi, Ted. Ted, are you there? Ted's not there.
STU: Now he's only up 4 after that.
GLENN: 3, 2 ‑‑
STU: Oh, gosh, it's slipping away.
GLENN: 1. Ted's gone.
STU: David Dewhurst has won. Wow, it happened that first.
GLENN: His internal poll says he's up by 9 points.
STU: Yeah, he had one that he released an internal poll was up 9. Then I think I saw another poll released after that that had him up 5, which was huge. I mean, people ‑‑ this will be one of the biggest upsets in all of this Tea Party stuff that's gone on over the past few years.
GLENN: This is the biggest, this is the biggest one.
PAT: My internal poll, the one in my head has him up by 47 points.
STU: Oh, my gosh.
GLENN: Does it really?
PAT: 47 points.
GLENN: Yeah. Huh.
STU: Wow.
PAT: In fact, he just won. We've just declared Ted Cruz the winner of Texas.
GLENN: I'm so proud of Texas. You know, I feel the opposite of Texas that I do about Massachusetts. I think what's her face, you know, the Indian squaw, what's her name?
STU: Oh, yeah.
PAT: Elizabeth Warren.
STU: Elizabeth Warren.
GLENN: She's winning. She's up in all the polls in Massachusetts.
PAT: She is?
GLENN: Yeah. She's up?
PAT: She's up?
GLENN: Yeah. In Massachusetts.
PAT: Oh, my gosh.
GLENN: Massachusetts, you get what you deserve.
PAT: That is unreal.
GLENN: You get what you deserve.
PAT: Yep.
GLENN: The difference here is in Texas they are not going to put Dewhurst in. Let me go to Ted Cruz now. Are you there, Ted?
CRUZ: Good morning, Glenn. Great to be with you.
GLENN: What is your ‑‑ what does the average poll say? We know your internal is up 9. We've seen 7 and 8. Do you know what the average is?
CRUZ: Yeah. Our internal poll has us up 9, 49‑40%. There have been two independent polls. One had us up 91/2, the other had us up 5.
GLENN: That would be sweet. What do you attribute this to? Because I saw the ‑‑ I saw the ad. I saw one of the ads against you on television. It's like ‑‑ it was like, "Ted Cruz is a lying liar that lies all the time."
PAT: And he's a lawyer who lies. That's even worse.
GLENN: He's a liar.
PAT: A lying lawyer who lies.
GLENN: I saw one ‑‑ I saw one of the worst attack ads I've ever seen. I didn't even hear it. It was just on and I look up and it was like, "Ted Cruz killed a bunch of people."
PAT: (Laughing.)
GLENN: I don't think that's true.
CRUZ: Look, I mean, it's ‑‑ at the Republican state convention I joked that by the end of this David Dewhurst was going to tell you that I want to eat your children.
PAT: Mmm‑hmmm.
CRUZ: What I didn't understand is that that wasn't a joke. That is, in fact, just how low they're going to stoop. I mean, they are pulling out all of ‑‑ all of the guns. They're flooding the airwaves.
GLENN: Big time.
CRUZ: With false negative attack ads. You know what, I think those, though, are actually rebounding on them and hurting them. People are tired of the lies and the false character attack ads. You know, we've kept our focus on policy, not on ‑‑
GLENN: Can I tell you something? I think that's the secret with Mitt Romney right now, too. Mitt Romney is running a very positive campaign. He's holding his feet to the fire but he's like, "You know..." it's almost like you're dismissing these guys because they really are. It's time for them to be dismissed. Go away. Go away. It doesn't matter what you say. Oh, really? "Yeah, I eat children at night, you know, for dinner as well as snacks. And my wife yells about it all the time." So anyway, thank you for that cute little argument but here's what we're going to do. And it seems to be working.
Let me ask you a tough question. You have described Chief Justice John Roberts as a mentor and a friend.
CRUZ: Right. I have. And which of many tough questions is coming next?
STU: (Laughing.)
GLENN: How are you feeling about his ruling there?
CRUZ: Look, it is heartbreaking. I was shocked. I was incredibly disappointed. You know, in the debate Tuesday, the moderator asked, knowing what you know now, would you, would you vote to confirm Chief Justice Roberts. And I tell you it was painful that I had to answer, no, I would not. Because I think the Supreme Court's decision, I think the Court abdicated its responsibility.
GLENN: So what led ‑‑ in your opinion you know, you describe him as a friend. There is a story out that he changed it at the last minute and it's well documented. I mean, the whole thing is written as if he is on the other side.
CRUZ: Right.
GLENN: So he changed it at the last minute. They said he came with red eyes, he really looked distraught while this was going on. Kennedy was pissed at him.
CRUZ: Yeah.
GLENN: What do you ‑‑ you know, in your uninformed, or maybe you have information. In your uninformed opinion, speculate a little bit: What do you think happened?
CRUZ: I have no reason to doubt those reports, and unfortunately what I think happened is I think President Obama's threats to the Court worked. And I think what happened was I think he got nervous about the Court striking down ObamaCare and made effectively a political decision ‑‑
PAT: Wow.
CRUZ: ‑‑ not to do so because he thought it would save the credibility of the Court. I think ironically it did exactly the opposite. I think this decision is going to go down in history as a Cravenly political decision and I think it is undermining the credibility of the court.
GLENN: Oh, big time.
CRUZ: Their job is to enforce the Constitution, not to be political players.
PAT: And if that's your opinion of why he did what he did, then you're doing the right thing in saying that you wouldn't vote to confirm him. Based on what you know now. That's what it's all B. It's about upholding the Constitution, not whether or not this Court has, you know, a legacy.
CRUZ: Well, and that's why they're given life tenure is to make decisions that might be politically unpopular. They might be criticized for. That's the entire purpose of life tenure and I think when they worry about the political consequences of the immediate moment and they don't stand up and do their job, it undermines the entire reason we have the Court in the first place.
GLENN: So what part ‑‑ and I'm asking this because I want to know about your character. What part of John Roberts' character would lead you to that conclusion that he made a political decision? What part of his character or what did you see that would make you say, "Yeah, that's probably, that's probably what he did"? Because that's quite a charge to make that a guy who was in the Supreme Court, is a Supreme Court justice, chief justice, would do that.
CRUZ: Look, I mean, I'm not claiming to have had any inkling of this beforehand. I mean, I was shocked at the outcome. It was not something that had entered my mind as remotely a possibility. But, you know, I base that on reading the opinion. The opinion to me reads like a political opinion. The reasoning trying to contort the statutes and turn it into a tax. Listen, I've read a lot of judicial opinions and it's an opinion that's trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and the only reasoning that makes sense is it is he was nervous about the outcome if he actually ruled on what was obvious, that it wasn't a tax because they said it wasn't a tax because they weren't willing to pay the political consequences of calling it a tax. And I think, you know, the gymnastics to turn it into something it wasn't, the only explanation I can come up with because a political outcome.
STU: And, of course, it never would have passed if it was called a tax, which makes it that much more frustrating. Let me ‑‑ go ahead.
CRUZ: And that's where the Constitution where the framers knew what they were doing. There's a reason taxes are treated differently. When politicians vote for taxes, they tend to get thrown out of office. And the framers understood passing taxes aren't popular and if congress can pass something, not call it a tax and let the Court magically turn it into a tax, that removes one of the most significant constraints on government power there is.
GLENN: Wow, I never thought of it that way.
STU: And that, you want to talk about judicial activism.
GLENN: Yeah, that is.
STU: That is the ultimate. I mean, he changed the actual bill. It's like he changed the text of it retroactively to make it constitutional. I mean, it's just ‑‑
CRUZ: Right, right.
STU: I could whine about that all day. Let me ask you, Ted, about illegal immigration for a second. You ‑‑ there's a story in the, I believe it was the Houston Chronicle that cited a speech from David Dewhurst in which he seemed to back amnesty. What happened the next day on David Dewhurst's website.
CRUZ: No, that's exactly right. So to back up a little bit, in the first televised debate we had in the runoff, Dewhurst looked in the cameras and told everyone he did not support amnesty, he has never backed amnesty, never backed the guest worker program. The next day the Chronicle broke the story that in 2007 he had given a speech where he called for amnesty for every single illegal alien currently in the United States today. And what was astonishing is the Dewhurst amnesty program was broader than Barack Obama's amnesty program. Obama's amnesty just extends to kids who came here illegally. Dewhurst wanted to give a guest worker program to every single person illegally in this country today. And the source of this was the written text of a speech he had given that was on his official lieutenant governor website. So when this broke, obviously a lot of reporters began calling, began looking at the story. And several days later Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst ordered the stay employees who maintain the website to take his speech down, to delete it and, in fact, to delete every speech he had ever given as lieutenant governor. And, you know, it strikes me as remarkable that he is literally trying to whitewash his record and delete his record.
PAT: Wow.
CRUZ: Because he wants to hide from the fact that he advanced an amnesty program broader than Barack Obama's.
PAT: Wow.
GLENN: The election is next week. I know you're going to be at Free PAC.
CRUZ: Yes.
GLENN: This, a week from Thursday ‑‑ I'm sorry. It's not next week. It's a week from, is it Tuesday?
PAT: Yeah.
CRUZ: Well, it's actually both.
PAT: The 31st.
CRUZ: So early voting in Texas starts on Monday of next week, and all next week Monday through Friday is early voting. So any Texan can vote any day next week and then election day itself is the next Tuesday, July 31st. And I'll tell you, to win we've got to do two things: One, we need conservatives to show up. I would ask every one of your listeners in Texas please, please, please come out and early vote next week or vote on the and Ist. But number two, Dewhurst is running millions of dollars of false character attack. We desperately need to raise the money to stay on TV. I'll tell you every time you've had me on the radio, hundreds of your listeners have gone to TedCruz.org, have contributed, hundreds of Texans and hundreds of conservatives nationally because every penny we raise goes to being up on television and radio to respond to these attacks. And we're leading statewide but if he's able to dump millions in attacks and we can't respond, what he wants to do is buy this race and I think that would be very, very dangerous and we desperately need the funding to respond.
GLENN: Well, I will tell you this: This race is probably the biggest sign of the Tea Party's power and the freedom movement. And if Texas can't do it, nobody can do it. Ted, best of luck and we'll see you next week at Free PAC.
CRUZ: I look forward to it. And thank you for your incredible support, Glenn. And you know what? You're right. If we win, the national headlines will be the Tea Party is transforming the country. And if we lose, every reporter will point to it as proof that the Tea Party is dead and it will hurt lovers of liberty across the country.
GLENN: Big time.
CRUZ: So I am pleased to stand shoulder to shoulder with you and lovers of liberty across Texas and across the country.
GLENN: All right.