Ted Cruz appeared before the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC) on Thursday looking to shore up his national-security credentials, which have increasingly come under attack as his rivalry with Florida senator Marco Rubio has intensified.
“Whether or not we are willing to acknowledge it, our enemies are at war with us, and I believe this nation needs a wartime president to defend it,” Cruz told the crowd gathered at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. Cruz said his foreign policy would consist of speaking the truth about radical Islam, defending Israel, and defeating our enemies. “We need a president who will destroy ISIS, support Israel, and shred the Iranian nuclear deal,” he said. If elected, he promised to move the American embassy in Israel, the location of which has been a major point of contention, from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem on his first day in office.
Along with the American-Israeli alliance, national security is the issue of chief concern to the RJC, which was founded by casino magnate Sheldon Adelson in 1985. Cruz has come under fire for his stance on American intervention in Syria and on the National Security Agency’s metadata program. He told Bloomberg earlier this week that the U.S. has “no dog in the Syria fight,” leading the Wall Street Journal editorial page to compare his view on intervention in Syria — he supports an air campaign but is against committing ground troops — to President Obama’s strategy of leading from behind.
Cruz and Rubio have butted heads over Cruz’s support for the USA Freedom Act, which limited the NSA’s ability to collect telephone metadata, and which has become the subject of an anti-Cruz ad funded by a Rubio supporter in Iowa.
Before his election in 2012, Cruz had never served in elected office, and, like Rubio, he’s had to contend with concerns about his lack of experience. On Thursday, RJC president Matt Brooks asked him about the issue. Barack Obama, Cruz responded, has not been a bad president because he lacked experience when he was elected. “Last I checked, he won two presidential elections,” Cruz said. Rather, he argued, he’s been a bad president because “he’s an unmitigated socialist who won’t defend the United States of America.”