One of the highlights of Ted Cruz’s successful run for Senate last year was getting to know his father, Rafael Cruz. Rafael is a fantastic speaker and pours his heart into every speech he gives. The packed house at the Downtown Houston Pachyderm Club yesterday got a chance to see this for themselves.
The thing that makes Rafael’s story engaging is his personal history – fighting alongside Fidel Castro, being tortured and thrown into prison, feeling betrayed by Castro, coming to the US with no money and no ability to speak English, building a successful business, and 55 years after leaving Cuba seeing his son sworn in as a United States Senator. As Rafael says, only in America!
And that is the fundamental part of any speech he gives – only in America! He is a proud supporter of our country and thinks that people who bash us should be forced to go and live in Cuba for a few months. Rafael reminded us that our country was founded by people seeking the freedom to worship God as they choose and that pastors were instrumental in the revolution against the British. He thinks that it is time for pastors to once again rise to the forefront and stop hiding behind their pulpits and 501(c)3 status and start leading the way again.
Rafael is dead set against socialism and communism. He related the story of the first year Pilgrims, when they tried communism and almost starved to death. He also reminded the crowd that Cuba once had a great medical system but communism had destroyed it. He urged us to go to DontFundObamacare.com and sign the petition. Over 1 million, one-hundred thousand people have already signed it as of this morning.
Rafael had two points that he said were the cause of the problems that we currently have in the U.S.:
- Political Correctness
- Complacency
On Political Correctness, he stated that McCain and Romney lost because they were unwilling to fight. And on Complacency, he said that the church stood silent when prayer was removed from our schools and look at the results: teen pregnancy rates are up, dropouts are up, vandalism is up. And then he said the church remained silent when the Supreme Court legalized abortion and as a result 55 million babies have been killed. He then mentioned the two recent Supreme Court rulings on homosexuality and said that once again, the church is silent.
Rafael urged the crowd to stand up and fight for what you believe in. To reach the Latino community, he said that Republicans need to focus on getting Latinos to vote on their convictions, not on their traditions.
All in all, it was a wonderful speech. The crowd at the DHPC gave Rafael a rousing standing ovation at his conclusion. If you get the opportunity to hear him speak, you should make it a point to be there – you won’t be disappointed.
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Who else would like to see Rafael join his son in the US Senate, representing Texas?