No, I’m not talking about the late Ralph Miliband, father of Labour party leader Ed Miliband; I’m talking about Rafael Cruz, father of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the de facto leader of the Republican party.
But the elder Cruz wasn’t speaking 50 or 60 years ago; he was speaking last Friday at a Republican dinner in Colorado.
A Cuban immigrant and a pastor, Cruz claimed that Obama has pledged to “side with the Muslims” if “the winds shift,” prompting a reaction from an audience member.
“He is Muslim,” shouted a woman.
“[Sen. John] McCain couldn’t say that because it wasn’t politically correct,” Cruz responded. “It is time we stop being politically correct!”
He also said that the Affordable Care Act denies and rations coverage for elderly patients while claiming that the law includes “suicide counseling.”
“As a matter of fact, one of the things in Obamacare is that for the elderly, every five years you must have end-of-life counseling,” Cruz said. “Translation: suicide counseling.”
When talk turned to his son’s recent 21-hour talkathon on the Senate floor, Cruz blasted Republicans for voting with Democrats.
“What is sad is the RINOs who went running to vote with Harry Reid,” he said, according to Politico. “I know I am in a Republican Party meeting. If you want to throw tomatoes at me, throw tomatoes at me, but unfortunately, you cannot say that the Republican Party is without blame. We have too many RINOs in the Republican Party.”
The term “RINO” stands for “Republican in name only.”
A spokeswoman for Sen. Cruz emphasized to Politico that the remarks came in “Mr. Cruz’s speech.”
“Senator Cruz has been in D.C. fully focused on the effort to defund Obamacare,” she said.
It wasn’t the first time the elder Cruz made incendiary remarks before a conservative audience. During a speech in August at the Family Leadership Summit in Ames, Iowa, he argued that “homosexual marriage” is a ploy to supplant God with government. In that same fiery speech, he also claimed that the Affordable Care Act will deny treatment to elderly patients.
Update: To complete the parallel with The Daily Mail and the Milibands: the conservative National Review reported on the close political relationship between Cruz the father and Cruz the son.
