Sen. Ted Cruz could hardly have picked a more fitting time and place to announce his presidential candidacy.
The Texas Republican skyrocketed onto the national scene in 2012 vowing to repeal the healthcare law. He propelled forward an Obamacare-fueled government shutdown in his first year in Congress. He has aided GOP gains in Congress by keeping the anti-Obamacare message front and center.
And he once vowed to speak against Obamacare from the Senate floor “until I am no longer able to stand.”
Now Cruz is running for president — and he made it official on Obamacare’s fifth anniversary at a school that sued over the law the day it passed.
“Five years ago today the president signed Obamacare into law,” Cruz told students Monday morning at Liberty University in Virginia. “Within hours, Liberty University went to court filing a lawsuit to stop that failed law.”
He was referring to Liberty’s challenge of the law’s individual mandate and requirement for employers to provide workers with insurance. That lawsuit was eventually tossed, but the Supreme Court has ruled on a separate challenge of the birth control requirement.
Cruz isn’t the only presidency-seeking Republican to oppose the 2010 health care law. In fact, it’s a position all the GOP candidates are almost certain to share. In April last year, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal unveiled a a free-market alternative plan that would fully repeal Obamacare — and he has vocally criticized Republicans in Congress for not going far enough in their own proposals to replace the law.
Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who currently leads the field of potential candidates, has rejected the law’s offer of Medicaid expansion and even former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who’s viewed as the most moderate of the bunch, recently called the health care law “a monstrosity.”
But perhaps more than any other likely candidate, Cruz has made opposition to the Affordable Care Act a core part of his political identity. He’s spent his two and a half years in Congress working to undermine it, even alienating some establishment Republicans in fall 2013 when he and other conservatives refused to vote for a government-funding plan unless it defunded the health care law.
At the time, Cruz helped fire up the resistance by delivering an overnight tirade against the law from the Senate floor. The move wasn’t technically a filibuster, but Cruz gained widespread attention for his speech, which lasted more than 21 hours.
In the end, Congress passed a plan that gained Republicans virtually no ground on the law, and the GOP’s approval ratings plummeted afterwards. But that kind of opposition to the healthcare law could now help Cruz as he tries to win the support of social conservatives and Tea Party-oriented voters.
“He’s done more than any other senator to advance that agenda,” John Ullyot, a Republican strategist.
Many Republican primary voters are still enticed by candidates’ promises to repeal and replace the law they’ve now hated for five years, and Cruz may know best how to tap into that sentiment. He’s being careful to keep the issue fresh on voters’ minds, introducing a bill in February to repeal the whole law.
“For primary voters who are most interested in repealing Obamacare, Ted Cruz is going to have a real leg up because he’s done more than any other senator to advance that agenda,” Ullyot said.
Cruz and other Republicans are now pinning their repeal hopes on winning the presidency next year, as President Obama has said he won’t sign a bill doing away with his signature health law. Cruz used his announcement Monday to signal he’ll make it a central issue in the 2016 campaign, making the health law the first specific policy he mentioned during the 30-minute speech.
“Instead of the joblessness, instead of the millions forced into part-time work, instead of the millions who have lost their health insurance, have lost their doctors, have faced skyrocketing health insurance premiums — imagine in 2017 a new president signing legislation repealing every word of Obamacare,” Cruz said.
“Imagine health care reform that keeps government out of the way between you and your doctor and makes health insurance personal and portable and affordable,” he continued.
