The debate following Justice Antonin Scalia’s death has given Ted Cruz a sharp new line of attack on his presidential rival: Donald Trump would ruin the Supreme Court.
Under a Trump presidency, Americans would lose their gun rights and religious liberty and see abortion rights dramatically expanded, Cruz said Monday morning on Fox News. That’s because Trump would certainly nominate a liberal to the bench, instead of the conservative that Americans need to preserve their fundamental rights, according to Cruz.
“We are one justice away from losing the second amendment,” Cruz said. “If you vote for Donald Trump, we will see the second amendment written out of the Constitution because one liberal justice will do that, and we will also see our religious liberty taken away.”
While polls currently show Cruz in second place ahead of Saturday’s South Carolina primary, he’s trailing Trump by around 20 points. The Texas Republican is trying hard to convince voters in the deeply conservative state that Trump isn’t the conservative he’s claiming to be.
Cruz, who served as Texas’ solicitor general and has also argued cases before the Supreme Court, has centered much of his campaign around promises to follow the law and preserve constitutionally protected rights.
The weekend death of Scalia, one of the court’s most reliable conservatives, has opened up questions about who the next president would nominate to fill his spot. Cruz has seized on that uncertainty to present himself as the best-qualified candidate to pick a conservative for the bench — and argued that Trump would be as likely as Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders to nominate a liberal.
“The time for the circus is over, the stakes are serious,” Cruz said, calling Trump a “very talented entertainer.” Instead, he said, “We need a serious nominee who will defend the Constitution.”
Cruz has noted that over the course of his career, Trump has given money to Democrats, including Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Chuck Schumer. Trump has also mentioned that he would consider nominating to the court someone like his sister, a federal judge in New Jersey who once helped strike that state’s partial-birth abortion ban.
“He has been a liberal his entire life,” Cruz said. “For 60 years of his life, he has described himself as very, very pro-choice.”
Abortion rights are another big issue at stake with Scalia’s vacancy. If a liberal justice replaces Scalia, the court would be likely to strike down new state restrictions on abortion passed over the last few years. One big case challenging Texas abortion clinic regulations is set to be heard on March 2.
Towards that end, Cruz also launched a new campaign ad on Sunday highlighting Trump’s past support for Planned Parenthood, the country’s largest abortion provider.
At the Republican presidential debate Saturday night, Cruz said the Scalia vacancy dramatically raises the stakes of this year’s election.
“The Senate needs to stand strong and say ‘We’re not gonna give up the U.S. Supreme Court for a generation by allowing Barack Obama to make one more liberal appointee,'” Cruz said.
