Cruz: US ‘Gone’ If Texas Turns Blue In 2024
If Texas is no longer conservative, what hope does the rest of the country have? That’s the legitimate question posed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) who flatly declared the U.S. will be “gone” if Democrats flip the state to blue in 2024.
Democrats are raising the alarm that they are prepared to spend heavily to swing the Lone Star State their way next year.
Cruz noted that he only won his 2018 Senate race against Beto O’Rourke, not what most consider a formidable candidate, by only 200,000 votes. That came after Democrats shelled out tens of millions of dollars, which dramatically increased turnout from their base.
He cited Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) declaration that he prioritizes ridding the body of Cruz in next year’s election.
The senator said his opponents will “spend $100 million the next year trying to flip Texas blue. And I gotta say, if they succeed, if Texas turns blue, the country’s gone.”
Cruz added that the status of Ohio or Florida will be nearly irrelevant if Texas is no longer a red state as Democrats hope.
Democrats including Rep. Colin Allred and state Sen. Roland Gutierrez are battling in the primary for next year’s Senate contest. Cruz expects the ultimate race, regardless of his opponent, to be a “firefight.”
The Texas Republican knows he will be a target because, as he likes to assert, besides former President Donald Trump, there is no one Democrats hate more than him. He told Fox News that it is something he wears “as a badge of honor.”
It is noteworthy that Cruz was far outspent in his 2018 showdown with O’Rourke.
Early figures now show that Allred, the most prominent possible Democratic opponent, bested Cruz by almost $2 million in second quarter fundraising this year.
Texas, like virtually all of the South, was reliably Democratic from the end of the Civil War through the 1970s. The Republican wave that swept the region also washed over Texas, and it helped that two presidents hailed from the state.
One or the other Bush was on every statewide ballot but one from 1980 to 2004.
For reference, Democrats have not carried the state in a presidential election since 1976, won a U.S. Senate race since 1988 or had a gubernatorial candidate elected since 1990. Cruz is right.
