A trio of GOP prospects for the 2016 presidential campaign rallied with 700 Republicans Saturday night in Iowa, with messages sometimes exclusively focused beyond this November’s election.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz opened his speech at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition banquet with a shot at the woman expected to seek the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2016.
“In the news today, somebody else was stopped climbing the White House fence,” Cruz said. “They said: ‘I’m sorry Hillary. Not yet.”
At the end of his speech, Cruz said Republican victories in 2014 set the stage for a Republican president who, in 2017, will repeal the Affordable Care Act. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal offered the audience a long critique of the Obama presidency, too.
“There are many things that worry me about President Obama and what he is doing to our country…but a lot of that could be reversed with a conservative leader in D.C.,” Jindal said.
Jindal and Cruz were scheduled speakers at the event, but Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan also stopped by after he appeared at a private fundraiser in Des Moines for Joni Ernst, the GOP candidate for U.S. Senate in Iowa. Ryan, too, hinted that Republican victories in 2014 could be a harbinger for 2016.
“The world is watching, which way will America go,” Ryan said. “Will this be eight years of a pause of going in the wrong direction, or an exception, or will this be a trend of things to come? Posterity’s being made right now.”
Listen to all three speeches here.