Presidential campaign visits North Idaho

COEUR d’ALENE — At one point during his Saturday afternoon visit to Coeur d’Alene, Sen. Ted Cruz mistakenly called Idaho “Iowa.”

With the Idaho primaries approaching Tuesday, the Republican presidential candidate quickly corrected himself by stating he hopes to repeat last month’s Iowa caucus victory in the Gem State, and several thousand supporters expressed their support for that goal.

At least 3,100 people from Idaho, Montana and Eastern Washington attended the campaign rally, held at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds, event organizers said. The Jacklin Building was filled to capacity (around 1,600 people), so about 1,500 remained outside in the rain.

“The energy and enthusiasm we are seeing here in Idaho is really what we are seeing all across the country, which is that Republicans are coming together, they are uniting behind our campaign,” Cruz told the media following the rally. “Sixty-five percent of Republicans recognize Donald Trump is not the best candidate to go head-to-head with Hillary Clinton. The odds are too high he’d lose; we’d lose the Supreme Court for a generation, we’d lose the Bill of Rights, we’d lose the Senate.”

Cruz told the crowd three issues are key to this November’s election: jobs, freedom and security.

He said the heart of the economy is not Washington D.C. or New York City. The heart of the economy, he said, is small businesses all across the country.

“If you want to unleash incredible economic growth, then lift the boot of the federal government off the backs of the necks of small businesses,” Cruz said.

When he spoke about freedom, he said the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia underscored the stakes of the upcoming election, leaving the government “one left-wing justice away from a radical five-justice liberal majority” that will take away religious liberty and erase the Second Amendment from the Bill of Rights.

He said any justice he would nominate for the Supreme Court would be faithful to the law and would “vigorously” protect the Bill of Rights.

On the issue of security, Cruz said Trump had announced recently that he would be neutral between Israel and the Palestinians, which elicited hundreds of boos from the crowd. Cruz said if he were elected president, he has no intention of being neutral and America “will stand unapologetic with the nation of Israel.”

He added that he would not attempt to weaken ISIS, but instead would destroy them.

“America has been reluctant to use military force,” he said. “We are slow to anger. But if and when military force is necessary, we should use overwhelming force, kill the enemy and then get the heck out.”

Cruz said he is the only one who can beat Trump, and has beat him in seven states during the primaries. The votes were still being tallied for Kansas, Maine and Kentucky during his Coeur d’Alene visit, but he was confident as he announced his campaign held an estimated 50 percent of the votes in Kansas and Maine.

He said Republicans are realizing they need to come together because if Trump wins, Clinton wins.

“The scream that you hear, the howl that comes from Washington D.C., is the utter terror at what ‘We the People’ are doing together,” he told the Coeur d’Alene crowd as they howled with cheers.

Sen. Steve Vick, R-Dalton Gardens, was among several local politicians who attended the rally. He compared his own father and Cruz’s father, describing them as two men who started with nothing, believing that the opportunities in America were limitless. He said they believed that through hard work and perseverance, anything was possible — they believed in the American Dream. And they raised sons who share that dream, Vick said.

“I want to leave my kids and grandkids that dream,” Vick said. “It is at this critical time in history that we need a leader who has proven that he is willing to stand alone if necessary, who is fearless when needed, a constitutional scholar who not only knows what the Constitution says, believes what the Constitutions says, but he has successfully defended your constitutional rights numerous times ... We need a president who finds no need to be crass, vulgar and rude — Ted Cruz is that person.”