In a strongly-worded speech to donors at a Tuesday evening fundraiser Rep. Ed Markey’s (D-Mass.) Senate campaign, Vice President Joe Biden (shown) blasted the GOP for submitting to libertarian principles inspired by Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Biden offered praise for Markey — who is campaigning in a special election to secure Secretary of State John Kerry’s former seat — and urged Democrats to stonewall Republicans from obtaining more seats in the Senate.
“Think about this,” the vice president told the crowd. “Have you ever seen a time when two freshman senators are able to cower the bulk of the Republican Party in the Senate? That is not hyperbole.”
In their so-far brief but budding senatorial careers, Cruz and Paul have clashed with many of their Republican colleagues, promoting policies to safeguard the U.S. Constitution while advocating for more transparency in government and greater civil and economic liberties. Referring to Kerry’s former Senate seat, President Obama’s second-in-command insisted that the “last thing” the country needs is an up-and-coming senator who will help reinforce the two Republicans. Biden explained:
It’s a pretty simple proposition: The United States of America, and the state of Massachusetts, does not need another Republican in the Senate. I’m being straight about this. This is not your father’s Republican Party. It really is a fundamentally different party. There’s never been as much distance, at least since I’ve been alive, distance between where the mainstream of the Republican congressional party is and the Democratic Party is. It’s a chasm. It’s a gigantic chasm.
I’m not talking about the character or even the quality of the minds of the people I’m going to mention. But the last thing in the world we need now is someone who will go down to the United States Senate and support Ted Cruz, support the new senator from Kentucky — or the old senator from Kentucky.
Biden also honed in on new gun-control legislation, noting that the 17 senators he “called out,” nine of whom were Republicans, refused to explain why they couldn’t support background check legislation. But almost to a person, he added, the lawmakers were reluctant to take on the two freshman GOP senators.
“I actually said, ‘Are you kidding? These are two freshman,’” Biden asserted. “This is a different party folks. They’re not bad guys, and they’re both very bright guys. And I’m not questioning their motive.”
Along with their general ideologies on the role of government, Cruz’s and Paul’s recent criticisms of the administration over the growing federal surveillance state, the Benghazi attack, and the IRS scandal, among other things, may also have helped stoke Biden’s fury. Though the slew of scandals now haunting the Obama administration has drawn heat from both sides of the political aisle, Cruz and Paul have been especially critical of the White House’s blatant, and frequent, constitutional abuses.
Expounding on the IRS’ targeting of conservative and Tea Party groups, Sen. Paul asserted in a May 16 article for CNN that the IRS has trampled on the Constitution’s expressed guarantee of fairness and due process rules. “Protecting citizens’ right to speak out against their government has always been an integral part of what separates us from tyrannical regimes,” Paul noted in the op-ed. “What the IRS did is how the KGB used to target dissidents. It is how they deal with troublemakers in China. It is not how we treat American citizens. Our Constitution guarantees it.”
Sen. Cruz issued a scathing report in April documenting six failed efforts by President Obama — all taking place since January 2012 — to expand federal authority in government. Come to find out, the entire Supreme Court shot down the president’s attempts, which included a GPS tracking program for citizen’s vehicles, interferences with a church’s selection of ministers, attempts to destroy private property without just compensation, an effort to violate state law whenever the president desires, among others.
“When President Obama’s own Supreme Court nominees join their colleagues in unanimously rejecting his administration’s call for broader federal power six times in just over one year, the inescapable conclusion is that the Obama administration’s view of federal power knows virtually no bounds,” Sen. Cruz affirmed in a statement. “This is a deeply troubling pattern that we will continue to highlight as long as this administration continues seeking ways to expand its power in direct violation of Americans’ constitutional rights.”
With Cruz and Paul continuing to crank up the heat on the White House as they speak out against Obama’s broadly unconstitutional administration, Biden’s verbal assault should come as no surprise. However, as Sen. Cruz’s office noted in a response to the vice president, his mission in Congress is to help nourish the U.S. economy, while protecting the constitutional principles that made this country so great:
Vice President Biden is a good man but he’s out of touch on the economy, the Constitution, and the size and scope of government. Democrats are clearly concerned by Republicans who are waking up and starting to fight, and making an impact. Senator Cruz will keep fighting and doing what he promised Texans. He’s proud to play a role getting the country back to the principles that have made it the wonder of the world.
Photo of Vice President Joe Biden: AP Images
