© Dallas NewsA special kinda stupid...
'We need to abolish the IRS,' he said, calling instead for a flat income tax rate and a user-friendly tax return that can be filed on a postcard.
That verbal gauntlet, thrown as much at a near-century of tax collection as at the Obama administration, was Cruz's biggest applause line.
'By virtue of your being here today,' he jokingly cautioned the nation's largest annual gathering of politically conservative activists, 'tomorrow each and every one of you is going to be audited by the IRS.'
On Wednesday the former IRS official in charge of vetting nonprofit groups that seek tax-exempt charitable status refused, for the second time, to tell a congressional committee what she knew about the scandal.
Lois Lerner claimed the Constitution's Fifth Amendment afforded the right to remain silent, despite a party-line ruling from the House Oversight Committee that she waived that privilege by offering a lengthy opening statement in a May 2013 hearing.
More than 200 right-wing organizations, mostly those linked to the tea party movement, sat in limbo for as many as three years while the IRS dithered and held them up during two election cycles.
The agency is now moving toward new regulations that would allow it to codify the secret rules it used to screen out conservative organizations while quickly green-lighting liberals.
During a Super Bowl Sunday interview with Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly, President Barack Obama insisted that there was 'not even a smidgen of corruption' in his administration related to the controversy.
Channeling a character in the 1987 cult classic movie The Princess Bride, Cruz mocked the president for his choice of words.
'You keep on using this word,' he said, referring to 'smidgen.'
'I do not think it means what you think it means.'
The Conservative Political Action Conference, held near Washington, D.C. in suburban Maryland, will host a cavalcade of right-wing speakers, many of whom are likely to run for president in 2016.
The Conservative Political Action Conference brings together a mishmash of military and foreign policy hawks, evangelical Christians, college Republican activists, campaign strategists and media organizations every year
That line drew a rousing shout from acolytes of former Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a one-time perennial presidential candidate whose libertarian following has picked up with Paul's son, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, right where it left off.
Cruz knows that he must appeal to that subset of the Republican Party, which opposes government surveillance programs as well as centralized control of the U.S. money supply.
He asked everyone in the audience with a cell phone to 'please leave them on. I want to make sure President Obama hears everything I have to say.'
But the Republican party's more traditional conservatives are his meat and potatoes crowd.
Leading off the first day of the CPAC convention, he nearly brought a giant ballroom to its feet with a demand that Congress must 'repeal every single word of Obamacare.'
Piggybacking on conservative disgust with the Obama administration's steady stream of alterations to the Affordable Care Act's legislated series of deadlines, Cruz took a direct pot-shot at the occupant of the Oval Office.
'If you have a president who is picking and choosing which laws to follow and which laws to ignore, you no longer have a president,' said Cruz.
Pennsylvania Sen. Patrick Toomey followed him at the podium with a similar slam. 'We need to stand up to a president who don't think the laws of America apply to him,' Toomey told the crowd.
CPAC's attendees are disproportionately young, with College Republicans chapters and church youth groups appearing Thursday morning by the hundreds.
'Millions have lost hope,' Cruz told them, 'because under president Obama, the American dream is harder and harder to achieve. ... If you were to sit down and design a plan to hammer the living daylights out of young people, you couldn't do better than the Obama economic plan.'
Stage a political coup against your minority leader and whip and ask members of the House, both Republican and Democrat to do the same against John Boehner. Then help the GOP House members who have introduced articles of impeachment against Obama topple Eric Cantor, as well. However, another good place to start would be owning up to the truth, as reported by the Grace Commission in 1984. The income tax is tribute paid to the Federal Reserve, the IMF and, ultimately, the Vatican (according to a World Bank whistleblower). However, that would take courage, not political grandstanding.