Ted Cruz targets Obama and Republicans in remarks

Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, railed against the Obama administration for taking a pass on the Paris Unity Rally Sunday, when other heads of state had managed to make the trip after the terrorist attack last week.

"How sad was it in the streets of Paris, as 40 world leaders walked down the street, absent was the United States of America? Where was the president? Where was the vice president? Where was the secretary of state? Where was the attorney general, who'd been there moments before, but chose to get on a plane and fly back home?" Cruz asked the audience at the Heritage Foundation's policy conference.

The Texas Senator declared that an administration "unwilling to utter the words 'radical Islamic terrorism'" could not "win a way against radical Islamic terrorism," adding, that the attack had not been carried out by "a bunch of ticked-off Presbyterians."

"We will not effectively combat what we are facing until we acknowledge what we are facing," Cruz said at the conservative think tank.

The president wasn't Cruz's only target, though. He turned his attention to governing and to his fellow Republicans--who now control both houses of Congress--and he reminded them to stick with their plan to repeal Obamacare.

"Two months ago you would have seen Republican candidates say we would fight tooth and nail to repeal Obamacare," Mr. Cruz said of the oft-repeated GOP campaign promise in the midterm elections . "Yet now when the topics come up at times you hear crickets chirping. It ain't complicated. We need to do what we said we would do."

After the speech ended, other media outlets reported that Cruz spoke with reporters and took a question about 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney's interest in another run for the White House. "There are some who believe that the path to Republican victory is to run to the mushy middle, is to blur distinctions," Mr. Cruz said. "I think," he continued, "recent history has shown us that's not a path to success. It doesn't work. It's a failed electoral strategy."