Cruz also defended his views to support a constitutional amendment that would subject Supreme Court justices to “retention elections”. ” “Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, for example, warned in an interview with the Family Research Council on Friday that the ruling would “[disrupt] the foundation of the world”.
The Senator from Texas added that 20 states have systems in place where voters can choose to either keep or remove judges if they “overstep their bounds”.
He’s also says it was the darkest 24 hours in United States history. “And then the next day the Supreme Court rewrote the Constitution and threw out the marriage laws of all 50 states”, the Republican presidential candidate told NBC’s “Today” show.
Other Republican White House hopefuls had more muted responses.
Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Ben Carson all voiced their disagreement with the decision, but said that the country must accept the ruling, and encouraged conservatives to focus on protecting the religious liberty of individuals.
But Cruz, with his call for doing away with lifetime appointments to the high court, had one of the most strident.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul urged the government to “get out of the marriage business” entirely, writing in a Time editorial, “While I disagree with Supreme Court’s redefinition of marriage, I believe that all Americans have the right to contract”.
“The Supreme Court’s decision has made 2016 a referendum on repealing every single word of Obamacare”, he said.
And the conservative firebrand said Monday he plans to put his opposition to same-sex marriage “front and center” in his 2016 presidential bid. But Cruz said the case doesn’t apply because three amendments to the Constitution ensure “everyone has equal rights regardless of race”. “A Senate that cannot muster 51 votes to block an attorney-general nominee openly committed to continue an unprecedented course of executive-branch lawlessness can hardly be expected to muster the 67 votes needed to impeach an Anthony Kennedy”, he wrote in his op-ed. “But I know this, I mean, religious institutions; religious entities, you know, like the Catholic church, they need to be honored, as well, and I think there’s an ability to strike a balance”.
“Look, I’m going to leave questions of state law and governance to our elected leaders there”, Cruz said.
