Ted Cruz brought his campaign to Knoxville, Tennessee as part of his “Take off with Ted”, #CruzCountryChristmasTour. Knox County is solidly conservative, as is most of East Tennessee and is a natural fit for Cruz.

Dr. Ben Carson had a book signing at Books-A-Million, Jeb! Bush was in Knoxville on October 9 and Donald J. Trump visited on November 16.

Senator Cruz held his rally in the Farragut High School gym in West Knoxville. It seems that they set up the gym so that no matter how small the crowd, it would look (to borrow a word from Mr. Trump) HUGE. In any event, the Cruz people got well over a thousand people to show up at a high school gym at 9:00 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, three days before Christmas. That is HUGE.

Newly elected state representative Jason Zachary led the crowd in the Pledge of Allegiance, before introducing a pastor who prayed and a young lady who did a very nice job on the National Anthem. Then, representative Zachary was back to announce another pastor. Ted Cruz’ dad, Rafael Bienvenido Cruz. Wow, just wow. Watch the video.

Watching father and son embrace was amazing to me. I love that kind of thing.

After his Dad’s introduction, Senator Cruz took the stage. His opening jokes were about Miss Universe and the difference between the Republican and Democratic fields:

Ted Cruz then listed off the five things he would do on the first day of his Presidency.

1. Rescind every one of Barack Obama’s illegal and Unconstitutional Executive Orders.

2. Open an investigation into Planned Parenthood.

3. Stop the persecution of religious groups, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor.

4. Rip to shreds the “catastrophic” Iranian Deal that no one has signed.

5. Begin process of moving the American Embassy to Jerusalem.

And, that is day one.

In the days to follow in his Presidency, Cruz vowed to rebuild the military, protect the Second Amendment, defeat radical Islamic terrorism, and utterly destroy ISIS. He will stop the EPA and all the agencies that descend on small businesses and kill jobs.

He also plans to work with Congress (best of luck) to enact fundamental tax reform and abolish the IRS. He joked that the 90,000 employees of the IRS would then be put on the border. Anyone crossing the Rio Grande, would take one look at the 90,000 former IRS employees and turn around and go home.

He reminded everyone that our enemies now are Russia and Iran, much as they were in the late 1970’s. We are mired in misery, stagnation and malaise, just like the 1970’s. We can turn things around just like 1981 with Ronald Reagan.

Instead of singing “Rocky Top”, the crowd sang Happy Birthday to Senator Ted Cruz as he was presented a Tres Leches cake

Go Vols!