Just in time for Easter, Republican White House hopeful Ted Cruz (R-TX) has declared his ticket for 2016 will be the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Of course, the players in his Trinity have been updated. In his announcement address at Liberty University two weeks ago, Senator Cruz recounted his father's "come to Jesus" tale. And in his first campaign ad released on Friday, it is the epiphany of Pastor Rafael Cruz his son puts at the center of his--and the nation's--story:

"Were it not for the transformative love of Jesus Christ, I would have been raised by a single mom without my father in the house. God's blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation. Over and over again when we faced impossible odds, the American people rose to the challenge. This is our fight, and that is why I'm running for president of the United States."

Unfortunately for Cruz, in conservative circles filial piety isn't an advantage, but an albatross. After all, the right-wing made Barack Obama's Kenyan father--a man he hardly knew--the key to understanding "The Roots of Obama's Rage." But if the likes of Dinesh D'Souza and Newt Gingrich are going to claim Obama's supposed "inherited rage" and "anti-colonial worldview" were handed down by Obama senior, Rafael Cruz represents a huge problem. The former Castro ally turned immigrant and Born-Again Christian has all the zealotry of the convert combined with a zero-sum, us-versus-them Cold War mentality. For father and son, that sound and fury signifies something, none of it good for wide swaths of the American population.
As it turns out, the preaching of Rafael Cruz provides a window into the soul of his son. In July 2013, CBN host David Brody asked Rafael about the meteoric rise of his son, suggesting it was "a thing of God." The elder Cruz agreed, explaining that his Ted was indeed the anointed one:

Yes, but you know something, it is not something that started a couple of years ago. Let me just go back to when he was maybe four. When he was four I used to read Bible stories to him all the time. And I would declare and proclaim the word of God over him. And I would just say, 'You know Ted, you have been gifted above any man that I know and God has destined you for greatness'. And I started making declarations about the Word of God to him every day.

And he hasn't stopped making those declarations. Without "the Word of God," Rafael Cruz warned atheism would lead to moral anarchy:

"Well, if there is nothing, if there is no God, then we are ruled by our instincts...
Of course, this leads us, when there are no moral absolutes, leads us to sexual immorality, leads us to sexual abuse, leads us to perversion and, of course, no hope. No hope!"

Already hopeless, Cruz explained in November 2013, are African-Americans, at least as long as the vote Democratic. Black and Hispanic voters, he proclaimed, are "uninformed" and "deceived" in the support for Democrats. Happily glossing over the exodus of southern, segregationist Democrats to the GOP in the wake of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965, Ted's father rewrote the history of the civil rights movement in America:

"Let's talk about the black population. All the civil rights that the African Americans have obtained have come from Republicans," Cruz said. "But you know what, Democrats took the credit."

Doubtless at the top of that list is Barack Obama, a man the Born-Again Birther suggested in more African that American. As Mother Jones documented in October 2013 after Pastor Cruz announced that "the United States of America war formed to honor the word of God":

Seven months earlier, Rafael Cruz, speaking to the North Texas Tea Party on behalf of his son, who was then running for Senate, called President Barack Obama an "outright Marxist" who "seeks to destroy all concept of God," and he urged the crowd to send Obama "back to Kenya."

And why not? Obama, Cruz the Elder, is little different from Stalin or Mao and no better than Fidel Castro. Asked if "President Obama wants to take our guns as part of this worldview," Cruz responded:

"Well, of course, you have got to realize that is all about control. You look at history, Stalin took out the guns, then killed twenty million people; Mao took out the guns, then killed fifty million people. Every society where government has taken the guns away from the population, then they've used them against the population."

According to Rafael, gun control is just one tool of communist control. Another is...wait for it...evolution.

Because communism, or call it socialism if you think communism is too hard a word, necessitates for government to be your god and for government to be your god they need to destroy the concept of God. That's why communism and evolution go hand and hand. Evolution is one of the strongest tools of Marxism because if they can convince you that you came from a monkey, it's much easier to convince you that God does not exist. Looks good.

(Comparing those concerned about global warming to "flat-earthers" and himself to Galileo probably looked good to Ted Cruz, too.)
That's one reason why, he insisted, "communism or socialism, whatever you want to call it, what is happening in this country is not different than what happened in Cuba." Another reason is simply because Obama is just like Castro:

I grew up in Cuba under a strong, military, oppressive dictatorship. So as a teenager, I found myself involved in a revolution. I remember during that time, a young, charismatic leader rose up, talking about "hope" and "change." His name was Fidel Castro...
I think the most ominous words I've ever heard was in the last two state of the union addresses, when our president said: "If Congress does not act, I will act unilaterally." Not much different than that old, bearded friend that I left behind in Cuba -- governing by decree, by executive order, just like a dictator, like Fidel Castro.

It's no wonder college student Ted Cruz was seen walking around Princeton with some interesting reading material his father no doubt would have recommended. As his freshman-year roommate Craig Mazin recounted:

"I remember very specifically that he had a book in Spanish and the title was Was Karl Marx a Satanist? And I thought, who is this person?"

Just his father's son. Or at least, the version of his father Ted Cruz describes. In the same way he omitted mentioning that his "bread-baking" wife was a high-level executive at Goldman Sachs, Senator Cruz avoids naming his Rafael's one-time ally in the struggle to topple the Cuban dictator Batista:

He joins a revolution against Batista, he begins fighting with other teenagers to free Cuba from the dictator. This boy at age 17 finds himself thrown in prison, finds himself tortured, beaten. And then at age 18, he flees Cuba, he comes to America.

But as Pastor Cruz himself has explained, Ted's dad wasn't fleeing Fidel Castro, but fighting alongside him. As NPR reported in

In an interview near his home outside Dallas, the elder Cruz says that as a teenager, he fought alongside Fidel Castro's forces to overthrow Cuba's U.S.-backed dictator, Fulgencio Batista. He was caught by Batista's forces, he says, and jailed and beaten before being released. It was 1957, and Cruz decided to get out of Cuba by applying to the University of Texas. Upon being admitted, he adds, he got a four-year student visa at the U.S. Consulate in Havana.
"Then the only other thing that I needed was an exit permit from the Batista government," Cruz recalls. "A friend of the family, a lawyer friend of my father, basically bribed a Batista official to stamp my passport with an exit permit."

You might think that background would make Cruz pere et fils sympathetic to immigration reform. But you would be wrong. Senator Cruz wants to pull up the ladder to opportunity the United States provided for him and his father. "In my opinion, if we allow those who are here illegally to be put on a path to citizenship," Ted Cruz explained, "that is incredibly unfair to those who follow the rules." Those rule-followers, that is, like Cuban and Canadian émigré Rafael Bienvenido Cruz:

"I came to this country legally. I came here with a legal visa, and ... every step of the way, I have been here legally."

And so it goes. Cruz the Father warns "Obamacare is going to destroy the elderly by denying care, by even perhaps denying treatment to people who are in catastrophic circumstances." Cruz the Son follows up with Obamacare myths quickly demolished by fact-checkers. It's no accident that Cruz the Son insulted a gathering of Middle East Christians by telling them to support Israel; that's in keeping with Cruz the Father's End-Times theology. Needless to say, father and son are united in fighting gay and transgender rights in Texas, Indiana, and pretty much everywhere else.
So, it is fair to make Rafael Cruz an issue in son Ted's 2016 campaign for the White House. Is it relevant to highlight shared Cuban irredentism, fanatical anti-Marxism and unconstrained and unreconstructed evangelical fervor of Father and Son? As another frightening--if less dangerous--Republican shooting star would put it, you betcha. After all, Ted Cruz didn't just put his father's story at the center of his Liberty University announcement speech. The candidate has already told voters that "Rafael Cruz, who's become a celebrity among Christian conservatives, will frequently visit Iowa over the next year." And as CNN recalled Senator-Elect Cruz' statement on Election Night 2012:

Rafael Cruz helped his son on the campaign trail and at various conservative events since Ted Cruz won his Senate seat last November. Right after that victory, Ted Cruz praised his father, saying that he "has spent virtually every day the past year crisscrossing this state, telling his story and speaking on his son's behalf. My dad is my hero, he has been my entire life."

As disturbing as that may sound, it pales in comparison to this: If Cruz the Father and the Son end up in the White House, America doesn't stand a ghost of a chance.