Political commentator Niger Innis, national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), told PJM a “superhero” Republican presidential nominee would be a combination of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Donald Trump.
Innis, who has endorsed Cruz, praised Trump for “never” giving into the media’s narrative of issues such as illegal immigration.
“He never allows the media to determine the battlefield. He determines the battlefield. No pun intended here, but he calls a spade a spade and he’s not afraid to do so and he does it consistently and that’s the courage Republicans are going to have to have as we move forward into this election with Hillary,” Innis, chairman of Tea Party Forward, said during an interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
“If you could cobble together a political superhero for the conservative movement it would be the attitude and the tactics of Donald Trump and the ideological platform of Ted Cruz and Ted Cruz’s stubbornness. If you could put all of the facets together you’ve got a new Ronald Reagan for this age,” he said.
If Trump won the nomination, Innis said he would need to “bring in” someone like Cruz.
“Vice versa, if Ted gets the nomination he’s going to have a little bit more leeway to do what he wants to do in terms of vice president and his cabinet because he is such a consequential conservative and people know he is not going to compromise,” he said.
Innis praised Cruz for standing up for conservative principles and not compromising with the left. PJM asked Innis if those characteristics would prevent Cruz from making progress with Congress on entitlement reform and other issues as president.
“The problem is Republicans always fight from defense, right? We’re always fighting on the battlefield the Democrats want us to fight on,” he said, citing illegal immigration as an example.
“The progressives have made this issue of immigration into a civil rights issue and it’s not. It’s like apples and oranges. What people are asking for is a favor, not an entitlement.”
Innis said he loves the attacks on Trump and Cruz from the party establishment.
“I love these guys for all the enemies they have within the establishment. You know they are on the right side of history if they’ve got Mitt Romney and the rest of the establishment crowd doing everything they can to stop them. It’s a good time to be a conservative,” he said.
Innis said the Democrats have wrongly framed the illegal immigration issue debate around amnesty only.
“If you are for amnesty, you are fine. If you are against amnesty, then you’re a racist and that’s nonsense — it is not true,” he said.
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