DES MOINES, Iowa – Conservative heavyweights joined with up-and-comers in hammering President Obama Saturday over everything from the health care law to his immigration policies as they played to a sold-out Iowa crowd in what amounted to the opening bell of the Republican presidential campaign.
They spoke at the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines, held in the first-in-the-nation caucus state at a time when big-name Republicans are getting close to announcing whether they’ll seek the presidency.
While nobody at the summit has definitively declared a 2016 bid, nearly a dozen of the summit’s speakers are flirting with one. Testing their message on the conservative Iowa crowd, they took a hard line in their prescriptions for the country.
“The most important tax reform we can do is abolish the IRS,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz told the fired-up audience.