Sen. Thad Cochran's razor-thin win over tea party-backed challenger Chris McDaniel in the state's Republican primary runoff shows that people are frustrated with Washington, D.C., politics and have a "hunger for change," Sen. Ted Cruz said.
"It's striking that the race was so close," the Texas Republican told "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday. "I think that demonstrates that there is a lot of hunger for change. People are frustrated with Washington."
Cruz said Americans are also "hungry for leaders who will stand up and make the case we need to go a different path."
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He called on all Republicans to "stand up" to the "failed" agenda of President Barack Obama that has "taken the country in the wrong direction."
One reason Americans are frustrated is stagnation in Congress, Cruz said, adding that "nothing is getting done in the Senate." He places the blame on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
"Harry Reid has insisted on making this a do-nothing Senate. Under Harry Reid, we don't even vote on pro-growth policies. We don't vote on fundamental tax reform. We don't vote on regulatory reform," Cruz said.
Cruz said he traveled to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, to visit the illegal immigrant children housed there. He called the thousands of illegal minors crossing the border "heartbreaking," and blamed the "lawlessness" of Obama for allowing it.
An estimated 90,000 illegal immigrant children, mostly unaccompanied by parents, are expected to cross the southern U.S. border this year, up from 6,000 in 2011. Cruz described the trauma some of the children had experienced at the hands of the drug cartels thought to be transporting them.
"A number of these children, these drug cartels hold them for ransom from their families. And to extort ransom, they literally cut off body parts, and they're forcing one child to cut off fingers and ears of another child," he said.
Cruz also called on Obama to address the situation of Mariam Ibrahim, who was jailed and sentenced to death in the Sudan for being a Christian. Ibrahim, a mother of two, was released from jail Monday, but subsequently arrested when she tried to leave the country with her husband, an American citizen. Cruz said the incident illustrated the "grotesque evil of the Sharia law."
"Where is the president? Nobody has a bully pulpit like the president of the United States. President Obama should stand up and say to the government of Sudan, 'Free Mariam now,'" he said.
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