Cruz: Election was revenge of ‘flyover country’

Sen. Ted Cruz offered his assessment of Hillary Clinton’s stunning defeat Friday, calling it the “revenge of flyover country.”

Speaking to a gathering of conservative lawyers in Washington, Cruz said the election “was an incredible vindication for the American people across this country, and especially those that you know in rural America, in what elites on both costs consider to be ‘flyover country.’ This election can be well understood as the revenge of flyover country.”

Cruz was particularly critical of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

“I think the Clinton campaign found themselves utterly flabbergasted. They had not even contemplated the possibility that they might not prevail. And that, I think, is the direct result of not listening to and not hearing the American people.”

At the National Lawyer Convention, an annual event hosted by the Federalist Society, Cruz also praised President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions for attorney general.

“He is a committed and deeply principled conservative,” Cruz told the crowd before warning conservatives about the responsibilities of governing.

“When you’re given control of the executive and the legislature, it’s time to put up or shut up. There are no excuses. We’ve got to deliver. And I think that is what the voters across the country expect and it’s what I very much hope we will give them,” Cruz said.

Cruz did not endorse Trump at the Republican National Convention but did rally his supporters for the real estate mogul in the fall. Speculation is now swirling around the Texas senator over a possible cabinet appointment in Trump’s administration.