Ted Cruz Talks About Condoms And His College Days. It Goes As Well As You'd Expect.

BETTENDORF, Iowa -- Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) left little to the imagination Monday evening when answering a question about contraception at an Iowa town hall.

When a voter asked the Texas senator about his thoughts on “making contraception available to women who want to control their own bodies,” he responded by railing against what he called the Democratic Party’s “war on women,” and the “completely made-up threat” of the “condom police.”

“Hillary Clinton embraces abortion on demand in all circumstances up until the moment of birth,” Cruz said at the final campaign stop of a three-day swing through Iowa. “Partial birth abortion with taxpayer funding, with no notification for parents in any circumstances. Ninety-one percent of Americans say that’s nuts. So what do they do? They try to shift it. 'The war on women wasn’t that, it was contraceptives.' Now listen, I have been a conservative my entire life. I have never met anybody, any conservative who wants to ban contraceptives.”

The idea that Republicans are anti-contraception is nonsense, Cruz added.

“Heidi and I, we have two little girls. I’m very glad we don’t have 17,” Cruz said with a laugh. “And it’s a great example when the war on women came up, Republicans would curl up in a ball, they’d say, 'Don’t hurt me. Jiminy Cricket!'”

Cruz went on to give some very personal examples, and those in the crowd seemed to uncomfortably shift in their seats.

“Last I checked, we don’t have a rubber shortage in America,” Cruz said. “When I was in college we had a machine in the bathroom, you put 50 cents in and voila! So yes, anyone who wants contraceptives can access them, but it’s an utterly made-up nonsense issue."

Cruz blamed Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton for the issue's prominence, claiming she is trying to “scare a bunch of folks into thinking someone is going to steal their birth control” to distract from other policy issues.

“Imagine for a second you’re Hillary Clinton,” Cruz explained. “You’re trying to think, 'How do I run?' Well you can’t run on the economy, because we have the lowest percentage of Americans working any year since 1977. You can’t run on Obamacare, because millions of people have lost their jobs, lost their health care, lost their doctors, seen their premiums skyrocket. You certainly can’t run on foreign policy, 'cause every country you touched as secretary of state is a disaster.”

“So what do you do? You go, 'Aha! Condom police. I’m gonna make up a completely made-up threat and try to scare a bunch of folks into thinking someone’s going to steal their birth control.' What nonsense.”

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