At the Rome of Titus and Domitian, the Senate and the Colosseum were nearly adjacent. Senator Cruz, in a wide-ranging interview with the Sun at its offices on the eve of a re-election bid, professes his affinity for the kind of combat practiced in both venues. 

That is because Mr. Cruz likens his job as Texas’s junior senator to striding into the “Roman Colosseum, where I grab my armor, I grab a battle ax” to “fight the barbarians.” The senator, up for re-election next year, lays out that fight with force, painting himself as an implacable foe of what he calls the “dumb***” policies championed by President Biden and Vice President Harris. 

The man Alan Dershowitz calls “one of the best students I ever had” is still angling for the top of the class, even if another presidential bid — he was bested in 2016 by President Trump, a man he calls a “friend” — does not appear to be in the cards, for now. 

The Sun endorsed Mr. Cruz in that 2016 race mainly for his declaration that the Federal Reserve “should get out of the business of trying to juice our economy and simply be focused on sound money and monetary stability, ideally tied to gold.” Now, he pledges to keep “fighting for legislation to audit the Fed.”

Mr. Cruz adds that the Fed “behaves as if it answers to nobody,” and explains that with “inflation rising across the economy,” the Fed’s mandate should be “monetary stability.” The advantage of something like a gold standard, he explains, “is that it focuses on keeping inflation under control and providing a stable currency for the rest of the economy to utilize.”

Pushed on whether he will lead that fight, the senator allows that “with a Democrat administration or a Democrat majority in the Senate, we’re not going to see sound monetary policy” until the advent of “an administration that cares about” the dollar’s integrity, not one with a predilection for “printing money.”

Mr. Cruz expresses wariness toward a “central bank digital currency,” which would expose the “American people and your financial transactions to incredible, credible monitoring and spying by the federal government.” He notes his enthusiasm for bitcoin and cryptocurrency generally, which he calls the “equivalent of digital gold” and a hedge against inflation.

On the foreign front, Mr. Cruz decries the Biden administration’s “constant efforts to undermine the state of Israel, and in particular to undermine Prime Minister Netanyahu.” He asserts that the president and his foreign policy elite “loathe and despise” Israel’s longest-serving prime minister.

When the former solicitor general of Texas is asked his opinion of the judicial reform plan roiling Israeli politics, he accuses the Biden White House of “actively stirring up the left wing protests” against Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Cruz declines to plant his flag on the question, explaining: “I don’t think my jumping in the middle of that issue is appropriate or particularly helpful.” 

Mr. Cruz calls Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, a “friend that wanted Brazil to be friends with America.” His successor, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, is a longtime leftist who received a warm welcome at the White House. In these foreign policy zig-zags, Mr. Cruz upbraids “weakness.”   

The senator lambasts President Biden’s devotion to the Iran nuclear deal, which he calls “madness.” He detects a vein of “appeasement” that runs from Kabul to Kharkiv, and calls for America to “stand absolutely with Taiwan” against Communist China’s greedy ambitions. The “objection,” he adds, “should be deterrence to prevent a Chinese military attack.”

Mr. Cruz, who weathered a strong insurgent campaign from challenger Beto O’Rourke in 2016, is again locked in a matchup that is sure to attract eyeballs and dollar bills. His opponent is Colin Allred, who once played linebacker for the Tennessee Titans. Now he is seeking to tackle Mr. Cruz, who expects a “real fight.”

Democrats, Mr. Cruz explains, “have laid out this race as their number one target to try to pick up a seat,” and Majority Leader Schumer has “targeted Texas in particular” because “after Donald Trump, there’s nobody in the country liberals want to beat more than me.” He promises: “We will win in Texas.”

When it comes to the presidential contest, Mr. Cruz tells the Sun that he is “staying out” of the race but predicts it will come down to Mr. Trump and Governor DeSantis, whom he predicts will “beat the living daylights out of each other.” He will support either of them against Mr. Biden because he thinks “the path we’re on is disastrous for America.”