Ted Cruz acknowledged to an audience in New Hampshire Friday the plan to defund Obamacare has been dubbed “deceptive, deceitful, nuts, crazy, stupid and wacko.”

And that’s just what his Republican colleagues think, he half-joked.

Standing before a breathtaking bucolic backdrop of a Dublin forest, the ambitious, steely freshman senator from Texas asked the attendees of a state party fundraiser to join arms with him in a battle that seems unwinnable.

Yet its the daunting odds of the prospect that is central to the Cruz package.

He is the one who will stand in the trenches and fight, even in the face of imminent defeat.

Cruz said he would not support a continuing budget resolution this fall that devotes even one penny to the health care law.

But his overarching message was that establishment forces — even many of his colleagues — weren’t strong enough to take up that battle.  But as the saying goes, you can’t win, if you don’t try.

“We have to stand up and win the argument,” he said, attracting one of his longest standing ovations of the evening.

“We have voted to fund the government.  We don’t want to shut the government down.  Why is President Obama threatening to shut the government down to deny those waivers to those families?,” he said, offering an alternative argument.

“The impasse ends when one side or the other blinks . . . You want to know how we win?  Don’t blink.”

As ideologically different Cruz and Gov. Chris Christie may be, their emphatic styles are in the same vein — Win or go home.

And that’s the message Cruz showcased in his first visit to the Granite State.

But he opened, of course, with obligatory humor.

“I’m pretty sure you can actually see Canada here,” Cruz said to yelps from the crowd.  ”So I appreciate you all going above and beyond to welcome me.”

Follow Dave’s blog at TheRun2016.com