Cruz Announces Addition of Key Evangelical Leader to Iowa Leadership Team

HOUSTON, Texas – Presidential candidate Ted Cruz today welcomed the endorsement of church missions leader and former missionary Tim Lubinus of Ames, Iowa, who serves as the Executive Director of the Baptist Convention of Iowa.*

“I am honored to welcome Pastor Lubinus to our team,” said Cruz. “His commitment to Christ, and passion for seeing people of faith engage every aspect of the world around them, is reminiscent of the bold pastors who played such a key role in the founding of America.”

“I believe Ted Cruz is the candidate that above all others is a bold champion of liberty, is best qualified to be president, and has the resources to develop a nationwide organization to win,” Pastor Lubinus said. “I want to encourage pastors to step forward and to engage in the political process. We do not relinquish our civic responsibilities when we enter ministry. On the contrary, our love for Christ and our fellow man should motivate us to action all the more.”

Lubinus will be active with the Statewide Leadership Team, and the “99 Iowa Pastors” coalition as the Cruz campaign continues to organize in the state of Iowa.

A native Iowan, Lubinus was baptized while attending Iowa State University and became a member of Grand Avenue Baptist Church. Tim, his wife Darlene, and their children served as foreign missionaries in South Korea and Central Asia, where Tim started, led, and expanded a team of more than 100 International Missionary Board (IMB) missionaries in 12 cities, while serving as the strategy associate on IMB’s Central Asia regional leadership team. In 2005, Tim also became a trainer for ministry supervisors in Central Asia. The Lubinuses later returned to Ames, where Tim served as the regional and global ministry director at Cornerstone Church for eight years before being appointed as the Executive Director for the Baptist Convention of Iowa in March of 2014. Pastor Lubinus earned a master of divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and a Doctor of Ministry degree from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City.

Some 2 million less evangelicals voted for McCain than voted for Bush and even fewer voted for Romney. There are some 90 million evangelicals in the USA and less than 40 million of them voted last time.

Ted Cruz Tells Evangelicals to 'Stand Up and Vote Our Biblical Values'

Rush Limbaugh in a 2011 interview with Van Sustren.

Here's the big problem, Greta, for the Republicans. And I am a lone wolf on this. The rule of thumb in elections, both parties, 40 percent are going to vote Democrat automatically, whatever you do, 40 percent are going to vote Republican, automatic, no matter what you do. And in the middle, who do we have? The precious, God love them, independents and the moderates. And they are the targets. They are the focus of every election. And our brilliant campaign consultants tell our candidates they are the ones that know how to go get a majority of those independents. And we have, as Republicans, put ourselves in prison to this whole silly notion that you only win elections by moving to the center and getting great independents. Fine and dandy, but if you squander your base in the process, you haven't a prayer.

The Republican Party is trying to do something in this primary that is unprecedented. They're trying to split the conservative vote and win the primary with a moderate, with Romney. It's the other way around. You consolidate your base and then you move to the center in the general. The Republican establishment has decided they don't want any part of conservatism. And this is really not new. People are surprised to hear this, but the Republican Party formative event with conservatism is Goldwater's landslide defeat. That's what they think of when they think conservative. They don't think Reagan. They think Goldwater.

They believe what the inside-the-Beltway philosophy is about conservatives. They're racist, sexist, bigot, homophobe, Southern hayseed hicks. They're pro-lifers. They're embarrassing to have to go to the convention with them. And they're just embarrassed to have those kind of people in the party. They're dumb. They're not erudite. They're not educated in Ivy League schools. We'll take their votes on election day, but we really don't want to hang around with them. We don't want anybody in Washington thinking that we're really that close to them and aligned with them. So in the process -- you know, it's a very sophisticated electorate. The Republican primary voter can sense that the Republican Party really doesn't like them, really doesn't want them, thinks that they are the route to defeat. That's the problem in a nutshell. The Republican establishment thinks that a conservative nominee is the route to defeat because they think Goldwater landslides are going to happen because they believe what the popular misconception the left has created of conservatives -- they think everybody thinks that.

Rush Goes On the Record with Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren December 15, 2011

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