Totally inexplicable, except that perhaps conservatives have been so beaten down they are now running around in frightened herds, will to throw themselves at the mercy of the first perceived strong man that comes along...aka Donald Trump.
I think Trump’s initial response to the Geller meeting in Garland is instructive. If you watch Trump’s first responses to issues and questions carefully, you will often see his secular humanist world view revealed. Then the “walk back” necessary to retain his angry supporters quickly comes.
Another example of a typical Trump liberal world view response: remember in that one debate when the topic of repealing Obamacare was raised, Trump’s reflexive response was that he was “not going to let people die in the streets”. Typical left wing/democrat talking point. Never mind that people are not currently dying in the streets anyway. The Trumpeters simply refuse to give the appropriate weight to the “red flags” that Trump is regularly giving us that he is in no way a conservative. I think I’ll go with Cruz, who has decades of fighting for conservative principles behind him.