Posted on 08/25/2015 10:15:35 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
On Friday night, while the political media was transfixed watching Donald Trump's in-all-ways-secular stump ramble in Mobile, Ala., Ted Cruz was holding a deliberately religious rally in Des Moines.
Evangelical voters were always meant to be a linchpin of Cruz's presidential bid, and as our Katie Zezima and Tom Hamburger write, the Des Moines event was not shy about making that pitch. Blasting Planned Parenthood and lamenting the "persecution" of business owners sued for denying services to same-sex couples, Cruz was clearly trying to do two things: Plant his flag as the Republican crusader -- and prompt religious voters to vote on religion above other considerations.
So far, Cruz has floated around in the middle tier of the Republican field, never really surging ahead, but never dropping down into the 1-percenters. (In this context, that's a bad place to be.) And that's in large part because the white evangelical vote has mostly just echoed the overall Republican vote, according to Fox News polling....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
LOL sounds like wishful thinking.
DEAR WAAAAAAH PO!
MR CRUZ is an avowed Christian...
that alone should be a clue as to how large a evangelical vote there is
SIncerely,
M.M.
That’s funny. What about those 500 people I got to church with?
This article actually confirms exactly what Ted Cruz has said about the media and inside the beltway types.
I myself am not particularly religious or even belong to a church but I do truly believe in God and have true faith in him. More important to this argument is the fact that I know America must have Judeo Christian morality to survive.
Obviously they don’t vote. Just ask Philip.
There is an Evangelical vote and apparently Trump is running away with it, thus the motivation for this story to demoralize or scare off evangelicals away from Trump. The writer seems to use Ted Cruz to bounce around the religious right enough to make his point.
Keep that illusion going in your head, Phil.
Ted Cruz’s biggest problem is that he had angered and threatened the very powerful cartel of corruption within the Republican party. As much as the GOPe despise the popularity of Trump they know they will not survive if the party is headed by Cruz. Cruz has threatened their political existence and they will do just about anything to keep their power.
So, “there isn’t really and ‘evangelical vote’ right now,” huh?
Try to win an election without it. Can’t be done.
No, Cruz's biggest problem is that he's not attracting GOP grass roots as quickly as Trump. Same problem everyone else running for the nomination has.
Some of his failure to win people over has to do with his stances on the issues, which I assume you've seen well demonstrated here on FR. Some of his detractors are quite vitriolic.
Try to win an election without it. Can’t be done.
The point of the article is that evangelicals are mirroring the rest of the GOP. As Trump has surged with the GOP, he has surged with the evangelical subset. As Cruz has stagnated with the base, he has stagnated with the evangelical subset.
Cruz's hope is/was that the evangelical subset will have different issues, and that he can do much better with them than some other sub-segments of the base.
This has not proved out. In the past the evangelical vote has broken from the rest of the GOP and supported Huckabee in 2008 and Santorum in 2012. That support was enough to get them both top three finishes in those years.
Cruz isn't showing an ability to duplicate that dynamic yet.
The entire dynamic has changed, even in the past 3 years. Old rules don't apply.
Are you saying that Obama won the evangelical vote twice?
Pretty much the marginalization that I expect from the GOPe and the media in order to keep Cruz's influence to a minimum. The playbook calls for a ban of discussion on the issues, instead pivot to polls with misrepresented positions and focus on the horse race to divide the opposition.
God knows whats best for America,
We may have been being chastised ...under Obama..and I do mean under.
I sense that Ted Cruz’s Emergence may signal a dramatic shift
I get nervous when Evangelicals vote by their religion. The last time they really did, we almost had Huck losing to Obama—probably even worse than McCain did.
Not sure what you’re getting at. The GOP posted decidedly ANTI-evangelical candidates the past two presidential elections. That’s why they lost.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.