I see you didn't include myself in ping to that, and for that I do honestly thank you.
This part (quoted directly below, from the article) -- I dunno. I don't think it can be spun, not honestly.
How much that factor could be somehow overcome in the remainder of the primary elections, and then later in the general (if it came to that) is difficult to imagine.
Looks like Trump has a long term advantage in this, that would be tough to break.
My own best guess would be that Cruz could only erode that advantage to some unknowable extent --- in best of circumstances for himself. There's no guarantee there a "best" will surface. Does this sound honest, so far?
The "I don't like evangelicals" contingent has had that bias so well & widely nurtured within themselves (from within US cultural influences coming at the subject from many angles, relentlessly) the past few decades +, it is difficult to see (forecast) anything even approaching yuuge changes regarding that deeply rooted, powerful bias.
Yet worth examining, though remaining still difficult to accurately-for sure quantify;
How many ---who if having to decide between Cruz and the presumptive DNC candidate, and went for Cruz because they know well enough they can't stand the beast so would stick with a Republican nominees regardless -- even if it was Cruz, despite not liking nasal-sounding, kind-of dweeby moralists like Cruz personifies ---would be offset by non-evangelical, otherwise Republican leaning wymns who, not being able to choose the voting tool 'Dildos for Berny' against Cruz (Bern not being on the ballot) would vote based on their prejudices against evangelicals, and their own equipment au'naturale (thus cross-over to the Donkey Party)?
I'll flip you for it?
Or;
Pick a card, any card!
How in the hell did we ever get this low and desperate? Submit essay. Please keep it under 17 volumes and 37,890,000 words, please.
(I agree with you, btw.)
First -- how did we get this desperate?
Two fold. The deliberate policy of secularization by the left, by capturing all the institutions which shape and guide public opinion: first the schools, then the Universities, (including, quite importantly for later, the Law Schools), and the news press, and the entertainment industries.
Seeding acceptance of homosexuality, to the point that a Lavender mafia promoted itself through mutual back scratching, to achieve multiple positions of high standing within many industries: then foisting "tolerance and diversity" as a cudgel to attack Christians.
(Note that Hillary is now pretty much an open lesbian; the rumors of Obama and the gay bath houses culminating in the "in your FACE" rainbow lights at the White House...and don't forget Denny Hastert (once *GOP* speaker of the House,charged in hush money payments to what is rumored to be an underaged boy)
and the former head of the GOP Ken Mehlman being homosexual, not to mention Cruz getting significant funding from homosexuals and the Rubio "foam party" and other rumors; and on the other side, a relentless pushing of feminaziism, including no-fault divorce, de-stigmatizing of sluttery and the presentation of unwed, single mothers as heroic champions of self-determination rather than stupid whores, affirmative action hiring and mentoring of women over qualified men, and abortion on demand and the pill.
And the deliberate seeding of homosexuals into the Catholic Churches by the KGB. No, I'm not kidding.
Second, on the GOP side, in addition to the seeding in of many Democrat moles, and the loss of the Christian consensus, the replacement by the globalists and the Chamber of Commerce / Cheap Labor Express, who under Bush '41 deliberately sabotaged and threw away ALL of Reagan's accomplishments, and practiced a policy of "run Right, govern left (or at least cave all the time)" relying on a captive left press to cover this up. This has been compounded by the Cheap Labor Express selling out most of the US economy to China, with the foul propaganda that "consumers DEMAND lower prices"...
(Note the counterexamples of high priced athletic shoes, none of those lower costs get passed on; of Apple Products, produced in China yet more expensive than the MicroSUCKS-based products which were also made in China; of (a few years back) the skyrocketing cost of gasoline (both out-of-kilter with the price of oil,*and* subject to rapid, single-day jumps to 25cents/gallon, which is far faster than changes in demand could work their way through the supply chain; and ignoring the inconvenient fact that when stuff from China first began appearing on the shelves, people complained loudly that it was "cheap sh*t" and they WANTED their American-made goods back, but there were none to be had; and finally, remember the toxin-laden drywall from China and melamine ridden pet food (melamine added to goose the sample assay of the pet for for protein, at lower cost and without regard to nutritive value or to toxicity).
Someone on FR had noted the role of "Pappy Bush" (41, the former CIA director) and suggest a lot of the "New World Order" crap came from him; upon reading it, I am inclined to agree; also blame Ted Kennedy, whom I fervently hope is rotting in Hell, for his lying through his foul teeth about the 1965 immigration agreement, designed to replace Caucasians in the US with Third Worlders who share neither our Western-European genes, nor our faith, nor our worldview). See (Vanity) A Look Back at Immigration, or Fifty Years of Lies.
Two things have happened to stop this march. OK, three.
1) The Internet. People have found they can talk to others and that they are not alone. Not just breaking the leftist monopoly on the news (Limbaugh helped with that) but both eliminating the sense of helpless isolation, and replacing it with a) community and b) replacing the "I *knew I saw that somewhere" with the "you said it *HERE*" and getting to pushback in real time. The left is trying to counteract this with Faceberg / Cuckbook, and with the SJW entryism into both Twitter and open-source-programming but these are doomed to fail, as the internet famously "interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
2) Obama. He has been so f*cking BLATANT (along with Nancy Pelosi's triumphant march with the gavel, and John Roberts replacing the literal text of the law with autofellatory blather) that it became quite clear the whole game has been rigged.
and finally, to culminate in the answer to your question
3) Cruz was poised to take advantage of this through his relatively high intellect (I have read 150, but *many* FReepers are well North of that), and Ivy League Pedigree, to monopolize the Evangelicals through laser-focused data analytics on messaging, and become *THE* voice of the resistance. For the GOP-e, THEY were going to "win without the base" as the Big Donor Class told ¿Jeb?, and the rules of the primaries were designed so that (as they thought) Bush would get constant small pluralities in a highly fractured field, causing a bandwagon effect, and preventing the entrance of any populists late in the game.
Enter The Donald. He out-populist'ed Cruz, ironically enough, despite ("Two Corinthians") *NOT* being an Evangelical, simply by shouting over Megyn Kelly when she attempted the timeworn "war on womyn" trope which she though would sink him, and he did it in particularly clever way: when she listed what he'd said 'about some women',he answered "ROSIE O'DONNELL". This did several things: a) it allowed him to lightning-rod the anger to ground, since he chose a target whom pretty much ALL Republicans dislike; b) he didn't cower or squirm, he reframed (red pill); he got a cathartic cheer from gazillions of those on the right who were tired of GOTCHA questions only given to Republicans while democrats got the customary reach-around-with-a-complimentary-chocolate-on-the-pilllow from the press. So he stole BOTH Cruz's thunder (I am the savior populism -- Cruz didn't help by being off-scale smug and condescending, nor by his choice of that Roe guy to run dirty tricks, which undercut Cruz's squeaky-clean Christian image)...and did to Bush, what Bush had hoped to do to the field, by garnering a plurality in a divided field.
There. 16 volumes, 35 million words.
I take chocolate and AMERICAN Express. ;-)