Evangelicals Don't Want Ted Cruz

If there was any lingering doubt that Ted Cruz wanted to win the Evangelical vote for his presidential bid, it was dissolved during his campaign announcement this morning at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Liberty is the world’s largest Christian college and is conservative even by the standards of most religious institutions of higher education; making it the choice of venue was especially revealing. Cruz’s speech, too, was heavily interspersed with shout-outs to Evangelicals: from his declaration that “rights don’t come from man, they come from God almighty” to his repeated references to the United States as a “shining city on a hill.” In case those nods to religious voters were too subtle, Cruz also said it plainly: “Today roughly half of born-again Christians aren’t voting. They’re staying home,” he said to the crowd. “Imagine instead, millions of people of faith across America coming out to the polls and voting our values.”