For once, Ted Cruz might not be Christian enough.
The Texas senator was once considered a lock to win South Carolina, thanks to his unimpeachable religious credentials: a pastor father, a lifetime commitment to the Southern Baptist Church, and a seamless ability to weave the prosperity gospel into his political rhetoric. Days before the state's critical Republican primary, however, Cruz finds himself sandwiched between Marco Rubio, who has also proven adept at capitalizing on his faith, and Trump, an unrepentantly foul-mouthed exemplar of “New York values” with a tenuous grasp on Christianity who is nonetheless crushing his competition in the polls, with twice the support of either Cruz or Rubio. Even worse, Trump leads Cruz among self-described evangelical voters, according to a new Monmouth University poll—the same group that Cruz won in Iowa by a landslide. Now, as Cruz prepares to face off against Rubio and Carson in a CNN town hall Wednesday (airing opposite a one-man Trump “town hall” on MSNBC), his campaign has to be asking: What went wrong?
Read Full Article »