Today, World magazine reports that Marco Rubio’s lead over Ted Cruz increased in their survey of evangelical leaders.
Nearly half of the respondents chose Rubio as their first choice.
The other new development was some new support for Donald Trump (5%).
As the mainstream media focuses on the feud between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, this sampling of evangelicals seems somewhat split between Rubio and Cruz, with support perhaps moving toward Rubio.
While I know a few of the participants, I can only guess that World’s group is light on Teavangelicals (Tea Party oriented Christians). That group appears to be split between Trump and Cruz.
Another way to sort out the muddle is the Christian nation concept. In a Yahoo News article last week, Jon Ward suggested that Cruz supporters are much more likely to say America is a Christian nation than are Rubio supporters.
Another observation about the divide between Cruz and Rubio is that Cruz supporters really seem to think Rubio is a moderate or worse. The lone comment thus far at the World article illustrates:
NYorker
Really?! This is discouraging, depressing to see that some 82 “influential evangelicals” are so unconservative as to choose Rubio. They need to look at some facts. If Rubio is the Republican’s choice, there won’t be much difference between him and the democrat candidate, and not much point in voting. Cruz is obviously the most conservative candidate and these “influential candidates” should be supporting him!
It is beyond belief that anyone could think Rubio and Clinton espouse similar positions on much of anything. Such is the crazy season leading up to the election.
Ted Cruz is heading to Waterloo for a rally hosted by Keep the Promise Super PAC which will feature Cruz and his national campaign co-chairs, Steve King and Bob Vander Plaats. The Super PAC’s coordinator and the director of Glenn Beck’s charity Mercury One, David Barton, will be speaking too. Oh, Beck will speak too.
I’m sure this is just happening with no coordination between the campaign and the Super PAC.
What plays well in IA might not work nationally. This concern is the subject of a Houston Chronicle article out over the weekend. Cruz’s endorsers, including Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson, have appeal to the far right side of the GOP but have taken controversial positions which will likely alienate independents and moderates. Recently, stridently anti-gay voices Matt Barber and Linda Harvey have endorsed Cruz. Phil Robertson has had his own problems with controversial statements about gays and blacks under Jim Crow laws.
Along with David Barton (quoted in this article), Cruz seems to be persuaded by a notion that there are millions of far right, anti-gay, anti-immigrant, socially conservative dominionist voters who will lift him to victory, if only they can be mobilized to vote. Such a wish might be true in Iowa and perhaps South Carolina. However, I can’t help but believe there is a ceiling for this appeal much lower than needed for a Cruz win against anybody in the general election.
With all of these endorsements, including people on his campaign staff (see the Houston Chronicle for more on that), Cruz will likely be on the defensive. Given his South Carolina staff, he may have to answer about his views on the Confederate flag. He will either agree with his staff’s support for the flag or be forced to explain why he didn’t fire them over their support for the flag. He will have to address questions of criminalizing homosexuals, the Bible’s status versus the Constitution and whether or not America should favor Christianity in legislation and public policy.
If he backs away from his controversial endorsers or waffles on the positions they care about, he risks losing them. If he sticks to those guns, he risks a big loss in November.
Will the GOP back away from Cruz (and equally as problematic option Trump)? I still think it is likely, although I think we may have to go longer into the primary season to see which of those now in the back of the pack catch on.
From tedcruz.org, campaign website World‘s J.C. Derrick has an interesting article out today on the reaction of some evangelicals to the growing media narrative that Ted Cruz has the evangelical vote locked up. Not so, says Sam Rodriguez, Rick Warren and Jim Daly.
What really caught my eye was Derrick’s citation of a National Review article which detailed how a group of evangelical leaders met behind closed doors and voted until over 75% voted for the same GOP candidate. Ted Cruz eventually won out over Marco Rubio. The group, led by Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, gave some thought to how to roll out the consensus. According to NR,
Cruz this week surged to the top of several polls in conservative-friendly Iowa, and a string of soon-to-come endorsements should only help to cement that standing. A decision was made before the vote that members would roll out their endorsements individually rather than issuing a collective statement. This approach, they decided, would help create a perception that the conservative movement was uniting behind a candidate organically while dispelling images of political horse-trading occurring inside smoke-filled rooms.
While there probably wasn’t smoke, there was political maneuvering behind closed doors. If this NR piece is accurate, the good Christians in the room decided to make up a reality so it wouldn’t look like what it was. The insiders decided to roll out the endorsements gradually as if they came via some natural and spontaneous groundswell of support and good will for Cruz. Sounds like astroturf to me.
Now, finally, other evangelicals are coming forward to say those endorsers don’t speak for all of us. This is good.
I am looking for a candidate who has ideas I can get behind about how to keep us safe, keep our economy healthy, protect our rights and work with Congress. We are going to elect a president not a pastor.
Fellow Patheos blogger Fred Clark (Slacktivist) is worried for Messiah College prof John Fea and me. He says:
But I’m worried for both of them. Specifically, I’m worried because this is an election year and that means that the ever-shifting goalposts of the white evangelical tribal gatekeepers may well shift between now and November. Depending on the outcome of the upcoming Republican presidential primary races, the bounds of theological acceptability could shift in such a way that both of these fine professors may end up on the outside looking in.
I like Fred and appreciate his blog so his post deserves attention and I encourage you to read it. I appreciate his kind words and positive assessment of my work here.
He’s worried because Ted Cruz is doing well in the polls. Cruz is supported in no small way by David Barton. Barton appears to be Cruz’s evangelical endorsement broker and runs one of Cruz’s Super PACs. Both John and I have written in honest terms about Barton’s revisions of American history as well as his problems with more current events (e.g., Barton’s claim that Obama’s administration has not prosecuted child porn).
Fred thinks we may be in some jeopardy since we both teach at conservative Christian schools. I sincerely appreciate his concern. In a day when Wheaton College is moving against a tenured professor for her religious beliefs, I guess it looks like anything can happen. From http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist
Fea thinks he is ok, and I suspect he is right. I feel pretty confident that I am in good shape as well. I am not a stranger to efforts to silence me by pressuring my employer, it has happened on more than one occasion before, coming from both the far right and the left. Grove City College’s leadership has leaned on academic freedom as a value and I keep on writing. While I take nothing for granted, I have appreciated GCC’s stance on these matters through the years.
Leaving aside our employers, I think Clark sees something real when he discusses “the ever-shifting goalposts of the white evangelical tribal gatekeepers.” A Cruz win would shift the party dramatically toward the Christian dominionist view of the world. Although I consider myself generally conservative, many in the far right consider me to be a moderate. I honestly think Ronald Reagan would be considered a moderate in today’s GOP.
Having said that, I think John and I are fine. I have already gone on record as saying Cruz isn’t a good choice for the GOP. I will say that even if he turns out to be the GOP’s choice.
And besides, if something does happen and I have to start another life, Clark says I have potential to make a switch:
Throckmorton can be a tenacious pitbull when he sniffs out a story. Check out his ongoing series examining financial irregularities at the mission agency Gospel for Asia — it’s an impressive, dogged pursuit of answers to important questions. In another life, Throckmorton would have made a fearsome investigative journalist.
