Ted Cruz might be in trouble. He’s being attacked from the right, and his evangelical credentials are being called into question. Is he in trouble?
Senator Ted Cruz is running away with the Iowa Republican caucuses. The most recent Des Moines Register survey has Cruz leading by 10 points, though other polls have since narrowed the gap.
This apparently doesn’t sit well, not just with celebrated Bible scholar Donald Trump, but many Iowa evangelicals. That’s according to Tim Alberta and Eliana Johnson at National Review, whose latest piece makes the case that leading Hawkeye State social conservatives, stung by the failures of Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, are making common cause with Marco Rubio to take out Ted Cruz. They write:
To a concerned and angry bunch of Iowa Republicans, their mission heading into next month’s caucuses is as simple as ABC: Anybody But Cruz. …
“This is real. There exists this feeling that Senator Cruz is only the most recent Christian conservative presidential candidate, and that the two individuals who preceded him in the 2008 and 2012 caucuses have not been given the respect that they deserve as voices in the Christian conservative movement,” says Jamie Johnson, a former member of the Iowa GOP state central committee who supported Santorum in 2012 and has not thrown his weight behind a candidate after supporting former Texas governor Rick Perry earlier this cycle.
It does appear from National Review’s reporting that some plugged-in Iowa traditionalists, including Johnson and Santorum advisor Matt Beynon, have soured on Cruz. It’s easy to see why: Cruz was recently caught on tape assuring Manhattan donors that gay marriage wouldn’t be a top priority if he made it to the general election, and the Texas senator lacks the social conservative street cred of someone like Mike Huckabee.
Cruz’s voting record speaks for itself, but in attempting to appeal to broad swaths of the party, he seems to have taken a misstep. The main beneficiary of this? Donald Trump, who was losing ground to Cruz.
AAN Staff
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