Divinely inspired?
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) thinks he's found his way past the Donald Trump presidential roadblock by locking up the right-wing evangelical vote, and he's going to do that by
going after Planned Parenthood. He's launching a 50-state campaign this week to gin up pressure to defund the organization, mobilizing right-wing pastors.
More than 100,000 pastors received e-mail invitations over the weekend to participate in conference calls with Cruz on Tuesday in which they will learn details of the plan to mobilize churchgoers in every congressional district beginning Aug. 30. The requests were sent on the heels of the Texas Republican’s “Rally for Religious Liberty,” which drew 2,500 people to a Des Moines ballroom Friday. […]
The push comes as Cruz seeks to grab a decisive edge in a crowded primary-within-a-primary, with half a dozen GOP contenders battling for what he has referred to as “the evangelical bracket.” […]
On the campaign trail, Cruz has urged people to watch the controversial Planned Parenthood videos and has repeatedly attacked the Supreme Court, where he once served as a law clerk. In an op-ed in USA Today on Thursday, Cruz wrote that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) shouldn’t schedule or allow any legislation to be heard that would give federal money to Planned Parenthood. […]
At his religious liberty-themed rally in Des Moines on Friday night, Cruz cast himself as the only choice for evangelical voters. There is a “war on faith,” he said, as he quoted scripture and paced the stage like a televangelist; evangelical voters will “stay home no longer.” […]
Cruz’s Iowa campaign chairman, Matt Schultz, suggested that Cruz was divinely chosen to lead.
How is Mitch McConnell going to keep his promise that there won't be a shutdown on his watch when God has ordained it? Or at least told Ted Cruz's supporters that this is the only way Ted Cruz becomes the nominee. The long-range problem for Cruz here is that only about a quarter of Republican primary voters consider themselves evangelical nationally, though it's nearly half of Iowa's Republican base. Where he takes his government shutdown over Planned Parenthood after Iowa is kind of murky right now, since shutdowns haven't really been all that popular with the public.
Cruz, however, knows this. He's a zealot, but he's not stupid. Chances are pretty good he's counting on McConnell and all the other Republicans in the Senate who aren't suicidal to block his efforts. That'll give him more fuel for his anti-establishment campaign. Maybe he thinks that will be the ticket to take him through the primaries.