It looks like Donald Trump has decided that the best way to overcome the rise of Ted Cruz in Iowa and elsewhere is to bear-hug evangelical Christians. Being Donald Trump, this obviously involves telling evangelicals what they should be doing and announcing that he, Donald Trump, will be amazing for them in fairly vague terms. What should evangelicals and other Christians be doing? Being afraid, obviously:
It’s under siege. You look at Syria where they’re chopping heads off, specifically of Christians, and others. And Christianity is under siege David. As you understand well from covering it. And we have to do something, we have to ban together, we have to become stronger as Christians because it’s very bad what’s happening with respect to Christianity. We’re not banded together properly. We have to stick together whether it’s very, very serious things like what’s happening over in the Middle East or things such as ‘Merry Christmas.’ You don’t see it anymore in department stores. We have to get together and make sure it’s what we want.”
As for what Trump has to offer and why he’d be better than Cruz … there’s so much! Where to start?
"Well, number one, and there are lots of ways of looking at it, but beyond all else, Ronald Reagan wasn’t a totally — he didn’t read the Bible every day, seven days a week. But, he was a great president. And he was a great president for Christianity," Trump told CBN News' "The Brody File" on Monday when asked how he stood apart from Cruz among evangelical voters. "And frankly, I would say that I would be a far better leader. I will be much stronger on borders. I will be much stronger in protecting the evangelicals. I’ll be much, much stronger in protecting our country. And I think I’ll be a much better person for evangelicals but also for everybody else."
The “under siege, need to band together” argument, which Trump also made in his speech at Liberty University, is a clever move for a guy whose Christian bonafides are questionable. “It doesn’t matter who’s the best Christian,” that argument says. “It matters who’s going to be the most aggressive against our common enemy.” And Donald Trump will always do well in a “who’s the most aggressive” fight. But at the same time, this little campaign for evangelical votes does show that Trump is feeling the heat from a rising Cruz.