Ted Cruz, one of the U.S. Senate’s most extreme and conspiratorial members, told sympathetic commentator David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network today that he plans to run a “positive, optimistic, hopeful” campaign for president that will stay out of the gutter.

“There may be other candidates who get down and nasty, who get personal, who go into the gutter and launch attacks. I ain’t going to be one of them, and I’m not going to reciprocate,” Cruz said, before clarifying that he does plan to “contrast” his record with that of other candidates. “The Scripture gives us guidance; the word tells us ‘you shall know them by their fruit.’”

When Brody asked the senator if he agrees with evangelicals who “believe that this is a Christian nation,” Cruz said that America was “built on Judeo-Christian values” and “built by people of faith, men and women of faith, who were fleeing persecution.”