The Texas senator went all in on courting the Christian right while announcing his presidential campaign. But with their influence in presidential elections waning, Cruz runs the risk of alienating millennials and female voters

Ted Cruz became the first official US presidential candidate on Monday, not by way of his home state of Texas but in a direct appeal to the Christian right. Onstage with his trademark hands-free headset at Liberty University – founded by the late evangelist leader Jerry Falwell and touted as the largest Christian college in the world – Cruz made a pitch to voters that was equal parts megachurch sermon and unabashed conservative checklist.

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In a Republican field that is about to become much more crowded, the freshman senator formally launched his campaign for the White House – and demonstrated the continued influence of religious conservatives on his party. If that Bible-thumping base remains an obstacle between Republicans and the White House, the question now is: can Cruz stave off his rivals to get enough thump for his buck to topple the establishment – and still win over millennials?

“Today, roughly half of born-again Christians aren’t voting. They’re staying home,” Cruz declared in his speech. “Imagine instead millions of people of faith going out to the polls and voting our values.”

Courting the support of the Christian right has long been a staple of the Republican primary season, even as the demographic’s prominence has waned in recent presidential contests as the US becomes more socially liberal. The majority of red-state Republicans identify as evangelical Christians, and it was white evangelicals who predominantly helped propel the GOP to its landslide victory in the 2014 midterm elections.

In 2016, religious activists and political operatives insist, the support of Christian voters will be critical in the early-voting states of Iowa and South Carolina, where evangelical leaders believe they can best winnow a deep Republican field to take on Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic frontrunner.

“In the past several election cycles, I don’t think religious liberty has even been asked about in the primary or general election debates,” Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, told the Guardian. “But this year, it is a major focus for evangelicals as well as for Roman Catholics.”

Cruz, a Tea Party favorite who was elected to the Senate in 2012, once again invoked what he called the Obama administration’s “assault on our religious liberty” – name-checking everything from the supreme court’s Hobby Lobby contraception case to church groups helping the poor, and from abortion to “the sacrament of marriage”.

Moore, who has met with Cruz and other Republican candidates expected to declare in the coming weeks, said it would be essential for anyone who seeks evangelical support to be a staunch proponent of “the sanctity of human life and family stability”.

Using abortion and gay marriage against Bush and Co

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Establishment-backed candidates-in-waiting like Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have sought to avoid discussing reproductive rights and same-sex marriage, as the party struggles to make inroads with both young and female voters. Even though the 2012 election marked a record 78%-21% split among white evangelicals in favor of Republican candidate Mitt Romney, Obama trounced his opponent among key demographics such as youths, minorities and single women.



Since then, evangelicals have set out to ensure their values are not shut out by Republican party leaders taking steps to avoid a drawn-out primary in which the prospective nominee is, like Mitt Romney, forced too far to the right.

Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, 2012 presidential candidate Rick Santorum and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson are among the other Republican insurgents vying for the same demographic. Kentucky senator Rand Paul and Florida senator Marco Rubio, arguably Cruz’s chief rivals, have also held meetings with faith leaders.

A GOP operative told the Guardian that this election cycle, evangelical voters are “putting a premium on experience and the ability to govern over slick packing”.

“We have seen what has happened when the country elected somebody who was a one-term senator who gives a good speech with zero accomplishments,” said the operative, who requested anonymity to speak freely about the gathering Republican field. “This time, Republican primary evangelicals and general election evangelicals want a candidate who not just talks a good game, but who has actual accomplishments in the areas that they care most about.”

Courting ‘the lifeline of the Republican Party’

In his two-plus years in the Senate, Cruz has made a name for himself as a rabble-rouser who often butts heads with party leadership. He has waged several ideological battles, most notorious among them his crusade against the president’s healthcare law that led to a 16-day government shutdown in 2013, as well as sharp rebukes of Obama’s immigration policies.

But even as Cruz’s tactics – which show little deference for Senate rules – are often criticized by his Republican colleagues, the same theatrics have made him a star among grassroots social conservatives.

His success hinges on bringing together the three conservative factions of the Republican Party that don’t always walk in lockstep: evangelicals, Tea Party conservatives and libertarians.

“You’ve got to have someone with broad enough appeal to reach within those three groups and pull enough supporters to beat the GOP establishment,” Steve Deace, a nationally syndicated radio host based in Iowa, told the Guardian.

Evangelicals, he added, remain the largest segment of the Republican base.

“It is still the lifeline for the Republican Party even though they literally seem hell-bent at trying to betray them at every turn,” Deace said. “If the GOP nominee doesn’t energize the evangelical base and middle-class voters … I don’t care how much money they have, I don’t care if the Democrats nominate a billy goat, they can’t win.”

And while evangelicals have long been cast as so-called values voters, some believe they have a much broader role to play in 2016 than simply fighting the culture wars out loud. Such voting blocs have been particularly spurred by the rise of terrorism and targeting of Christians and other religious minorities by militant groups overseas.

Indeed, Cruz’s biggest applause lines on Monday did not arrive when he spoke of how religion defined his upbringing or how “the transformative love of Jesus Christ” led his father to return home. The crowd roared loudest when Cruz professed his support for Israel and spoke out against an emerging nuclear deal with Iran.

“Imagine a president who will defeat radical Islam, and we will call it by its name,” he said.

Although Obama is not on the ballot in 2016, Republicans see an opening to extend the same attacks to his former secretary of state. Given Clinton’s advantage among white voters, a surge in evangelical turnout is a key factor, even this early, that could boost the eventual Republican nominee – and the reason why the Christian right can never be counted out.