Here it is, the first television ad of the 2016 presidential campaign, courtesy of the first official presidential candidate, Ted Cruz. No beating around the bush here-we get a mention of Jesus in the very first sentence:
"Were it not for the transformative love of Jesus Christ, I would have been raised by a single mom without my father in the house. God's blessing has been on America from the very beginning of this nation. Over and over again when we faced impossible odds, the American people rose to the challenge. This is our fight, and that is why I'm running for president of the United States."
Wait, why were you running again? Because the American people rise to challenges? Or because "this is our fight"? And what is our fight?
OK, so we shouldn't expect too much specificity from a 30-second ad. But it's pretty clear that at least at this point Cruz is presenting himself as the most Christian candidate (Cruz is a Southern Baptist). I get that his religious faith is very important to him, but as a political strategy, even in a party made up in significant part of evangelical Christians, taking Jesus as your running mate is a sure loser.
We know that because so many people have tried it before and failed. That's what Rick Santorum did in 2012, and what Mike Huckabee did in 2008. It doesn't succeed for a couple of reasons. First, the evangelical voters to whom it's primarily aimed are a large part of the party's voters, but not so overwhelming a part that they swamp everyone else. For instance, in 2012, evangelicals voted 4-1 for Mitt Romney, but they were only 21 percent of the electorate. Which means that they made up only about a third of Romney's voters. That's a lot, but it isn't so many that you can get the Republican nomination if evangelicals is all you've got.
Secondly, no one's going to get all of them in the primaries, or even nearly all. Even if you're looking for the most devout candidate, there will be plenty of contenders to choose from, including Scott Walker (whose father was a Baptist minister), maybe Huckabee (himself a Baptist minister), possibly Bobby Jindal (who holds prayer rallies), and definitely Rick Perry (who's "not ashamed to admit that I'm a Christian"). Even if Cruz succeeded in becoming the top choice of Christian conservatives, that would still leave him a long way from the nomination.
Somebody always tries to be the Christian candidate, and that person never gets the nomination. But maybe Cruz is just starting out by establishing his religious bona fides, and then he'll move on to win more people over with his compelling policy ideas.
