Cruz thinks he can improve on Karl Rove's results among "gays, guns and God" voters. Not in 2016...

[DonViejo]

Ted Cruz has no path to win: His play for evangelical vote won’t fly as GOP’s Wall Street and Tea Party wings collide

The Texas senator thinks he can improve on Karl Rove's results among "gays, guns and God" voters. Not in 2016...

JOHN STOEHR

For the 2004 election, Karl Rove resolved to avoid a too-close-to-call repeat of the 2000 contest. He believed as many as 4 million white evangelical voters failed to show up in the race between George W. Bush and Al Gore. Four years later, President Bush was enjoying strong approval ratings as a “war president,” but Rove wasn’t taking any chances. He set out to inflame conservative fear with a campaign strategy built on a theme of “Gays, Guns and God.”

White evangelical voters are a fickle lot. They don’t support just any Republican. They need to be courted. Wined and dined, you might say. John McCain, who never cared for social conservatives or their penchant for governmental control over private behavior, saw 2 million fewer white evangelical votes than President Bush did four years prior. Even more stayed home in 2012.

In launching his 2016 campaign at Liberty University, Ted Cruz was making clear his intention to be the Republican candidate of the “gays, guns and God” bloc. But, according to Bloomberg Politics‘ Dave Weigel and Ben Brody, the Texas senator is aiming higher than Rove did. Cruz, they said, is banking on the theory “that 8 million to 9 million white evangelical voters haven’t been turning out. As many as 35 million of their peers had, but if the exit polls were right, enough evangelicals stayed home to lose states like Ohio and Florida” in 2008 and 2012.

So Cruz cut to the chase in Lynchburg: “Roughly half of born-again Christians aren’t voting. They’re staying home. Imagine, instead, millions of people of faith all across America coming out to the polls and voting our values.”

It’s a gamble, as presidential politics tends to be. But his odds are made longer by two factors. One is obvious. Cruz is hoping to double the “gays, guns and God” bloc — 4 million more than Rove got. Not easy. The other reason is more complicated, and it has nothing to do with immigration.

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http://www.salon.com/2015/04/28/ted_cruz_has_no_path_to_win_his_play_for_evangelical_vote_wont_fly_as_gops_wall_street_and_tea_party_wings_collide/

[underpants]

1. Actually Lee Atwater created "God Guns and Gays"

Early 80's Reagan Revolution. Rev. Moon demanded that moral/social issues be included in exchange for his huge contributions to the cause.