Ted Cruz’s strategy to win the South Carolina Republican primary by appealing to evangelical voters failed Saturday when the Texas senator finished in third place, trailing just behind Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and failing to win a single county.
Republican voters instead overwhelmingly went for billionaire businessman Donald Trump, and handed the casino tycoon a decisive victory that saw him winning 44 of the Palmetto State’s 46 counties.
Rubio, for his part, carried two counties.
Cruz not only failed to win a single county, but he also lost the evangelical vote to Trump. This comes despite an intense push this month by the Texas senator’s campaign surrogates to appeal to the largest religious denomination in South Carolina.
“When [Cruz] reads the Constitution he kinda’ takes old James Madisons’ advice,” “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson told a group of Cruz supporters Friday.
“The strength of this nation will not be this Constitution, but the laws of God that the Constitution is based on. You get rid of God, you get him out and keep him from being your anchor — when you start allowing men to determine what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is evil,” he added. “You let men do it and they do not vet it with through this book. Our Founding Fathers warned us over and over again, what you will end up doing is saying, ‘Well, now I know it sounds like a violation of commandment number six, which says do not murder, but we’re just going to go ahead and tell these ladies — ladies in America — they can kill their children.”
He concluded, “Vote godly.”
Conservative talk radio host Glenn Beck appealed to voters earlier this month with his own faith-based sales pitch.
“I know there is a God,” Beck said at a Cruz campaign event. “I testify to you that I see a storm coming. And God does have a place for each and every one of us. It is your job now to be able to sleep at night to go door to door, to talk to every person you know, to find the candidate that will stand where God is telling him to stand in an unshakeable way.”
“Get your family to vote, friends to vote,” he added. “You cannot stand on the sideline. It is not enough for you to just go out and vote. You must be an evangelist for the Constitution of the United States. This is your last call, America. Stand, stand, stand for the man I believe was raised for this hour: Ted Cruz.”
At around the same time that Cruz’s surrogates warned South Carolinians to “vote Godly” or else there would be more things like men deciding that “ladies … can kill their children,” Trump made headlines by defending Planned Parenthood during a GOP primary debate.
“[They] do many wonderful things for women’s health,” the GOP front-runner said of the nation’s largest provider of abortions.
Trump swept Cruz among evangelicals. Every district.
— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) February 21, 2016
