National Review - Setting His Script Aside, Cruz Focuses on the Fight for Religious Liberty

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By Alexis Levinson

Speaking to a group of Christian conservatives on Thursday, senator Ted Cruz was the only candidate to dispense with his stump speech. Instead, his remarks focused entirely on religious liberty, which he said will be the central issue of the 2016 presidential election.

The speech, which Cruz delivered at the Faith and Freedom Coalition's Road to Majority Conference, was indicative of the crucial role social conservatives and evangelicals will play in Cruz's bid for the Republican nomination. The Texas senator has, during his three years in Washington, tried to define himself as the most conservative man in the race. Perhaps less obvious, though, is that Cruz is positioning himself as the natural second choice of social conservatives who are now backing some of his rivals, particularly Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, and the retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. On Monday, he made a political and personal case that he should be their man.

Cruz already has a large following among religious conservatives, something that was clear from the moment he was introduced. He received the loudest applause of any speaker that day, and the crowd roared with approval as he cheered leaders and groups on the Christian right, such as Ralph Reed, the founder of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, and Concerned Women for America's Penny Nance.

"Religious liberty has never been more threatened in America than right now today."

"I believe 2016 will be the religious-liberty election," Cruz told the crowd. "Religious liberty has never been more threatened in America than right now today." Throughout his speech, he tapped the frustration felt by many Christian conservatives that some actions by the Obama administration have put religious conservatives on defense -- for instance, the mandate in Obamacare that employers provide coverage for contraception, a requirement that the Little Sisters of the Poor and other religious organizations have found problematic.

The message was not subtle: The senator also talked about his own experiences as a litigator who has fought for Christian causes. With the Supreme Court set to issue a ruling on the legality of gay marriage, Cruz described his career as a lawyer and solicitor general of Texas who successfully defended religious liberty before the Supreme Court. He specifically mentioned that he defended the display of the Ten Commandments monument at the Texas Capitol and worked to keep "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

He also aimed a broadside at some of the other Republicans running for president who, he charged, have not been as vociferously supportive of the religious-freedom law passed in Indiana, which sparked a political uproar across the country.

"I think Indiana was, as Ronald Reagan put it, "a time for choosing,'" Cruz said.

"More than a few Republicans, sadly, even more than a few Republicans running for president in 2016, chose that moment somehow to go rearrange their sock drawer. I'll tell you this, I will never, ever, ever shy away from standing up and defending religious liberty, ever."

Cruz was the last of three presidential hopefuls to speak on Thursday afternoon, after Senators Marco Rubio and Rand Paul. Both Rubio and Paul delivered variations on their standard stump speeches rather than exclusively keying their remarks to the crowd.

As Cruz sold himself, he buttered up the crowd, too. "The men and women in this room are going to play a critical role" in electing a Republican president and bringing a sea change in the politics of the country, Cruz told the people assembled in a ballroom at the Omni Shoreham hotel in Washington, D.C. He urged the audience to reach out to the networks in their states and help "turn out people of faith" on Election Day -- even people who don't always vote Republican, like "Reagan Democrats, blue-collar, working-class Catholics, up and down the Midwest into New England."

Of course, Cruz is not the only candidate competing for the evangelical vote. Santorum, Huckabee, and Carson are all drawing supporters from among conservative Christians. But this may be one time in Ted Cruz's life when he's okay being runner-up -- for the time being.

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