Posted on 04/20/2015 12:22:59 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Well, at least the Dallas Morning News was kinda nice to Liberty University. In the lede to its story on Ted Cruz in New Hampshire, the newspaper called it a "huge evangelical Christian college." Once upon a time, many mainstream media routinely slapped Liberty with the "F" word: "Fundamentalist."
But the paper doesn't prove its claim that Cruz sounded less evangelical, more secular in his New Hampshire visit to sound more presidential. It therefore pushes a related stereotype: that Americans don’t particularly like evangelicals.
DMN paints Cruz as a conservative's conservative as well as an evangelical's evangelical. It says the believers' bloc can be active and ardent, but that Cruz will have to broaden his appeal to win the White House:
"Cruz’s initial focus on the evangelical vote made tactical sense. In a large, splintered Republican field, having a base to build from could be critical. But there’s a pitfall: By focusing so tightly on social conservatives, he could alienate others, ending up with a very enthusiastic sliver of the electorate."
“People I’ve talked to are excited about him. And yet there are some who are nervous, because of what he’s saying,” said Kathleen Lauer-Rago, chairwoman of the Merrimack County GOP."
The story tries to back up the assertion by citing exit polls in 2012, which showed that equal numbers of New Hampshire people (22 percent) are "very conservative" and "born-again Christians." However, it blurs the fact that "born-again" is not the same as "evangelical," a fact long brought out in Barna polls.
DMN also doesn't report whether the poll said it was the same people in both categories. The most we get is a Cruz supporter who says he and his family are "very conservative" and "conservative Christians." That doesn't prove, of course, that they're all alike.
Other Republican candidates are sized up as well in this story -- Scott Walker, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee -- but it mentions evangelical support only for Huckabee. In fact, as sociologist Tobin Grant has pointed out, as many believers voted for Romney in 2012 as for the more "evangelical" candidate, Rick Santorum.
The DMN piece comes close to promoting another stereotype, of the gruff, aging conservative Christian. The main photo shows pot-bellied old men in VFW hats clapping at a conservative rally in Merrimack, N.H. And quoted sources are said to be 47, 64 and 69 years old. Only at the very end does the story add a 20-year-old college student in Cruz' camp.
At least we get a good sampling of the issues Cruz has been highlighting: taxes, national security, the national debt, gun rights, religious freedom and repealing Obamacare. But we learn little on how he supposedly played these up while downplaying faith matters.
Even after setting up evangelicals as radioactive beings that could taint Cruz' presidential chances, the DMN story quotes Kathleen Lauer-Rago, the GOP officer, that New Hampshire voters share Cruz' talking points. "I don’t think he’s pigeonholed himself at all," she concludes. Well, then, who has been trying to pigeonhole Ted? Political writers, perhaps?
Sociologist Grant challenges the whole image of religious Republicans, saying bluntly, "There is no evangelical movement within the GOP." Blogging for the Religion News Service, Grant says that evangelicals hold some beliefs in common, and they have strong leaders who try to muster political clout. But he says they're not organized as, say, Sierra Club or the NAACP.
Grant even starts sounding like we often do at GetReligion:
This idea that evangelicals would somehow back a candidate simply because some religious-turned-political celebrity said so is more than myth. It is an insulting, offensive stereotype of evangelicals as sheep who believe and act in response to what they’re told. They couldn’t be thoughtful voters (or as thoughtful as any other voter) who decide to back candidates without the aid of pastors or pundits. Evangelicals as loyal, dim-witted followers is a stereotype that continues to exist despite clear evidence to the contrary.
I'll have to say that the Dallas story is more even-handed than some. The Daily Beast ran a dim appraisal for Cruz, by Jacob Lupfer, a political science student at Georgetown University. He says that "party insiders" always ending up choosing who runs for president.
"Unfortunately for Cruz, there is little reason to believe that the Republican Party is going to nominate someone who looks and talks like a televangelist," Lupfer says snidely. "The nominee ends up being someone the party feels is a safer bet for the general election but whose religious commitment evangelicals greet with private, and sometimes public, skepticism."
But neither Dallas nor the Beast reflect actual American views of religious groups. A Pew Forum survey last year found that most feel warm toward evangelicals, just a point or two south of Jews and Catholics. Lowest on the totem are Muslims and atheists.
The DMN story has so many holes, so many assumptions, I'm tempted to say it has social and political variants of tmatt's original religious "ghosts." Perhaps the writer felt free to analyze more freely because the story ran under a "Politics" label. But it would have been packaged better as opinion or commentary.
HE could WIN. He says give a path to legal status but no citizenship. That’s fair.
He says let the stats decide gay marriage. That’s fair.
He is not falling for stupid questions about being invited to gay pizza weddings. He would DESTROY the beast in a debate.
CRUZ!!!!
I’ll agree with the line about the DMN and the DB being very poor places to find informed writing about anything religious beyond the not so Revs. Jackson, Sharpton, and Wright.
Just from the headline, 2DV, I’d say: the evangelical is not the “fringe”.
Yes, though, Cruz must go beyond evangelicals to win.
Looking for Hillary to get in bed with her feminist fringe group.
It means that they are afraid of him for certain.
They continue to pretty much fail to utter his name, which tells me they FEAR Cruz and don't want their viewers to learn more about him - from him!
.....and that's saying something!
Fox News is only “conservative” as compared to its competitors. It’s not what you or I would consider conservative. Any network that employs people like Geraldo, Juan Williams, Karl Rove, Alan Colmes and dozens of others like them is not conservative.
And everyone knows it--Hillary doesn't speak well "on the cuff" and with her dislike of people criticizing her and her known short temper, they really may have to put in a seven-second delay lest Hillary say one of the Seven Dirty Words when she gets flustered.
Cruz needs to get beyond evangelical voters. He needs to talk economy, freedom...
I wonder if Madame Hillary would go so far as to refuse to debate Cruz?
Of course, it wouldn’t be reported as an actual refusal, more likely it would be spun as a refusal by Cruz to agree to her terms.
If I didn’t know better, I would think that “evangelical” was a word made up by the MSM and the DNC to imply that someone is a nutcase religious zealot.
I CANT WAIT!! But I am afraid of what I am seeing as the conservative vote being split among Cruz, Rubio, Paul and HucksterBee. I wish some of these losers would drop out. I WILL NOT vote for Bush!!! I’ll hold my nose and vote for Rubio. I think Paul Is clinically insane.
FNC also has some "sleeper cells" who attempt to hide their true character behind sounding somewhat "fair and balanced" with emphasis on the "balanced" part which we already don't need as everyone else is screamingly liberal!
“I’m a libertarian, and I’m supporting Ted Cruz”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/3278302/posts
Ron Paul supporters bolt Rand Paul camp -Support Ted Cruz
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3276663/posts
EXCLUSIVE–INSIDE TED CRUZ’S CAMPAIGN HQ: HOW TEXAS FIREBRAND PLANS TO WIN BY BREAKING ALL THE RULES
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3276339/posts
Supporters deserting Rand Paul for Ted Cruz (Including key people)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-gop/3273028/posts
I have been saying I expect that to happen. Would you want to debate Ted Cruz?
The elite media lives in Manhattan and doesn't venture out often, they cannot imagine what life is like not safely surrounded with liberals and sycophants. Evangelicals to them are like exotic animals that are seen on safari and at the zoo. In other words they would rather hunt us than allow us to live amongst them free from ideological cages. We are to them cute but scary. They are intrigued by us as a topic of polite conversation at their dinner parties as a novelty ---now please pass the hors-d'oeuvres!
Fox is more like liberal-tarian because when it comes to social issues they really are just as left as Clinton and Paul
I think Paul Is clinically insane.
100% agree. He is his daddy’s son after all and have you noticed the nutcase father in the background s proud of his son running on the same nutty platform as his father?
Only difference is that his son panders much more and lies much more to have it both ways, pretending to be a conservative when he is a conservative, hell even his voters think that .
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