“You ask yourself why we live in a country where life is under assault, where marriage is under assault, where faith is under assault,” roared U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz on Aug. 29, addressing a rally of thousands of evangelical Christians at the South Carolina State House. “The last election, fifty-four million evangelical voters stayed home. Is it any wonder we have the country we have?”

Of course, Cruz hopes those evangelicals will vote for him in 2016. The conservative senator from Texas is best known as a constitutional scholar and limited-government advocate, but he’s been wooing the evangelical base on his path toward the GOP nomination.

And on that balmy August day, he won a lot of support among the crowd of mostly Baptist (judging by church T-shirts), overwhelmingly white attendees. They came on church buses from across the state, and from Georgia and North Carolina. They set up lawn chairs in the scant patches of shade. And they cheered and booed along with Cruz and fellow presidential contender Rick Perry, who joined a crowd of pastors and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott on stage.

Evangelical Christians are a notoriously difficult voting bloc to predict and reach — but they’re a powerful one.

“They’re a very fired-up group,” says David Woodard, a conservative political science professor at Clemson. “And if they get involved they can really make a difference.”

Read the article “Fired Up Evangelicals Could Tilt 2016” on free-times.com.