Ted Cruz embraces potentially polarizing endorsements

PETERBOROUGH, N.H.

Some politicians run from polarizing endorsements. Ted Cruz seeks them out.

The Texas senator’s strength in the 2016 Republican presidential primary is drawn, at least in part, from the backing of high-profile figures from his party’s far-right fringe. They are people, like his national co-chairman Iowa Rep. Steve King, who may be popular among the passionate conservatives who usually decide primary contests, but could turn off the swing voters and independents who typically decide general elections.

King is a leading voice on immigration, having compared those who cross the border illegally to drug mules and livestock. Cruz has also embraced endorsements from an evangelical leader who described Hitler as a hunter of Jews sent by God, and B-list entertainers like Phil Robertson, the anti-gay patriarch of the Louisiana duck hunting family featured on the popular cable show “Duck Dynasty.”

“When a fellow like me looks at the landscape and sees the depravity, the perversion — redefining marriage and telling us that marriage is not between a man and a woman? Come on Iowa!” Robertson told an adoring crowd in Iowa City, Iowa, the day before last Monday’s caucuses. Many in the crowd blew duck hunting whistles as a sign of support.

“How about Phil Robertson. What an extraordinary human being,” Cruz declared when taking the stage.

As the campaign shifted this week to New Hampshire, which hosts the nation’s second primary contest on Tuesday, Cruz continued to promote King’s backing and a fresh group of divisive figures.

“I’m all the way in supporting Ted Cruz for president,” King declares in a video played before his Sunday afternoon town hall-style meeting in Peterborough.

Cruz was then introduced by former New Hampshire House Speaker Bill O’Brien, a Republican leader who was essentially deposed because he was too polarizing.

“That’s a November conversation,” O’Brien said when asked whether he and other hardline conservatives might alienate some voters. “This is a Republican conversation.”

Former New Hampshire Republican Party Chairman Fergus Cullen, who last week endorsed Ohio Gov. John Kasich, described Cruz backers as “a collection of misfits.” He called King “my least favorite member of Congress.”

“His rhetoric on immigration has been appalling,” Cullen said.

Yet Cruz, who infuses his pitch to voters with readings from scripture and exhortations to “awaken the body of Christ,” is betting that aligning himself with the stars of his most conservative wing will ultimately deepen his base of support in the primary election and November’s general election alike.

That helps explain why Cruz called Robertson a “joyful, cheerful, unapologetic voice of truth.”

Robertson faced a backlash for declaring in 2014 that gays are sinners and that African-Americans were happy under Jim Crow laws.

Cruz also celebrates the backing of Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled as a hate group largely because of its anti-gay positions.