And So it Begins...Senator Ted Cruz to become the first Republican to officially declare he is running for President
Republicans fire 2016 starting gun at Christian college that teaches world is 6,000 years old
Senator Ted Cruz to become the first Republican to officially declare he is running for President hoping to get out in front of a crowded field
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...years-old.html
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Quote:
The first Republican candidate for the 2016 US general election will officially declare his campaign on Monday at an Evangelical University that denies Darwin’s theory of evolution and teaches that the world is only 6,000 years old.
Senator Ted Cruz, a Tea Party darling from Texas with a reputation as a firebrand rhetorician, will announce his candidacy at Liberty University, a college for Evangelical Christians in the state of Virginia that claims to be the largest Christian university in the world.
His speech will effectively kick off the long 2016 election campaign that could see more than 20 Republican candidates vying for their party’s presidential nomination when the caucuses and primaries get under way next year. Television debates will start in September.
Mr. Cruz released an early morning tweet on Monday confirming his announcement.
Among the Liberty University facilities is a “Creation Hall” designed to teach students the biblically literal idea that God created the world in seven days and that Noah and his flood was an historical event that rescued the animals from which all today’s species are ultimately descended.
On a visit to Liberty University last year The Telegraph saw displays showing Noah’s ark as a scale model next to a Boeing 747 and the US space shuttle, explaining in detail how all the animals had fitted in.
One display noted that it was a “strong possibility that horses, zebras and donkeys are all descended from an original pair of horses that were on Noah’s Ark”, while a second argued that the discovery of the coelacanth “fossil-fish” had blown a hole in evolutionary theory.
The display added that sharks did not – as conventional scientists believe - evolve some 400 million years ago, but were designed 6,000 years ago, declaring: “Sharks are not primitive remnants of pre-hisotory, but are acutely fine-tuned organisms that defy Darwinian evolution.”
The decision to launch at Liberty University reflects Mr Cruz’s support among the hardcore conservative base of Evangelicals and libertarians who thrill to his anti-government, low-tax, no-compromise rhetoric.
Mr Cruz has said he expects to raise some $50 million for his campaign and will be relying on donations from the grassroots, many of whom deny evolution.
According to a 2012 Gallup Poll some 46 per cent of Americans espouse a creationist view of the world in which God created humans in their present form in the last 10,000 years – although other polls have put the figure at around 30 per cent.
The question of evolution has long been awkward for Republican politicians on the right who need to embrace their core supporters to win the Republican nomination, but then risk ridicule from more moderate, scientifically-minded voters at the General Election.
In a sign that the issue remains live, last month Scott Walker, the Wisconsin governor a strong Christian who is currently a front-runner for the Republican nomination, refused to answer whether he accepted the science of evolution when questioned during a visit to the UK.
He later clarified via Twitter that “I think God created the Earth,” adding "I think science and my faith aren't incompatible.”
Mr. Cruz does not appear to have stated a public position on the issue according to several organisations that track candidates’ positions on the issues.
Liberty University, which was founded in 1971 by the late televangelist Jerry Falwell, is a potent symbol of financial power on the religious Right, boasting 13,000 students on campus, nearly 100,000 more online and a $1.2 billion endowment.
Mr. Cruz, a Harvard-educated lawyer who has argued in front of the Supreme Court, shot to prominence in 2013 when he helped shut down the US Federal government in defiance of his party’s more moderate leadership.
As a standard-bearer on the Right, Mr. Cruz will be jostling for position with Rand Paul, the Libertarian senator from Kentucky, Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor turned TV host and Rick Santorum, a former Pennsylvania Senator and Evangelical Catholic who ran in 2012.
A university spokesman told The Telegraph at the time that Liberty students learned "both sides" of the evolution debate, with the university officially teaching both conventional science and so-called "young earth creationism".
Hillary Clinton will announce that she will run for President soon, after she's done peeing her pants laughing at Ted Cruz.
