US Republican race: Ted Cruz gains cash, supporters and momentum over Donald Trump
/In the US presidential race Republican front-runner Donald Trump may be getting all of the headlines for his outrageous rhetoric.
But close behind him in the race is fellow conservative candidate Texas senator Ted Cruz who suggested "carpet bombing" Islamic State (IS).
Senator Cruz is the only Republican who has refused to criticise the billionaire businessman publicly and that has helped propel him into a winning position in Iowa — the first state to formally decide on its presidential nominee.
Loading...The anti-establishment conservative may yet garner the Republican nomination with the support of evangelical Christians across the south where he has been campaigning this past week.
Senator Cruz is a first-time senator with less than three years in Washington but, according to Republican pollster, Kristen Soltis Anderson, has risen to prominence on the back of his vigorous opposition to President Barack Obama.
"[He] came to the Senate and was the leader of the government shutdown — sort of the movement to say we need to oppose President Obama as vigorously and by any means necessary," she said.
He came to international prominence for reading his kids a bedtime story while stalling debate on Obamacare for 21 hours on the Senate floor.
Attacking Mr Obama and climate change is par for the course.
"What numbskull thinks the SUV in your driveway is a bigger threat to our security than a bunch of lunatics who want to kill us," he asked supporters in Alabama on Sunday.
He is also happy to invoke religion at every turn.
"Just like the scripture tells us. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. That's what we're doing," he said earlier this month.
Cruz 'notably silent' on strident Trump
In fact, Senator Cruz is relying, in large part, on energising the conservative Christian vote.
"The only way to win a general election is to bring back to the polls the millions of conservatives who stayed away in 2008 and 2012 — millions of evangelical Christians stayed home, millions of Reagan Democrats stayed home," he told 7.30.
"How do we win? We need to be the party of hardworking men and women, blue collar workers, hardworking men and women who want to believe again."
His problem is that Mr Trump currently owns a large chunk of that conservative blue-collar support.
"I think every election feels a little bit new and different but this is very bizarre — you have a candidate like Trump who defies the laws of politics," Ms Anderson said.
She has keenly watched Senator Cruz's rise in the polls so that he now stands centre stage with Mr Trump.
"Ted Cruz has been very notably silent when it comes to any criticism of Donald Trump," she said.
"In part, I think it's because he views Trump voters as potentially coming to him should Trump, for whatever reason, quit the race."
"And, he also understands that there are a lot of Republican voters who may not even be voting for Donald Trump but they still think that there's some truth in what he's staying — that they like that he's calling out establishment Republicans, that he's staying things that are different, that he's getting rid of political correctness.
"I think Ted Cruz does not want to be on the opposite side of a lot of those things because he knows, emotionally, it's where a lot of Republican primary voters are at."
It was clear in the latest Republican candidates' debate that Senator Cruz was winding back some of his most outrageous rhetoric.
After previously stating the US should carpet bomb IS into oblivion, he is now qualifying what he said.
"You would carpet bomb where ISIS is, not a city, but the location of the troops," he said.
"You use air power directed and you have embedded Special Forces to direction the air power.
"But the object isn't to level a city — the object is to kill the ISIS terrorists."
Senator Ted Cruz's base, financially and politically, are the Tea Party — the Washington haters and the conservative purists.
It is these people, these evangelicals, who Senator Cruz is counting on to be his salvation in the race for the Republican nomination.
More than half the people who caucus in Iowa are evangelicals.
And no-one in 40 years has ever become the Republican candidate for president without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire.
"In winning over this community, Ted Cruz has positioned himself very well to pick up the kind of voters who are very likely to turn out in something like the Iowa caucuses," Ms Anderson said.
"Ted Cruz is also well positioned in many of the other early states.
"While it's unlikely he'll win New Hampshire for instance, not a state that's composed of the type of voters Ted Cruz goes after, you have South Carolina which is very evangelical-heavy state."
Mr Trump may still be the front-runner in national polls.
But as the Republican field narrows, it is Senator Cruz who's picking up supporters, cash and momentum.