Speeches that strongly imply but don't actually clearly say are, unfortunately, a necessary part of electoral strategy in a first past the post system—if your audience believes something to be 100% true, then you can't tell them they're wrong, you have to try to avoid the issue.

Bloody stupid system.

Doesn't absolve it, but regardless, to win over there you need to give a lot of ground to regular churchgoers. As long as you don't promise to do stuff to one group and promise to never do it to another (like Hillary did) then you're covered, don't like it but that's the system.