I don’t claim to know much about what motivates evangelical voters, but I was a little surprised that Trump winning the evangelical vote. Still, he’s not doing quite as well with them as with other segments of the Republican electorate. He’s hoping to change that:
Leading in the polls but lacking deep political roots with the religious right, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is planning to gather with a group of evangelical Christian leaders at his office next month.
The meeting’s invitation, shared with The Wall Street Journal by a person who received it, describes the planned Sept. 28 Trump Tower gathering as “a small group meeting, maximum 30 people.”
“Mr Trump’s goal is simple, to hear the heart of America’s Christian leaders and learn what they feel are the most critical issues facing our nation today,” wrote Sheila Withum, a Tampa, Fla., public relations executive who “has an extensive background in media ministry,” according to her website.
Any chance the Donald’s going to get born again before the Iowa caucus? I’d certainly tune in for on-air river dunking, and I can’t be the only one.
dedc79
Something tells me the Donald is careful not to get his hair wet while on camera.
Trentrunner
Asked yesterday if he were an “Old Testament or New Testament guy,” Trump replied “both.”
He don’t know shit about the Bible.
SenyorDave
Any chance the Donald’s going to get born again before the Iowa caucus? I’d certainly tune in for on-air river dunking, and I can’t be the only one.
I’d tune in for the submerging part if I knew that there would not be a re-emergence.
NonyNony
Why? Trump is a perfect candidate for at least half of the GOP’s self-labelled “evangelical” voting bloc.
“Evangelical” can mean a sincere fundamentalist Christian faith – I know a lot of liberal evangelicals and a few conservative ones for whom this is true. But sometimes “evangelical” faith is basically “America Fuck Yeah!” plus racism with a side order of the Bible and Jesus.
Trump’s got the main course, he’s just missing the side dishes.
SiubhanDuinne
Wouldn’t a dunking in the river loosen the glue on his scalp? If I were Teh Donald, not sure I’d want to risk having the rabid ferret detach and float away….
schrodinger's cat
Not particularly surprising since what seems to motivate the religious is right is fear and spite.
Tim C.
Most of the Evangelicals don’t have any kind of deep or even coherent theological worldview. See Fred Clark’s blog over at
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2015/08/25/white-evangelical-voters-donald-trump-and-the-evolution-of-the-religious-right/
for a good analysis of this.
Robin G.
Not a chance. The root of his schtick is that he doesn’t change for *anyone*. Even if every evangelical in the room comes out against him, he’ll still stay popular. They’ll find out they can’t control the mob any more than FOX can.
john not mccain
He’s going to have to become even more racist to improve his standing with evangelicals.
BGinCHI
What’s the difference between The Apprentice and these evangelical religious orgs?
Nope, I don’t know either.
dedc79
The GOP is the “Do as we say, not as we do” party. Trump is a perfect fit.
gvg
Just read a snip of an article over on LGF which was an interview some time ago with “Dee” from twisted sister who did a charity concert with Trump. He said that Donald was nice, funny, self depreciating, etc until just before the cameras started filming him when he became “the Donald”. Then his face would pucker up and he said things like “Dee, why shouldn’t I fire you”.
that is a very interesting possible fact about what is going on. We already know people are projecting what they want on to Trump.
“Dee” by the way did not think Trump would be a good president. It was way down a thread I think the first one right now but not sure. I got interrupted several times and lost track.
Tommy
At this point pretty much nothing Donald does will surprise me.
Lihtox
But doesn’t Trump already think he’s God?
Face
Boy, if I didn’t do my job as thoroughly as this bitch doesn’t, I’d be outtie so fast my shoes would be hot.
Just how many times does she need to spit directly into the eye of the Federal Judiciary before they drop her ass in the pokey?
Another Holocene Human
@NonyNony: Must be.
Evangelicals on twitter (I call them Christianists) certainly follow this mold.
Tommy
@gvg: I’ve seen more than a few interviews with people on his TV show and it is surprising how many of them like Trump. And I should note many he didn’t treat very well.
Amir Khalid
@NonyNony:
@Tim C.:
So the dark id of the Republican party base that the Donald has excited essentially deceives itself that it is evangelical Christian? Yep, makes sense to me. Especially when I think of moral scold and Ashley Madison
dupeclient Josh Duggar.Another Holocene Human
@gvg: I’ve known people with NPD who would do this. It can kind of leave the other person reeling. Presumably another seasoned performer just rolls with it as “stage persona” because that’s at thing as well.
Hal
Can’t wait for the mass hypocrisy of all these evangelicals being willing to vote for an multiple times married adulterer just to keep that evil Democrat out of the White House. I have a friend who is deeply religious who talks about how terrible Trump is but I know it’s only a matter of time before he starts supporting him. Can’t wait for his justifications.
Brachiator
Some time back, I would have said, not a chance in hell. But then again I never imagined that Trump would ever run for president.
@Trentrunner:
This is a feature, not a bug. He shares this ignorance with most Americans.
Halcyon
This is entirely unsurprising. DougJ, the only important part of gaining evangelical political support is that you have to make the appropriate noises indicating that you acknowledge that they are the mostest importantest and mostest moralest people in the entire US and everyone else is inferior. Everything else, including anything like a working knowledge of the bible, or even religion at all, is secondary and optional, up to and including blatant hypocrisy.
Another Holocene Human
@Tim C.:
I blame the evangelism as marketing movement. When you package Christianity and make it content free, it becomes nothing more than a brand, rah rah go team.
Roger Moore
@BGinCHI:
The Apprentice worships Trump rather than Mammon.
BGinCHI
@Roger Moore: Difference without a distinction.
p.a.
“I can be yoooge for Jebus. Jebus is quality and class, just like Trump Inc.”
NotMax
Donald (“I build stuff”) Trump could have completed the Tower of Babel. With a wall around it, too.
And it would have been huge and classy, with a giant golden calf in the lobby.
Tommy
@Halcyon: Amen to that comment. I am an Athiest but many religious people in and around my life and they are nothing like the people I see on TV telling me how religious and pious they are.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@gvg: Which brings us back to the idea that Trump’s run is either a massive troll on the GOP or a false-flag op to help Clinton (or at least expose the GOP’s moral and ethical bankruptcy for all to see).
The only reason I don’t believe it’s true is that it’s working so well.
As has been pointed out multiple times, Trump isn’t saying anything the rest of the field isn’t saying, he’s just not bothering to use the dog whistles – he’s blurting it out in plain text for everyone to hear and understand. And regardless of whether he’s serious or trolling, and despite the very real risk such rhetoric has already brought, it will wind up being a net positive, because it exposes the morally bankrupt, xenophobic, racist, infantile heart of the modern Republican party for everyone to see.
lonesomerobot
Can’t stand Trump but you have to admit he’s the ultimate gift to the media. He may also be that to Democrats, but I have one significant concern about a specific group – Low Information Non-Voters. Or, in other words, idiots that don’t normally vote.
The average turnout rate for US Presidential elections going back to 2000 is 58.6%. That leaves a significant portion of the electorate lurking there, and there’s a portion of that roughly 100 million people that are going to vote for Trump. Bank on it. The question is: Will it be 1%, 5% or 10%?
They could be the “R’s and D’s are both sides of the same coin” crowd, or just idiots (maybe redundancy there, I grant you). Perhaps they’ve merely been waiting all their lives for a candidate like Trump. So that’s the thing about Trump that worries me the most. Never underestimate the power of idiots in America. Never. Especially when roused into action by an Alpha-Idiot.
Another Holocene Human
@Tim C.: In all seriousness, thanks for that link. I had never thought about the Cold War angle from an evangelical perspective, because while I lived through the Cold War, I wasn’t an evangelical.
rk
Doesn’t surprise me at all. Evangelicals are religious in the same way as the Duggars are religious. It’s all pointy finger sanctimonious lecturing and hatred of everyone on one hand, and closeted porn, debauchery and greed on the other. Of course they support Trump. He’s what’s in their ugly souls. Lying, inconsistent, egotistical fraud. They’ll all fall in line. If Trump is the candidate he will get all the votes that every republican gets. Mitt Romney was supposed to be a liability because they would never vote for a Mormon. How did that turn out?
NotMax
@Tommy
Handy hint: Avoid capitalizing atheist as one would the name of a religion.
Mike J
Religious voters don’t actually care about religion, and never have. Fred at Slacktivist just had a post on this topic.
WaterGirl
At this point, I really think Trump is still running as a big fuck you to President Obama for poking fun at him at the big press dinner a couple of years ago. The Donald will not be humiliated!
Based on the title that showed up in my RSS reader, I really expected this to be a John Cole thread.
Mathguy
@Trentrunner: “Which newspapers do you read?”
“All of them.”
Tommy
@lonesomerobot: At first I thought Trumps run was a publicity grab, a cry for attention, or some bizarre form of performance art. Now he kind of worries me.
Another Holocene Human
@lonesomerobot: I think the only extras he might pick up are discouraged white supremacists who thought Romney wasn’t racist enough. Those people scare me, especially if they vote down ticket.
At the same time, if the Democrats do their damn jobs they should be able to rally numbers of their own. Kids turn 18 every year. Some of their loyal broke voters have cars now (national transit ridership is slightly down). Work to organize the unorganized (or disorganized) continues.
JPL
@Trentrunner: Halperin also asked him What’s your favorite verse? It’s a personal question and I don’t want to say…
Like others, he might say the Bible is his favorite book, but he’s hasn’t opened it.
Betty Cracker
It’s only surprising if you don’t consider how deeply and consistently hypocritical Republican evangelicals as a group are on damn near every issue. They are at odds with the teachings of Jesus on policy (fuck the poor! yay war!) and in their personal lives (highest rate of unmarried births, domestic violence, etc.).
JPL
This is an interesting hashtag about Trump and the Bible.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/trumpbible
Here’s a sample
Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes and GAVE THEM AWAY? Terrible business strategy.
Brachiator
@Tim C.:
I don’t know. The link that I reached seemed to talk about a fairly coherent, if dumb, worldview. But the analysis itself was find of fuzzy and I’m not sure how any of this provides any insight into evangelical support for Trump.
For example, the blog post claims:
I thought that conservatives saw this as an unforgivably inept failure. But I didn’t parse out how religious conservatives might have viewed this differently from the rest of that crowd.
Amir Khalid
@WaterGirl:
I also like the theory that Bill Clinton persuaded the Donald to run — thus executing the mother of all ratfucks against the Republican party.
srv
I’m shocked that a man like Trump could have different public and private personas. Why, that’s just impossible for someone who spends a lot of time on TV and has even done WWE.
What’s on TV is real! W was a great rancher anyone would want to have a beer with and Putin is a really tough man too.
Another Holocene Human
@rk: I wouldn’t dismiss the Duggars that way. They are part of a cult (a very ugly patriarchal cult) and there is some very real pain and trauma hiding behind those fake smiles and frozen eyes. The sex crimes are not just a random American tragedy but actually NORMATIVE in these communities because of the intensely fucked up things young men are taught about sex and gender roles. In fact, when Papa Duggar sought help at church (not outside of church, again: cult), he found out multiple other families in the church were suffering through the same thing.
Patriarchal cult religion in general seems to truck in heaps of child abuse, especially sexual abuse of minor females, but there’s plenty of perversion to go around.
Many evangelicals strike me as belonging to a feel good, shallow, pump yourself up, slogan religion. What the Duggars were into was something very different.
Even if both groups vote for the same horrible assholes.
gex
What motivates evangelicals?
Easy. It is hate.
The Christian Coalition got political when segregated schools went away. They’ve added the war on women and gays to their agenda. They are the group that most strongly supported wars in the ME and torture. I’m sure they aren’t very happy about immigrants that aren’t white.
If they weren’t currently banding together with other Christians to wage wars on these groups, they’d probably go after non-evangelical white Christians too. There is one true way, one chosen people, and the rest are the enemy.
sigaba
@Robin G.:
He doesn’t change for anyone, he just sorta shows up, shakes some hands, and realizes “these were always my people.”
@Tim C.:
There’s this game pundits play, where we’re all supposed to pretend that the Christian Right is overwhelmingly comprised of Rod Drehers and Ross Douthats.
Or, the logic goes something like this: “Thomas Aquinas was against homosexuality, Joe won’t bake a cake for a gay wedding, thus Joe’s opinion is basically as authoritative as Thomas Aquinas’s.”
gene108
In the 1970’s, it was trying to find ways around integration.
Since that did not really work out well for them, they moved to abortion and being moral scolds in the 1980’s.
But somewhere in their minds there’s still the resentment over the 1960’s and all the racial equality and gender equality stuff that got pushed down their throats.
And Trump seems to be the best candidate to restore the balance they want in that regard.
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator: Fred’s saying their truest and most consistent (going back to 1980) motivation is America Fuck Yeah. If America looks weak in the world, then it’s a failure of the president, and they need a tough president to make America strong again. It’s nationalist dipshittery. Trump has repeatedly promised to screw other nations in negotiations and get away with it. To liberals this sounds like performance art, because who could believe such claims? But Fred is claiming that evangelicals believe him and it’s what they want to hear.
The rest of the piece is talking about a larger conversation about why Evangelicals are willing to vote for non-Evangelical candidates and why that might be.
EdTheRed
Sixteen candidates in a convention hall
Turning me into the biggest fool of them all
Gin & Tonic
@Another Holocene Human: There are 70 million people eligible to vote who are not currently registered to vote. If Donald gets 10% of them to register and vote for him, then get used to saying “President Trump.”
Baud
This makes sense. The cross is in the shape of a T. I’m sure the Bible Codes foretold this.
Kropadope
I wonder if it helps or hurts Trump with Evangelicals that in response to a comment made by the Pope about the excesses of capitalism, Trump implied that he wouldn’t help the Pope when the very real existential threat of ISIS comes to overthrow the Vatican.
Another Holocene Human
@sigaba: Aquinas lost me when he said rape wasn’t so bad because at least it wasn’t masturbation.
Tommy
@Another Holocene Human: I might suggest you read Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer. It is about a sect of Mormons and a murder mystery at the same time but I have always felt the far, far right evangelicals share a lot of similarities.
Another Holocene Human
@Gin & Tonic: I would expect some registered but rarely vote folks to come out of the woodwork if Trump is closing in. Granted, most of them probably live in the Northeast Corridor or lived there for a significant period of time.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: They do. A fundie Mormon group made headlines some years ago for throwing out teen males (to reduce sexual competition). Their prospects were dim.
Amir Khalid
@Kropadope:
It’s my understanding that evangelical Christians despise Catholics. So it might help Trump rather than hurt him with that crowd.
schrodinger's cat
I ar not an anchor kitten!
ETA: The anchor baby has as much grounding in reality as the so called death panels did.
sigaba
@Another Holocene Human: More true then than now, fortunately:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtY5bv-oxLE
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: That would be the coolest thing ever and among the greatest hoaxes on record if it were true. And really, if you set out to cripple the GOP for the foreseeable future, wouldn’t “blow up bridges with Hispanic/Latino voters,” “undermine the power of Fox News,” and “expose plutocratic control of the process” be the first three items on your agenda?
Brachiator
@lonesomerobot:
Probably no such thing as low information voters or low information non-voters. Most people, even the passionately political, are dumber than they think. And there are a number of reasons that people do not vote. Some are not politically engaged because they are insulated (or believe that they are) from what politicians may do. Others see themselves as too busy living their lives to pay attention to politics.
But here’s the group you should be worried about.
There are some of these. But there are also people who believe, with much justification, that neither party has done a damn thing for them, and are not likely to do anything for them in the future.
Trump may be appealing to some of these people. Who knows. But if he is, it could mean trouble for the Republicans, and possibly some trouble for the Democrats.
On the other hand, Trump has not yet won a single primary battle. Pledges of support for now don’t mean anything, because it is not a real statement of committed preference.
Perhaps they’ve merely been waiting all their lives for a candidate like Trump. So that’s the thing about Trump that worries me the most. Never underestimate the power of idiots in America. Never. Especially when roused into action by an Alpha-Idiot.
DougJ
@EdTheRed:
I like it.
NonyNony
@Kropadope:
Are you kidding? That wouldn’t even hurt him with the Catholics who are inclined to vote for him.
Another Holocene Human
@Amir Khalid: Not so much these days that a bunch of them didn’t convert to Catholicism and then get loudly indignant when conserva-Pope stepped down.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
This is not true to the same degree anymore. Evangelicals and Catholics come together over the issue of abortion.
Pee Cee
The religious right are authoritarians at heart. Of course they’ll like The Donald.
Tommy
@Amir Khalid: I am asking because I don’t know, but aren’t Catholics a diverse group but many pretty darn conservative. I was raised a Methodist but the rest of my extended family Catholic. Attended their Mass and that is a pretty conservative group of folks. How are Evangelicals not with them?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
The religious right doesn’t care about the Bible like they care about the Constitution these days. They may carry one around with them but they never read it. They’ve replaced biblical orthodoxy with conservative orthodoxy, so they probably don’t really care what relationship Trump has with Jesus, so long as he says what they like to hear on non-biblical topics.
Linnaeus
This might be an appropriate place, if it hasn’t been done yet, to recommend Kevin Kruse’s book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. In light of Trump’s outreach to evangelicals, the book provides some good historical context that helps to explain how they might (and might not) respond to him.
Brachiator
@Another Holocene Human:
I don’t quite buy this argument. Cold War opposition to the Soviets had a religious dimension, the terror of godless communism vs Baby Jebus. And the Iranian hostage failure was played up not as a general “America looks weak in the world” thing as much as it was supposed proof of Carter’s incompetence as commander-in-chief. And I’m still not seeing the Soviet connection here.
But now the Soviet Union is dead (apparently still news to some liberals and as well as to some conservatives), and the battle that Trump is promising to win is economic not ideological or religious. I am still not sure what deeply religious evangelicals hope to get out of this by jumping on the Trump wagon, or how they connect nationalist dipshittery to religious observance.
John O
I haven’t read all the Donald threads because *yawn* at some point, I still can’t imagine him as the nominee and it’s too early to worry about, but I wondered if anyone had posted this along the way, since it seems pretty relevant.
For me it’s like check, check, check, check, at infinitum. Also, too, you know who else had NPD? That’s right. He liked German Shepherds.
Calouste
The latest Q-pac poll for the GOP primaries:
Never held office : 45%
Hasn’t held office in 8 years or more: 11%
Current or recent office holders: 32%
Don’t know/someone else: 12%
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
That the Soviet Union is dead is news even to Vladimir Putin, who for some reason wants to revive the Cold War. So don’t be too surprised that there are Americans who haven’t heard yet.
Hoodie
I almost bust a gut watching Trump awkwardly profess his love of the Bible after comparing it to Art of the Deal. Evangelical Republicans will support Trump because (1) they’re judgmental authoritarian assholes, just like Trump, and (2) they’re the biggest marks on the planet, evidenced by all the cash they throw at TV preachers and other grifters.
Kropadope
@Tommy:
Catholics are actually pretty liberal as far as religious groups go. More likely to vote Democrat and more likely to support things like gay marriage and access to birth control. Must be those Northeastern folk of Irish decent.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
They trust him to stay bought. Steve Forbes ran in 1996 as a social libertarian, famously calling Pat Robertson a toothy flake, then in the 2000 cycle ran as a hard core Jeebus freak and got a good chunk of fundie support, for a while
Linnaeus
@Brachiator:
It’s not obvious, because being evangelical does not, in of itself, indicate anything about one’s economic views. But in the US political context, there has been a steady program of welding a particular economic view to a particular religious outlook (with a good bit of “free-market-economics-as-national-identity” thrown in). The result is that one can discern a population of evangelicals who view their religious, economic, and political views as an integrated whole.
lonesomerobot
@Brachiator: Well I’m going to have to call plagiarism on that last paragraph. Please consult your lawyer.
I guess it boils down to: Of the ≈100 million that normally don’t vote, how many of them decide Trump is the different thing they’ve been waiting for all this time? I think it could be a significant number. Idiots that don’t normally vote.
I’m also already thinking there’s less chance Dems can take back the Senate if Hilary Clinton is the candidate. And absolutely zero chance for the House. She really just isn’t the type of candidate that will energize voters. Except of course the right wingers who hate her and would walk through hot coals, over a bed of gay penises, and swim through a river of santorum to vote against her.
Linnaeus
@Amir Khalid:
A fair number of Americans, both elite and not, have not been willing to accept the end of the Cold War, mainly because it provided an easily grasped organizing principle that could be used to justify any number of policies that might not otherwise be justified. So it doesn’t surprise me that there are those who are eagerly looking for a new Cold War, with perhaps a different enemy, but theoretically and structurally very similar to the old one.
Feudalism Now!
Trump: The Candidate will have his speech writers throw some suitable scripture into a few speeches. Actually, it may be Quentin Tarantino’s pseudo-scripture from Pulp Fiction, but it will be enough. The Evangelicals will follow whoever has the power and they won’t get that from the Dem side. Neither Hilary nor Bernie is going to court the American Taliban. So lip service and the projection of a ‘winner’ are enough to get the Religious Rights vote. They will not be the deciding faction in the primaries because every candidate is going to that well. Is there a republican contestant not touting their religious bona fides?
schrodinger's cat
@Tommy: By this logic the mullahs in Iran and the Saudi Princes should be bosom buddies because they are equally conservative.There are some divides that span centuries. The Catholic-Protestant divide is one of them.
ETA: Also there are many liberal Catholics, like the Jesuits, see the current Pope. Not all Catholics are like Scalia and Alito.
Tripod
He’s preaching white power. Of course they love him.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
Putin’s actions are consistent with reviving the Russian Empire. This is not quite the same thing as the communist Soviet Union.
For example, Americans and others severely misread Putin’s actions in the Ukraine and were stupidly blind to old historical and nationalistic claims that Russia has to that region.
LanceThruster
It’s less about their Glob view then T-Rump’s ability to make their own prejudices ‘respectable.’
It’s always been a means to provide cover.
JoeShabadoo
>Brachiator:
I don’t know if there is anything that can be done about this because the American political system is set up to move like molasses and is not very democratic. With majorities in two legislative branches and a president necessary to really push things through as well as having party unity beyond that voters will always feel like nothing is getting done.
Add to that the fact that the Senate is based solely on geography, the president is voted in by states so popular vote doesn’t matter disenfranchising many voters in red and blue states and the house capped the number of representatives over a hundred years ago ensuring that as the population grew peoples votes would matter less and less.
cckids
@Trentrunner:
But . . but . . . at his Alabama shindig last week, he said that the Bible was his FAVORITE BOOK. Followed closely by his own paean to himself.
Of course, this came after he said (maybe at the debate?) that he doesn’t regularly pray to the Jebus. So possibly he got some blowback about that & decided that to most effectively market himself he needed to turn up the Xtian.
Noskilz
My guess would be some evangelicals might feel he’s likely to do things they want done, even if he’s not much of a holy roller himself. Assuming you don’t just go with the notion that the religion shtick is probably a flag of convenience for many.
Given some of his recent antics, I wonder if someone could scam somone in his campaign into using Bad Religion’s “American Jesus” for its evangelical outreach efforts and how long it would take for some of his fanbase to catch the slight.
polyorchnid octopunch
Oh, they’re going to have a heart to heart all right. He’s going to speak to them grifter to grifter.
I’m sure they’ll recognise him as one of them.
Brachiator
@JoeShabadoo: RE: There are some of these. But there are also people who believe, with much justification, that neither party has done a damn thing for them, and are not likely to do anything for them in the future.
Much of what you say is true, and this may in part be why we have disrupters like Ross Perot and now Donald Trump who appeal to those who feel frustrated by gridlock and evasion.
Matt McIrvin
@Kropadope: More Catholics are Democrats than Republicans, but, also, more Americans are Democrats than Republicans. And some of this is probably controlled by ethnicity.
Pew says the party affiliation of white American Catholics closely matches that of white Americans in general:
http://ncronline.org/news/catholics-america/religion-and-political-affiliation
http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/07/a-deep-dive-into-party-affiliation/
Sherparick
@NonyNony: You forgot the hating gays bit, slut shaming, forced pregnancy (even unto death) for women, and hating science since it tells them they (as part of the human race) are not God’s special little snowflake. Steve King of Iowa is a big “Fundamentalist” Christianity, and his views most non-whites as subhumans threat to his special fee fees.
Kay
Clinton is out and about:
She has to blunt the Kasich-mentum :)
Mr. Kasich has a bit of a burgeoning scandal here. It won’t matter nationally but it might ding him in-state. He hired the husband of his national campaign manager to rate Ohio charter schools. The husband presented his made-up numbers to the state board of ed, who were ready to rubberstamp, and then an alert newspaper reporter noticed the whole calculation scheme was fake and also illegal. There are rules about these things. The campaign manager’s husband resigned, but it may not matter because every newspaper in the state is demanding emails to see if the state head of education was involved in the book-cooking. The education department won’t release the emails and today it came out that the state director of ed flat-out lied about another (different) big controversy involving Youngstown.
Kasich should have gotten rid of the head of the dept of ed when he had the chance. It would have been over by now if he had. The newspapers who filed under state sunshine laws are going to get the emails as soon as it gets to a court. It’s a slam dunk. Kasich is not handling this very well. It gets worse every day.
Tim C.
@Brachiator: I’m distinguishing between the “Elites and Gatekeepers” and the rank and file megachurch patron. Yes, there’s a whole ecosystem of fundamentalism that builds mostly internally consistent way of thinking. Albeit one that is frequently dumb, bigoted, against their own economic interests, and constantly changing.
As was said by Holocene the fundamentalist identity seems to be more about a brand and a tribal boundary than anything else. There is a complete alternate “Christian” culture in the United States that allows for it’s adherents to reinforce that identity. Books, TV, apps, services, etc. What’s new is that it all seems to be evolving away from traditional denominations that historically all at least wrote out some detailed principles and is becoming more and more about what we can sell in the Christian bookstore at the strip mall than anything else.
satby
@Kropadope: a lot of those “Northeastern folks of Irish decent” are union workers, and I have been watching some pretty racist guys turn very sour on Republicans because of the union busting. Trump hires undocumented workers for his casinos and restaurants, so he’s on their shit list too.
catclub
@Feudalism Now!:
Fiorina?
Enhanced Voting Techinques
Who’se going to get baptisted, Trump or Jesus?
Brachiator
@Tim C.:
Fair enough. I still don’t think this tells us very much about how evangelicals reconcile their religion with their admiration for Trump. By the way, I don’t think any coherent apologia is necessary, but it would be interesting if anyone had any real handle on this issue.
I don’t think you are entirely correct here. The “Great Awakening” and other religious revivals in America have always been informal and charismatic. Anything approaching doctrine theology was always playing catch-up with the more spiritual enthusiasms of believers.
Not as negative a thing as you possibly suggest. Again, the impulse here is away from rigid authoritarian theology handed down by popes, archbishops and church hierarchy and more towards a more personal and accessible religion.
This, perhaps, makes it easier for evangelical splinter groups to jump onto any political bandwagon they like, and not worry as much about squaring their actions with received religious instruction.
Hoodie
I can see Trump’s appeal to some right wing evangelicals but, after reading this Charles Blow piece that includes some choice Trump nuggets that you think would be appalling to a lot of fundies (e.g., ones bragging about his sexual prowess), I’m starting to wonder whether there is an additional dimension to this madness. When you read some of these quotes, you wonder why some of the other GOP candidates didn’t trot them out in the last debate (particularly in fundie-rich Iowa), and why most of them are treating Trump with kid gloves. A possible theory is they know they can kill Trump with the fundies at any time, so they’re dragging it out to energize other members of the white power contingent who don’t often vote. The fundamentalists already show up at the polls for stuff like gay marriage and abortion (hence the continuing push there), so that contingent is likely maxed out. What’s left are other whites who are racist or quasi-racist, sexist or quasi-sexist, but aren’t particularly religious, and who, by the way, also tend to worship Mammon and loudmouth braggarts like Trump. The hope is that this expanded group will stay at least in some degree after Trump flames out with the fundies, all without having to use Trump’s explicit racist demagoguery themselves (I could see this as Cruz’s game plan). The “mainstream” GOP candidate left standing after Trump will get the benefit of Trumps’ additions to the party, while still letting “moderate” white GOP voters feel like they’re not racists. They’ll sit on their hands, say crap like “Donald Trump’s touching a nerve,” and not get their own hands dirty. They know they can’t win the Hispanic vote anyway and may hope turnout in that community will be less juiced once Trump is gone or undermined by stuff like voter ID.
gene108
@Noskilz:
They did this in 1980 and Carter is an actual evangelical.
burritoboy
@Tommy:
As much as a lot of people have wanted to meld the Catholics and Evangelicals (I’m looking at you, First Things), they’re not the same. Now, there’s some considerable overlap between conservative Catholics (especially if they live in already conservative regions and strongly if they live in regions where they are a small minority amongst Evangelicals) and evangelicals, but there’s strong differences:
1. Catholicism in the USA will always view itself as a religion of immigrants. Catholics know that our future in the US now rests on migration from Central and South America. Historically, it always viewed itself as a religion of immigrants. That the immigration (even in the 19th century) was primarily to the North and not the South (except for New Orleans) means that Catholics, even today, primarily view their historical experience as poor immigrants from underdeveloped parts of Europe (Ireland, Southern Italy) moving to become the urban working class in the big industrial cities.
2. Catholicism in the USA is heavily colored by a history of strong antagonism from Protestants, particularly the evangelicals in the South. Things like the KKK (which murdered a priest in Alabama), the strong opposition to Catholic schools, the Temperance movement and so on still resonate.
3. Catholics in the USA often came from the parts of Europe which were the places which the great Empires of the 19th century suppressed and ignored (again, Ireland, Southern Italy, Portugal, etc) and still retain a lot of the intellectual traditions of those places – the Catholic Church was central to how the Irish opposed being swallowed by the British Empire, etc.
Tim C.
@Brachiator: I see your point, and I get the argument you are making that decentralization is good in a lot of cases, and that making faith personal is a way for more people to find meaning. All good. But that decentralization is also the reason things get incoherent. When you can’t tell the difference between pseudo-religious fantasy like the Omen and Left Behind and the things that people thought before those movies and books come out… again, Fred Clark does it better than me.
As for the fundamentalist love of Trump, my big point is that they don’t need to reconcile their faith with Trump’s actions because they will happily justify that support the same way they justify hurting the poor, casting the first stone, and anything else the tribal identity demands. He’s the alpha they’ve been looking for.
Side note: Has anyone heard from Right2Rise since the GOP debate?
Davis X. Machina
Fred Clark at Slactivist has been arguing for years that in America about thirty years ago people began picking their religion, and especially denominations — – or tendencies, for Catholicis — within reiigions, to conform to their politics, and not the other way round.
Trump is exploiting this. The evangelicals love his politics, they could care less what his theology of grace is…
WaterGirl
@Amir Khalid: Your theory is a happier one than mine, we can go with yours. :-)
jake the antisoshul shoshulist
@Brachiator:
The Ruskys were atheists. Which was even worse than being commies.
Chris
@gex:
This.
Every time you hear “evangelicals,” substitute “segregationists.” That’s a much more reliable guide to their politics than anything Bible or Jesus related.
Chris
@Amir Khalid:
Evangelicals do despise Catholics. However, conservative Catholics basically make up half of the religious right. Pissing them off and losing them as allies, even of convenience, is not something they want to do.
Another Holocene Human
@Kropadope: Oh god. No. Catholics have been trending 50/50 on political orientation and only the MEXICANS have been keeping those Democratic numbers up. Due to the scandals, many of the liberal Irish quit, and the people left in those Northeastern churches are very conservative indeed. But don’t be fooled, there was always a fairly rightwing group of them in the northeast, kind of labor rights for me, no reproductive rights for thee kind of thing.
Another Holocene Human
@schrodinger’s cat: Wait, Jesuits are now “liberal” now for being to the left of Savonarola?
The more you know.
Another Holocene Human
@Kay:
Wow. Rick Scott canned his own Lt Gov to make a scandal go away. I guess it helps to have all lizard brain, no mammalian one.
Another Holocene Human
@Brachiator:
I don’t think that’s fair. For example, look at the big schism in the 19th century between Missionary and Primitive Baptists. It was fundamentally an argument about tactics … that was driven by an argument about goals … that was driven by an argument over theology and Biblical interpretation.
It isn’t ALL derp all the time with that set.
Kropadope
@Another Holocene Human: But then you have Catholics like me; confirmed, but not practicing. I’m sure the ones filling the pews are very, very conservative. Still, I know a lot of people who would identify as Catholic who only show up to church on Easter, Christmas, and for funerals.