Or, as the Grey Lady mealymouths it, “Social Conservatives, However Reluctant, Are Warming to the Idea of Trump”…
Activists and leaders in the social conservative movement, after spending most of the past year opposing and condemning Donald J. Trump, are now moving to embrace his candidacy and are joining the growing number of mainstream Republicans who appear ready to coalesce around the party’s presumptive nominee…
“Oh, my, it’s difficult,” said Penny Nance, the president of Concerned Women for America, a group that has openly campaigned against Mr. Trump. “He’s not my first choice. He’s not my second choice,” she added. “But any concerns I have about him pale in contrast to Hillary Clinton.”
And Mr. Trump — whose litany of offenses against cultural conservatives include support of Planned Parenthood, past positions on abortion rights and his more accepting views on gays and lesbians — is winning over this once deeply skeptical constituency.
He has made overt moves, such as suggesting last week that he would name Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, and sent subtle signals, like employing people for his campaign who are well known in the movement.
Mr. Trump has, to a large extent, placated a vocal and powerful element of the Republican Party’s base, whose backing he will need if he wants to wage a general election campaign leading a united conservative movement.
The support of social conservatives is not just symbolic. It means getting assistance from groups that plan to spend millions of dollars mobilizing voters, people who lead influential faith-based organizations and Republican activists who will help craft the party’s platform at the national convention this summer…
“They love a convert because it’s what their faith is all about,” said Ralph Reed, founder of the Faith & Freedom Coalition and a friend of Mr. Trump.
“Contrary to the stereotype that is often assigned to them by the larger culture,” Mr. Reed added, “evangelicals are far more forgiving and extend far more mercy to political figures and others than is understood.”…“My counsel — and I have spoken to others — is let’s not be premature in jumping to conclusions,” said Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, a conservative policy group. “Rather,” added Mr. Perkins, who is also a member of the committee that will write the party’s platform at the convention, “let’s give Donald Trump the opportunity to make the first move.”…
Because he may have broken at least nine of our Ten Commandments, but at least he’s got a tiny penis and hates women as much as we do. The only glimmer of humor in this shitstorm is that it must be killing Ted Cruz to watch the biggest names in God-Profiteering cozy up to the short-fingered vulgarian instead of bending their knees to him.
More from the daily Trumpster Dumpster-Fire:
Could you ask for a more perfect anecdote to summarize the Trump Campaign? https://t.co/sgn7vJQXHe
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) May 16, 2016
God, this election season: Trump's team canceled an interview after they heard the reporter speaking Spanish https://t.co/eE1WoYrWn8
— Lisa Tozzi (@lisatozzi) May 16, 2016
LesBonnesFemmes
Seriously. It is Come to Jesus time for the bernfeelers. I am a bit stunned that my bernfeeler friends still continue to qualify every single thing, and refuse to admit they might have ever been wrong once. Ugh.
JustRuss
A convert? Yes, Trump saw the light just as he needed millions of evangelical votes. Yet more proof that the lord works in mysterious ways.
I didn’t like Trump’s chances with these folks, but they live to get conned.
Mike J
Was it somebody here who asked, about Ryan, how long his process of warming to Trump would take, since it only took David Duke one day?
hellslittlestangel
AKA birds of a feather flocking together.
Prescott Cactus
Bore a hole in my skull.
“Because he may have broken at least nine of our Ten Commandments. . . ”
I’m giving him a double for “Thou shalt not covet (neighbor’s wife) ”
Back batting 1000%
NR
@LesBonnesFemmes: Well at least Hillary Clinton is unifying a party. It’s just the wrong one.
Villago Delenda Est
The vile creatures are getting in line. They always do. Last cycle they swore they’d never support a non-Christian (Marquis de Mittens). But they came around.
LesBonnesFemmes
@NR: And, whose fault might that be? The asshat, like you, who would rather crow about the GOP rallying against the Democratic Party, instead of getting on the train, or those of us who have been Big D Democrats since the Seventies. Get on board, buddy. Sorry your candidate lost.
piratedan
and what pray tell, is so incredibly fucking scary about Hillary Clinton….
she might treat everyone as equals?
she might treat women as something other than incubators?
that black people and brown people might really be seen as people?
that education and health care might actually be priorities instead of worrying about transgender people?
omg, the fucking horror of it all.
NR
@LesBonnesFemmes:
That’s easy. Hillary Clinton’s.
EBT
Even with the support of the god botherers is that enough to put him in the white house?
Elizabelle
As with most “mealymouthing” NYTimes articles (and they do publish many), it’s best to savor the reader comments — click on them and sort them by most liked. They’re a feast of common sense and seeing these “faith leaders” for the partisan charlatans they are.
amk
ah, the sweet, sweet hypocrisy of social cons.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mike J:
Kind of odd to think of Ryan as someone with something resembling a principle.
Major Major Major Major
NR sure loves pie.
I’m stealing the ‘broke nine of the ten commandments but at least he hates women as much as we do’ thing FYI. I don’t know where and I don’t know when but I do know I’m doing it.
Time for me to unwindulax with some Bob’s Burgers after a big evening of zen and Fallout 4. Do I contradict myself, very well then.
Got an interview with the Carnegie Foundation tomorrow, wish me luck! No idea where all these interviews are coming from!
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
I have no idea why anyone is scared of the dumbpublicans.
They’ve lost 5 out of the last 6 elections. Let that sit in.
MSNBC had a focus group of married republican women from some upper middle class Virginia suburb last week.
The women who were in the 60s and above loved Trump.
The women in their 30s and 40s hated Trump and said while they didn’t like Clinton they will vote for her to stop the disgusting misogynist.
He’s Sarah Palin without the intelligence.
Arclite
Cruz was the scariest candidate, so glad he’s out of the race.
Trump is a narcissist and a buffoon, but he’s no ideologue. I wish people would stop comparing his “rise” to that of Hitler.
Regardless, Hillz is going to wipe the floor with him.
NR
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Midterm elections aren’t elections now?
akryan
@NR: Really fair reply, because mid-terms and local elections are actually way more important to peoples’ lives than presidential elections, but in this case we are talking about a presidential election. I am not at all taking Trump for granted, but we would really have to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory to lose to him. I think she’s just going to kill him in the debates.
sm*t cl*de
As long as they’re Republicans.
Zinsky
@piratedan: Exactly, piratedan! Ask one of the slack-jawed morons who “fear” Hillary Clinton why they are so afraid of her and I’m sure what would come tumbling out of their periodontal-disease laden gob is some sort of idiotic mish-mash of ‘Whitewater, Vince Foster, Benghazi, Mena’ nonsensical goulash they read on Newsmax or heard on Rush or Hannity. All demonstrably false and irrelevant and pointless to boot. Conservatives can only engage their lizard brains when talking about the Clintons.
Betty Cracker
Rare footage of commenter NR as a child…
BC in Illinois
And on the topic of “we speak ‘murican here, amigo.”
The reporter wasn’t attempting to talk to Trump in Spanish. He spoke Spanish in a conversation with someone else, on his cell phone. For that, the interview was cancelled and he was asked to leave,
The Republicans don’t know their own heritage. Let’s go back to the days of Abraham Lincoln. After the Lincoln Douglas debate in Quincy, Illinois, October 13, 1858 — after three hours of debate — members of both parties gathered to hear even more speeches. “The courthouse was ‘literally jammed with people’ to hear three more Republican speeches . . .”
The second of these speeches was “in the German language.”
[Illinois State Journal, Oct. 18, 1858; quoted in Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas, p. 254.]
Sprechen Sie Amerikanisch?
Balconesfault
Almost makes me wish for a Trump victory… Because the real chance he’d nominate a justice that fulfills their “Scalia has risen!” fantasies is about 1 in 100. In office he’d flip on supporting a Christianist agenda as fast as he’d flip on deciding which of his bimbette props he surrounds himself with on the podium is the most bangable. It would be wonderfully sweet to see the wailing and gnashing of teeth from the Armageddon fetishists.
Almost…
Frankensteinbeck
@Balconesfault:
Unfortunately, it’s more like 50/50. Trump gets attention when whatever randomness emerges from his pie hole defies conservatism, but he IS random. He defended Planned Parenthood when he felt like attacking Fiorina, and attacked Planned Parenthood the very next time it came up. Like the most raging narcissists, his whim of the moment is what he believes in, needing no consistency.
MattF
@Balconesfault: Except that what they’ll do is drop any pretense of doubt and declare that anyone who implies anything negative about Der Trump is a liar and a hypocrite who’s headed for eternal damnation. It’s called projection, it’s what they do.
NorthLeft12
@JustRuss: You got it!
A favourite quote from Mark Twain that fits; “It is easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.”
And from this generation’s Twain, George Carlin; “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
rikyrah
The grifters gotta grift
Joel
@JustRuss: Trump is a living, breathing Sinclair Lewis character. A little bit Buzz Windrip, a little bit Elmer Gantry… And a large part of America is every bit as dumb and corrupt as Lewis painted it.
Hal
What other choice do they have? I would argue that the success of Trump this season proves evangelicals are not as influential as they like to believe they are, but instead are just useful idiots for the republican party leaders. Evangelism is lead by frauds out to make a buck and they have millions of unquestioning drones who will go along with anything as long as they think the rapture will save them.
Raven Onthill
In the final reading, it seems, “social conservatives” turn out to be organized misogynists. There are few things in modern “conservative” US politics that cannot be explained as expressions of threatened masculinity and spiritual pride.
StellaB
@BC in Illinois: Across the upper midwest and into Pennsylvania in that era, there was an entire network of German language public schools. Third and fourth generation children were educated in German.
terry chay
@EBT: Nope. Not only that, but by continuing to vote for people like Mitt Romney and Donald Trump they show that they’re impotent because if you won’t change your vote for any reason, then the other side has no reason to compromise or appeal to you. At least in 2000, a decent fraction of them stood by their principles and stayed home rather than vote for George W. Bush (the first time).
In the end, these “evangelical christian”(*) voters are only hurtning themselves.
(*) They are NOT evangelical christian voters, since it is not the evangelical part, nor certainly the christian part that is causing them to vote the way they do, it’s thier fundamentalism. (And since when was contraception part of evangelical doctrine?) They should simply be labeled fundamentalist Christian voters. A simple (and more accurate) correlative test for party ID isn’t whether they believe in Christ (christian) or even that salviation is through Christ (evangelicism), but whether they believe something that is scientifically untrue (like the earth is 5000 years old).
NorthLeft12
Reading stuff like this only confirms my decision to completely give up my membership in the organized Christian religion of my choice. And I have seen and heard this kind of hypocrisy more than I care to remember. If someone starts a religion with George Carlin and Mark Twain as the leading lights*, I will not join it, but will approve from a distance.
* – although from their backgrounds and writings, both of these gentlemen would be horrified to have a religion started in their names and would mock them unceasingly.
Citizen_X
@BC in Illinois:
It would have been fine if he was making Trump’s taco bowl.
NorthLeft12
It is times like this that I am thankful to Dog that religion has pretty much disappeared from Canadian politics. I don’t recall any politician [even the Conservatives] going on about the importance of their religious beliefs, or even what faith the various candidates are.
I remember being surprised to find out that the newly elected Premier [think Governor] of Ontario was a lesbian. It was not brought up by any of the other parties, and frankly she won the election to a great extent on her own personal popularity and likability.
“Social” issues like that don’t seem to be of any importance here during elections. Hopefully you in the US will get there some day soon.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Frankensteinbeck: It’s more than narcissism, I think. I think he’s suffering from actual dementia or some other organic brain disease. He’s not right in the head, and it’s not just an act that he’s all over the map in his “policy” statements.
How some people think that him contradicting himself makes him less scary than Cruz is beyond me. We have no idea who would be the power behind the throne…
Cheers,
Scott.
(Hillary better win!!)
Splitting Image
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Trump is a distraction. The real fight is over the Senate, and if the bankrollers abandon Trump, it will be to spend their money in the Senate and House races instead. And where the Senate is concerned, the Republicans have NOT lost the last 5 of 6 elections. Nor have they at the state level.
The Democrats need to assume they have to retake the Senate to seat Merrick Garland, or any other Scalia-replacement, not to mention replacing Ginsburg and Breyer when the time comes. To do that they have to pick up the seats in Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Illinois, New Hampshire, and Iowa. Do that and Hillary Clinton’s victory will take care of itself. But Clinton can probably win most of those states without flipping the Senate seats, and the Democrats shouldn’t consider that a victory, even if it does make it 6 for 7 at the Presidential level and allows everyone to have a good laugh at Donald Trump.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Splitting Image: Yup. Hillary has to have long coat-tails. This election will have ramifications far beyond the next couple of years. We need to lay a foundation for the 2020 redistricting and that means fighting to win every seat possible in 2016, 2018 and 2020. We can’t get complacent just because the national GOP is imploding (by some measures).
Cheers,
Scott.
BC in Illinois
@StellaB:
And it wasn’t a problem.
Well, actually at times it was a problem. The state of Nebraska (late 1800s) tried to outlaw German language schools (mostly religious schools.) The Supreme Court said they couldn’t. And at several points in the 20th century, during a couple of world wars, it was not popular to speak German. But people did — less and less.
But that was our heritage as a nation of immigrants. Each group has its stories–some far worse and more painful to recall than what happened to the German or the Irish or the Italians.
And then someone whose family spoke German is now going to turn against anyone who speaks Spanish? That has a history in our nation as well, but it’s a history to remember–and do better!–not a history to emulate.
This is America. Yeah, it’s a majority English-speaking nation, so it will serve you well to learn English. (The hundreds / thousands of churches with German language cornerstones are now almost totally English-speaking congregations. The four German-language newspapers of St. Louis in the 1860s are all closed. ) But we are also a nation where many languages are spoken on cell phones, in sidewalk conversations, restaurants, songs, and homes.
That’s not a problem. That’s what we love.
RedDirtGirl
@piratedan: The one argument I got into that gave me pause touched on her penchant for interventionism and her seat on the board of Walmart. I couldn’t come up with a defense. I wish I had one.
MattF
@NorthLeft12: A religion with Twain as the leading light wouldn’t be humorous. See The Mysterious Stranger.
cleek
@RedDirtGirl:
a lot of what she did on the Walmart board was fighting for women’s issues.
Chris
@Raven Onthill:
It’s even simpler than that. Conservatives are bigots. Period. Misogynists, but also homophobes, intolerant of all other religions (which includes most forms of Christianity), and frequently, yes, racist. It’s old news by now that the religious right got off in the late seventies as a response to Carter and his justice department’s “attacks” on all-white “Christian” academies in the South (“attacks” = ending their tax exempt status).
SoCons are the biggest faction of American bigots, and Trump is the loudest and proudest bigot in America. Their coming together was a foregone conclusion.
JGabriel
Anne Laurie @ Top:
So Concerned Women for America are no longer concerned?
Quelle surprise!
Wapiti
@BC in Illinois: My aunt told a family story, about how much her father loved singing “Oh, Tannenbaum” in Church during the Christmas season. This was in Nebraska – I don’t know if the hymns were all in German, or mixed German and English. As she told it, the last time that the church sang the song in German was the Christmas immediately after Pearl Harbor.
RaflW
Religious conservatives are power-seeking-at-any-moral-cost hypocrites? They’re willing to lay down with that womanizing, thrice-married freakshow? I’m just speechless with shock.
Librarian
@NR: And you’re saying that the same thing wouldn’t happen if Bernie were the nominee? Really?
BC in Illinois
@Wapiti:
Your family has stories like that; my family has stories like that; LOTS of families have stories like that.
And I think we ought to bring them out, every time someone pretends that Spanish-speaking families or Muslim families (or, to extend the image, African-American families) are not as American as that, uh, person in Trump Towers who told a man to leave because he spoke Spanish on his cell phone.
Is it so hard to make the mental connection, that this man speaking Spanish is just the same as our ancestors speaking German – – or Hungarian or Japanese or Navaho . . .
Like I say. This is not a problem. This is what we love.
rodnchance
@NR: I have yet to understand just why these so-called people are so fearful of Hillary. I realize that 30 years of Hillary Hate on the TV & radio etc are partly to blame for the fear but what is it that they think she will do to cause them actual harm. It ain’t the Pro-Choice thing as He, Trump is also P-Choice.
Chris
@BC in Illinois:
Also helps that they don’t necessarily know a whole hell of a lot about their ancestors, and can go the easy route of “well, MY ancestors ASSIMILATED!” (Obviously, otherwise they wouldn’t be speaking English now, amirite?)
One of the many untold stories of early U.S. history is that the reason we don’t have a national language is that there were *already* so many people (even not counting American Indians) whose preferred language wasn’t English (Germans, mostly) that it simply wouldn’t have been practically possible to force assimilation at gunpoint just like that. Letting them assimilate at their own pace was the smarter thing to do then and now.
Ken
TRUMP: Really? That’s all I have to say, and they’ll vote for me?
PRIEBUS: Yep, they fall for it every time.
TRUMP: And with the open slot, I’ll be able to do it.
PRIEBUS: No! If we ever follow-through, they might step back and look at the rest of the platform, and stop voting for us.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Every last one of them will vote for Trump. Not a one will sit out, not a one will vote for Hillary. That was delusional talk, always has been. You all know how these people are.
Frankensteinbeck
@RedDirtGirl:
Her ‘interventionism’ is wildly exaggerated, usually by stuff like pretending that getting involved in Libya was America’s decision and not NATO’s. She ain’t a hawk, she boasts of her involvement in peaceful resolutions, and her Mideast strategy is only minutely different from Obama’s. Hell, it’s only different from Sanders’ in a different mix of which local actors they think should do what, where Sanders obviously doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
As for the Walmart thing, it sounds awful in a sound bite, but the company was very different back then and her main role was advocating for women. It’s what she’s done all her life.
Tim C.
Honestly, I’m seeing no data that there’s anything other than the usual sturm and drang from a close primary.
Some of the most highly engaged people are Not. Letting. Go. That’s normal in a close campaign. If you are the kind of very special nerd that engages in politics and spends time on political websites commenting you are maybe what? .1% of the electorate? If that? We personalize the comments and personalities we engage in and we project that over an entire movement. The “Typical” Bernie/Clinton voter doesn’t exist and just because someone is an a-hole on the internet doesn’t mean they typify the voting public at large.
Finally, TPM has interesting datapoints worth reading.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/why-the-poll-tightening
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/some-confirmation-trump-is-not-expanding-the-gop
That’s normal, remember what’s her name? the elderly lady who lost her crap on TV calling Obama an “inadequate black male” Polling was showing an even bigger divide then.
joel hanes
@Major Major Major Major:
Fallout 4
About half of the Diamond City Radio hits have become earworms.
I had The Inkspots and young Ella Fitzgerald crooning “Into Every Life A Little Rain Must Fall” stuck in my head for over a week.
And Lady Day! The Andrews Sisters!
Thursday night I lost three provisioners at once in a single massive spontaneous firefight that erupted between The Slog’s settlers, the Forged in the Saugus works, and the Gunners on the adjoining freeway. Could not get my people to disengage.
RedDirtGirl
Thanks for the feedback.
Villago Delenda Est
@BC in Illinois:
It is, in fact, the key to greatness.
sunny raines
well of course they are, because the “Christian values” of the christian right have nothing to do with actual christian values, at least not the ones Jesus taught.
ericblair
@Frankensteinbeck:
It wasn’t even NATO that decided; this was the United Nations Security Council (resolutions 1970 and 1973). And if we as a nation decide to do nothing while people get slaughtered, that may be the better of a bad set of options, but it’s an active choice.