Interesting. Latinos are a factor in why catholics are turning away from Trump, but white Catholics are rejecting him too.
So why are white catholics moving away from Trump (18 point decline) while white evangelicals support him as much as they did Romney or McCain? Is it geography? Are evangelicals more likely to be southern and catholics more likely to be in the midwest and northeast? If so it may not be the religion itself, but geography. Republicans in the northeast and midwest are not as intensely partisan, on average, as southern republicans, so they may be more willing to abandon the party when they put up a bad candidate the same way democrats in Vermont would likely support a bad candidate more than democrats in places like Kentucky.
That article says that it is due to Catholics being more tolerant of immigration, and their upset at Trump criticizing the pope.
When you say foreign policy conservative, what do you mean and how do Clinton or Trump align with your values and goals in foreign policy?
The Obama administration seems to pursue targeted strikes on terrorists and prefers diplomatic pressure. Does that align with the agenda of foreign policy conservatives or do they have preferences for other ways to deal with middle eastern issues? How important is Russia to foreign policy conservatives? Do you guys have agendas or goals for latin america, eastern europe or Asia, or is it mostly the middle east?
What about the Obama administration and the ‘line in the sand’ with Syria that the US backed away from?
I agree, on foreign policy (like everything else) Trump is all bluster, empty rhetoric, cons and fantasies. The idea that he can somehow solve issues that endless numbers of people far smarter than him had trouble solving is idiotic.
I guess I’m under the impression there are at least 4 groups of republicans when it comes to Trump.
Republicans who are oblivious to how unqualified, slimy, emotionally unstable and dangerous he is.
Republicans who know he is those things, but don’t care and support him anyway.
Republicans who know he is those things, are offended by it, but still support him because he is better than the alternative
Republicans who know he is those things, and it bothers them so much they won’t vote for him.
I guess we will have to wait until after the election, but I’m wondering who falls into the 4 groups.
Like, do high school educated whites fall into group 1. Evangelicals fall into group 3 and college educated people into group 4?
It is going to be interesting, because a lot of people are going to want to research how and why so many people were either oblivious or indifferent to how unqualified Trump was.
As a Catholic (far left but still Catholic), I could surmise that one reason white Catholics are turning from Trump is that, unlike many evangelical churches, they don’t pray in all-white churches. In my county, for example, there are Masses in English at every parish, but almost every parish also has Masses in other languages, depending on the make-up of the congregation – Spanish mainly, but also Portuguese, Vietnamese, Tagalog, and there might be others I don’t know about. There are constant efforts (not always successful) to bring groups of different language speakers and different cultures together, since they are all equally parishioners.
Also, even white Catholics are more likely to have clear memories of immigrant parents and grandparents than those evangelical churches where people identify as “American”. it wasn’t all that long ago that Irish and Italian immigrants were the despised lower class.
Just a surmise here. For my parish, saying we should build a wall means that half the people who attend there would be walled off from their families. And then there would be no fundraiser home-made tamale sales. Man I would miss those.
Count me squarely in Group 4. I am female with an advanced degree. I said upthread I was a Republican-leaning centrist (by agreeing with someone else who described themselves that way), and I will tell you that the parts of me that remain Republican are due to the influence my stepfather, who was a staunch Republican small business owner in an even smaller Southern town. He cared deeply about people of all kinds, lectured me about how important it was for everyone to work together for the greater good, and he was willing to put in the civic work, on the school board, city council, deacon in the church. Most of his employees were black. And yes, this good kind reasonable man was a Republican. However, he died suddenly of a heart attack in the early 90s, and if he were alive today he would not recognize his party.
It makes me sad that my mother, a very intelligent woman, has suffered from the absence of his reason. She is firmly ensconced somewhere between your #1 and #2. Any conversations that cause her cognitive dissonance are met with denials. She reads some stupid blog called Conservative Treehouse all the damn time. My father is turning in his grave, and I am pretty sure he would be a #4 as well.
That’s only in his personal life. As I said before, we’re electing a president, not a preacher. If he wins, he will presumably support good policies at least some of the time. And a gamble on Trump is preferable to the certainty of bad and immoral policies that Clinton brings to the table.
Four years of Clinton immediately after eight years of Obama would come perilously close to doing long-term (as in decades-long) harm to this country.
I seem to recall that didn’t work out particularly well for the Pharaoh’s followers, what with the locusts and the frogs and the blood and the boils and the killing of the firstborn and the whole “drowning in the Red Sea” thing and so forth.
I’m not voting for him because he’s an imbecile, I worry about him being able to declare war, and his attitudes about women. I still hate Hillary, though and think she’d be just as bad as Trump policy-wise, so I’m voting for a third party.
It’s virtually certain that you and he don’t share the same basis for determining the morality of an action.
I agree that Clinton supports immoral policies - abortion, for one. I suspect you disagree about the immorality of abortion.
As to the thread topic, I staunchly oppose Clinton’s candidacy and would never vote for her… except now that the alternative is an increased chance of electing Trump, an absolute disaster in the making. My intended vote for Clinton is simply a vote against Trump attaining the White House.
I ask because I strive to be an informed voter. It was stated that it would be a certainty that Clinton would bring immoral policy to the table, and that for that reason, Trump would be a better choice. I can only assume that the idea is that Trump would be less likely to bring immoral choices to the table. I was curious to hear an example.
But not nearly all the 10% shortfall overall (assuming it’s 50 v 40) are Republicans. You yourself mix between OP title ‘voters who’d normally support a Republican’ and ‘Republicans’ in the quote above. A lot of self id’ed independents vote for Republicans, and Romney won that category by 5% points but still lost.
Trump’s % of self identified Republicans might be 10% points (of GOP’ers) lower or not. Romney got 93% of self id’ed Republicans. Various recent polls internals put Trump between low 80’s and low 90’s, up to a 10% gap or not much. It might take the exit polls to nail that down.
Generically ‘voters who’d normally support’ are the categories everyone can reel off (suburban women, etc etc). And among actual Republicans it’s some of the same categories plus ‘Never Trump conservatives’. But the latter category might be very small in terms of people coming to the polls and not voting for Trump, none of the categories can ever be closely measured among people demotivated from showing up at all.
Also the white ethnic angle, as expressed by ‘white Catholic’ but doesn’t actually have to be Catholics, could be Orthodox or other backgrounds. Just whites ‘ethnic’ enough to get a bad vibe from WASP/Scots Irish complaining which emanates somewhat from Trumpism, does to my antennae even as multi generation in US Irish Catholic.
However in all cases of people on the general rightward side of spectrum, it’s not if they like Trump (if it were just a referendum on him he’d get crushed by historic margins, which doesn’t appear likely), but whether they dislike him more than Clinton and the Democrats.
It’s hard to assess whether Trump has any genuine views about anything other than himself and his own greatness. In that sense, he’s probably significantly different than Clinton. (Not that she’s not as flexible as the next politician, but Trump is at his own level in this regard.)
I kinda would to or more precisely I suspect Trump is weakly pro-choice as much as he is anything* and probably doesn’t really care about gay marriage one way or another. I tend to think if Trump saw a statistical uptick in casino revenue based on more gay couples vacationing he’d shrug his shoulders and happily embrace the notion. His personal moral ideology to me seems to be built on a base of quicksand.
But I only suspect that and Flyer stated explicitly he’s taking a gamble that he might have “better” policies than Clinton. So I think that is fair enough, as I’m quite sure Clinton is unequivocally pro-choice and these days at least pro-gay marriage.
I’d also be kinda surprised if Trump hasn’t paid for abortions given his track record. But I certainly don’t know that he has - just a vague suspicion.
Her flexibility is a selling point for me. Used to be, my opinions were universally unpopular, or next thing to it. Not so much anymore. So, if Hillary is flexible enough to change policy to curry public opinion, ok. Tough enough to change popular opinion to progressive ends, much worse when that is done but the policy still does not change.
That only works as long as public opinion is trending in your favor. You never know.
Clinton has moved left as the Democrats as a whole have moved left, and it’s been more pronounced as she moved into primary season and needed to fend off Sanders. (Once the nomination was official, the election became pretty much issue-free and seems to be focusing exclusively on Trump’s antics versus her email servers.) But if she needs to deal with Republicans in congress you never know.
In fact, many American Catholic parishes are now headed by foreign-born (often African) pastors, since we’re not producing enough priests domestically these days. The current pastor of my parish is from Tanzania, and there are a couple of Liberian families who are heavily involved in the lay ministries.
Tamerlane, I’d be surprised to learn that Trump had ever paid for an abortion, just because of his general practice of never paying for anything. But he’s probably urged many other people to pay for abortions.
