Supposedly one reason evangelicals support Trump is because they care more about overturning abortion rights than they do about his lying and philandering.
Assuming he runs in 2024, will he still have their strong support, and if so on what basis? Any thoughts? I don’t feel well enough informed to prognosticate on this.
Well, there’s still gay people to go after.
(ETA: The evangelical right will never run out of people to fear, and to therefore terrorize.)
Although your premise is correct—that evangelicals lurve Trump because he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court and lower courts that would limit or overturn Row v. Wade—it isn’t the only reason. Some non-insignificant number of evangelicals see Trump as the literal anti-Christ and thus a harbinger for the coming of the End Times. They are just fine with the fact that he consorts with prostitutes and porn starts, talks about wanting to fuck his daughter, is divorced multiple times, has owned multiple gambling establishments, and is otherwise a highly immoral dude because in their minds his lack of virtue makes it all the more likely that Sweet Jesus will be coming down to bodily lift all of the Saved up to Heaven most ricky tick.
Trump has also managed to piss of some proportion of evangelicals because he is very clearly in no way an honest, moral, or righteous man, but then, these were people who were only voting for Trump as the (maybe) lesser of two evils in 2016 because they heard Hillary Clinton was going to bulldoze their churches and mandate homosexual teaching from Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. But they are a minority, and most evangelicals are also deep into the Conservative movement even though it has little to do with social conservatism and even less with adherence to Christian teachings, and will support Trump until and even more useful idiot comes along.
Stranger
Sadly, this is the exact correct answer.
Of course. For them, overturning Roe doesn’t win the abortion war any more than Stalingrad won WWII or Antietam won the Civil War.There’s still a huge ways to go.
And even if abortion were totally banned, the pro-life cause never goes away, because pro-choicers would keep reviving abortion. The movement shifts from “ban abortion” to “keep abortion banned.”
And as bobot said, the gays.
Right, but the battle moves to the states and the president has no power over them.
Sure, but if a Republican Congress were to ever pass a federal abortion ban (which some, like McConnell, are talking about publicly,) it would need a Republican president to sign it into law.
The battle is in Congress, and the Courts, and the entire Executive branch, with all the hundreds of departments and agencies, and all the people who take their lead from the President. The battle is all the people and funders and groups and activists and voters on the side of what the Republican Party has become and seemingly will never turn away from. The battle was and will always be national.
You might want to look at this article from New York magazine, The Future of Trumpism, really about Ron DeSantis and how he is an intelligent Trump who wants to make the politics of Florida the politics of the country.
We live in a nation, not in individual states. National politics spill over into everything, with local bumps depending upon majorities. Believing for one second that the Right can be confined to local politics is, politely, very, very wrong and very, very dangerous.
Oh, I don’t believe that.
That’s a great relief. Now to make sure that everyone on the left understands.
“Christians” will support the biggest fascistoid racist they find. Those are their core beliefs after all.
If you voted Trump and say you care about any Christian value: you’re a liar. If I were a Christian I’d be offended by those folks calling themselves that. Their silence speaks volumes.
Of course they will. He hates the same people that they do. Evangelical Christianity is all about hate and intolerance.
Well certainly a large proportion of Christians in the US.
The OP is assuming that Christians have strong principles and therefore there was a degree of compromise in voting for Trump.
And that was always the standard analysis WRT the evangelical right: Evangelicals vote Republican because of certain important moral issues, and just go along with things like military spending and gutting welfare as a compromise.
But, in recent years and especially during Trump, we’ve seen that they are not really principled at all and it’s much more about tribality, and being against boogiemen like transsexuals or (supposed) communists.
You need to be in our tribe and hate the right people. Just like Jesus didn’t say.
Otherwise supporting Trump would be 99% compromising principles and 1% getting something that is of questionable biblical basis, and that few people gave a toss about before it became a political issue in the mid-60s.
Some evangelical pastors are saying that Trump was sent to America by God Himself, so I’m going to go with “yes”.
Yes, although there seems to be a search for a younger standard bearer. The risk for America’s authoritarian movement is that they often don’t last past the first Dear Leader. Their very effective efforts to dismantle America’s education system and discredit science were a step in the right (far right) direction.
I used to wonder how the Israelites turned so easily to worship of the Golden Calf.
Now I understand.
Owning the Libs seems to be their primary driving force. Abortion is just one notch in their belt. The Evangelicals will never stop. Even if you poofed their ideal reality into existence today they’d find something else to be after in short order.
If the kind of people you’re talking about see Trump as the ANTI-Christ, I haven’t encountered them, online or in meatspace. They think he’s specially anointed by God, etc., mainly because he said once, JUST ONCE, that abortion should be criminalized.
For the most extreme, that’s really all they need.
Oh, I’ve encountered them, and they are creepy as fuck. There is a lot of high weirdness surrounding the evangelical support for Trump and I don’t just mean the kind of shit Jordan Klepper gets on camera during The Daily Show field pieces. The best was a mural that had a Devil Trump peaking out from behind a Jesus Trump, with the former pointing downward with a libidinous grin on his face while the latter looked up toward a cloud with yet another Trump, presumably standing in for the Christian God smirking over all of Creation and holding a lightning bold ready to smite down the wicked. I’m not exactly clear what the intended message is except maybe that whatever your game is, like Allstate, Trump has you covered.
Stranger
I think Trevor Noah hit the nail on the head: the evangelicals don’t rant against sharia law because it’s undemocratic; they rant because they’re jealous.
The evangelicals won’t stop until their theocracy is firmly in place.
As an aside: I hope Jordan Klepper gets some sort of hazardous duty pay (or at least competent security) when he is doing those pieces. I would never have the balls to unleash that level of snark into a Trump crowd. I guess he keeps it subtle enough that his targets are just too stupid to get it, but he must occasionally run into some who are quicker on the uptake.