How Donald Trump divided and conquered the religious right

[unknown]

How Donald Trump divided and conquered the religious right

http://religionnews.com/2016/08/23/how-donald-trump-divided-and-conquered-the-religious-right/

Trevin Wax
August 23, 2016

(RNS) It’s time for me to sit down for a nice meal of crow.

A year ago, I wrote a commentary here at RNS that tried to explain why Donald Trump had gathered some support in the Republican primary from “values voters” and “conservative Christians.”

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The way I saw it back then, Trump’s bombastic tendency to “drive our discourse to the gutter” would weary his Christian supporters and lead evangelicals to turn away from him in favor of other Republican contenders:

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Pass some crow, please.

A year later, many evangelical voters have grown to love the Donald’s roller coaster. Just as Trump divided and conquered the Republican Party, so also he has divided and conquered the religious right, the voting bloc of white conservative Christians that has been a cornerstone of the Republican Party’s outreach for decades.

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Now that the primary season is over, some evangelical leaders are supporting him. Other evangelical leaders are appalled. And evangelical voters have fallen into four major categories.

1. Anti-Clinton voters
...
2. Anti-Trump voters
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3. #NeverTrump voters
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4. True Trump supporters
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{.. snip ..}

[sinkspur]

Evangelicals who support a bigoted racist should be ashamed of themselves.  Demonstrates that religion stays in church for some people.

[skeeter]

Its not hard to figure out.

Trump made his bones railing against illegal immigration & political correctness.

This is what appealed to these primary voters, who also happened to comprise a good chunk of the evangelical base. It had nothing to do with their faith.

Of course we've learned since he was selling these voters a load of feculence, but thats another matter.

[INVAR]

Because as Mechanicos sees it, dividing and conquering Christians is a noble, virtuous and righteous thing for someone seeking the highest office of power in the world to do.

[ABX]

Because as Mechanicos sees it, dividing and conquering Christians is a noble, virtuous and righteous thing for someone seeking the highest office of power in the world to do.

Well, it is separating the wheat from the chaff, or however that goes. It is exposing those who worship and put their faith in the political game and reject their values for a cult of personality from those who chose to stick by their values. Even more so in exposing how the former treats the latter.