A reminder from David Bernstein that evangelicals supported the immoral candidate because the Left had put the fear of un-God into them. Many of those SCOTUS victories for were Pyrrhic for them.
36 thoughts on “They Asked For Trump”
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As Doug Wilson put it, you rejected the religious right. Let’s see how you like the irreligious right.
I’m having trouble understanding this. When you write “Many of those SCOTUS victories for were Pyrrhic for them,” which SCOTUS decisions, and Pyrrhic for whom?
Well, ObamaCare for one. But just the act of taking Little Sisters of the Poor and Hobby Lobby to the Supreme Court were a dire warning.
Ahh. Thank you.
“the immoral candidate”
Rand, you say that like it’s sufficient disambiguation.
OK, the immoral candidate who promised to end the war on Christians instead of the one who called them “deplorables.”
Much better.
Although don’t forget “no more Sotomayors”. That’s important too.
Imagine Trump running as dem.
It seems generally, he is too conservative, so like all dems, he would have to run to the left, in order to get elected.
One could say Clinton problem was she could not go towards the center, after she stole the dem primary. Other than, she is worst pol, ever.
Anyways if you don’t think Trump is stupid, how would he run as dem towards the left?
It seems like it is difficult question- because Left is completely crazy. Maybe he could promise to make Cuba great again.
Or fix Mexico. Or fix the UN.
Hmm, maybe something regarding global warming.
I guess the simplest is just focus on attacking the Repubicans- but that is rather boring.
Now, if Trump won the dem primary, then what would he do or say?
Well, of course, all the media would love him. And it probably be no fun at all.
Yeah, pretty much this.
Our friends to the left love to tell Christians what they must think, quote scripture when it suits their policies like its persuasive, and call people Christian traitors when Christians don’t act the way Democrats want them to. They also do this with other religions too.
Christians see the hostility and outright bigotry embraced by Democrats through rhetoric and deed and contrary to Democrat stereotype, Christians are perfectly able to support people who are not their brand of Christian or even Christian at all. Democrats don’t comprehend this because they view everything through their own religion, identity politics.
“They also do this with other religions too.”
That’s just it, they don’t. They don’t at all. people of other religions can rape, rob, burn and murder their way through the civilized world and the Democratic response is to bray like Wayne and Garth, “We’re not worthy! Please, forgive us. We’re so sorry!”
I partially agree with the sentiment. However, there is also the fact that Hillary and her husband were at the least equally immoral or, perhaps a different word, unethical. Many voters have said of various elections, they voted for the lessor of two evils. For me, it was very easy to look past immorality on Trump’s part, because it paled in comparison to Hillary’s. However, when put against other candidates in the primary; it was part of the reason I did not vote for him.
There is certainly a good deal of religious bashing from progressives that I think cost Hillary the election. After all, many black and latino voters are very religious. If they might refrain from voting for a immoral and “racists!” Republican, there was enough reason to stay at home for the Democrat as well. Especially when the Democrat blew off the blue wall states. If they didn’t realize the disdain Hillary held for them before; they certainly knew by election day when she never stopped to even say “Hi! I want to be your President”. She really was a terrible candidate.
” She really was a terrible candidate.”
Not to mention a loathsome person
I won’t complain if you mention it, Gregg.
Other factors include that Trump’s immorality was personal and separate from his policies. St.Hillary!’s immorality was part of her policy, and she promised to impose more of it given the chance.
Also, there’s a notion of “forgiving the sinner” among Evangelicals. A lot of Progressives love to quote the part where Christ said, “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” They neglect to note that then He turned to the woman and told her to “go and sin no more”. Evangelicals do know that part. As long as Trump can keep from sinning, and following through on the policies he promised and not persecuting them, he’ll keep that support, despite his past sins.
Ted Cruz campaigned as a “Bible thumper.” Why was Mr. Trump favored over Senator Cruz?
Your question is why I don’t fully agree Bernstein and Simberg. The evangelicals didn’t ask for Trump. They got him foisted upon them and then held their nose to block Hillary. I do agree the sin on their part was made easier by Trump’s promise to provide SCOTUS nominees evangelicals favored.
The funny thing is watching both sides try to paint Trump as homophobic, despite his support for the gay community. Sure, he said a few things that pandered to elements of the GOP base, but Hillary did the exact same thing in 2012, yet she’s not called homophobic. Here again, I think for the evangelicals, SCOTUS approval of gay marriage as an issue was a wash. It was also a much smaller concern to the cases Rand points to above, where a clear delineation between the general election candidates could be found.
The funny thing is watching both sides try to paint Trump as homophobic,
It has been my experience that while many Christians didn’t support gay marriage, they didn’t hate gays. IMO, the whole thing came down to a linguistic argument over the term marriage. Christians, like many other non-Christians, that don’t like homosexuality also don’t care what other people do as long as they are not made to participate.
Obama and the Democrats are all about forcing participation.
“It has been my experience that while many Christians didn’t support gay marriage, they didn’t hate gays. ”
Of course not. The Catholic church, for example, insists on it. It’s all part of that “love the sinner, not the sin” thing.
She was a flawed candidate but she was a good one. She rigged her own primary and got the media to not only help but silence any reporting on it. She got Obama to rig the investigation into her and also spy on the opposition. These are not things that inept candidates do.
Hillary raised a lot of money and took total control of the airwaves. She had dominance of the cultural elite that gave her untold sums in promotion on social media and media in general. And the campaign machine was a juggernaut.
She was a formidable candidate and everything was stacked against Trump. Trump overcame the impossible and ran a genius campaign, which everyone made fun of all through the election. Saying Hillary was just a bad candidate takes away from the historic achievement of Trump winning. Everyone thought he was going to lose but he employed a winning strategy. He deserves credit for beating Hillary, Obama, the DNC, the media, the GOPe, and the “professional” government workers.
While the election was only won by something like 70k votes spread over a few states. Those states actually had swings from Democrat to Republican of hundreds of thousands in each state from 2012-2016. So it isn’t even that Trump turned just a small number of people to squeak by. He turned something like half a million voters.
What we saw was David vs Goliath. Never in our history has a President won against all the resources thrown against them. Trump winning was like a Castro losing an election in Cuba or Putin in Russia or Erdogan in Turkey. No small feat and not due to the weakness of his opponent.
” He turned something like half a million voters.”
It’s probably also worth remembering that Hillary’s popular-vote margin of victory was basically obtained by running up the tally in California after the outcome was already known.
“It’s probably also worth remembering that Hillary’s popular-vote margin of victory was basically obtained by running up the tally in California after the outcome was already known.”
One cannot help but wonder how many of those California votes for Hillary were from illegals. Yes I know that “studies” apparently show that known illegal votes cast is supposedly miniscule. Given that California has now declared itself a “sanctuary state”, where they issue driver’s licensed to illegals whether we can take their word about said undocumented voting is an exercise for the reader. Something to consider for the “we want the popular vote to decide presidential elections crowd”, not that moldy old electoral college. To me it just shows the wisdom of the framers of this country.
Word. The amazing thing is that I find very few progressives who will admit this. Their bubble just doesn’t allow them to recognize that any evangelical (or Orthodox Jew, etc.) feels terribly threatened by the direction that leftist politics has moved. Things that used to be (a decade ago!) standard points of view are now punishable by law.
If not quite punishable by law in the US yet, they are punishable in other western nations and being pushed by progressives here. Although there are differences between Masterpiece Cakes and the Red Hen (Masterpiece was at least willing to serve gay couples, just not a brand new cake); the concept that many supported Masterpiece on was the right to refuse service for the service of things in which you disagree. Progressives touting Red Hen obviously want that right too, but they only want it on political grounds they define, which doesn’t make it a human right, but a specific privilege.
The difference being,
a) Masterpiece involved a custom order, and the owners offered non-custom cakes;
b) More importantly, Masterpiece was first threatened with, and then attacked with, the full force of the law, whereas Red Hen was only threatened with disparaging comments and promises to boycott from people who almost entirely would never have had the opportunity to eat there in the first place.
I believe that we should bring back Freedom of Association. It was wrongly discarded on the false notion that it was responsible for racism (Jim Crow involved state LAWS that threatened businesses and owners with financial and personal ruin if they failed to be racist enough to satisfy the state government). Once the laws were overturned, the proper response to businesses that committed racist acts was to allow customers to force them to change their tune or go out of business via the free market.
Instead, we went the Marxist route where “Everything that is not forbidden, is mandatory”.
And as for Trump? I did not vote for him in the primary. I was, however, tickled pink when Instapundit used exactly the same quote that I had been using in personal conversations regarding his candidacy: “Gentlemen, I cannot spare the man; he fights.”
Thanks for adding the clarification, and I agree with all.
I voted for Cruz in the primary and Trump in the general election. More than anything else, I did it as my way of stopping Hillary from getting to fill judicial and supreme court nominations. Had she won – and it was a very close thing – she would’ve immediately had the chance to nominate Scalia’s replacement. I suspect Ginsberg would’ve also retired. With Kennedy, she might’ve had the opportunity to fill three supreme court vacancies in 2 years. Even with just the Scalia vacancy, almost all of those narrow 5-4 decisions these last two years would’ve gone the other way. A young nominee could be on the court for 40 years or more. It’s the most lasting thing any president can do, for better or worse. Say what you will about Trump, but there has not been a single second go by that I believed things would’ve been better had Hillary won. That was the only choice on the election.
“It’s the most lasting thing any president can do, for better or worse”
Of course, a Supreme Court decision is extremely important, but I don’t agree that it is most lasting or most consequential. If you google “most consequential presidential decisions”, you’ll see that many people make such lists, and they might provide food for thought.
Just for an example, JFK’s decision making during the Cuban Missile Crisis is often listed. I hope voters with the supreme court on their mind also asked themselves how Trump and Hillary would perform in an analogous crisis.
(I imagine some here believe that it would have been desirable if the Cuban Missile Crisis had escalated into a shooting war, because the USSR would have decisively lost, but if so, that bolsters the case that JFK’s decision making was quite consequential with lasting effects. )
JFK didn’t need to cave to soviets, and still not a have a nuclear wars, but JFK didn’t cave as much as Obama and his lead from behind policy.
I would say JFK most lasting decision was to go to the moon, this was most effective and cheapest policy to win against the Soviets, though if we would lost space race, the long term consequences might have been better. Or short term fix had short term advantages [and it is possible we would not have gone to the moon, yet].
JFK biggest plus is he did not like the Soviets and he thought highly of country he was the President of.
Well, that is a nice argument in extremism. Certainly there can be more consequential decisions a President makes but not many of them.
I think it is fitting that Garland didn’t get voted on because not getting that seat on SCOTUS is the only punishment the Obama administration will get for running a criminal government that was the most corrupt in modern history. Much of Obama’s domestic legacy is being expunged because he didn’t follow the law or do things the proper way. The same is true for his foreign legacy. He counted on his corruption ushering in another marxist Democrat to cement his lawless acts and that progressives would abuse government so that no other party would ever elect a President.
That didn’t happen. Trump saved the Union, at least for now. Marxism is ascending in the Democrat party and their is no telling how things will go as it devours them from the inside out.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a crisis because of JFK’s ineptitude. Praising JFK for his decision making on that crisis is like applauding his brother Ted’s ability to free himself from the car and save himself after crashing off the bridge and killing another person.
What do you think JFK should have done instead?
It is not what President Kennedy did during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it was what he did to bring on the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Very early in his term, he gave the green light to the CIA backed Bay of Pigs landing of Cuban exile troops against the Castro Regime and than backed away from giving them air cover (using WW-II vintage planes with the Cuban exile army logo but presumably American pilots).
Having OK’d the operation, he should have not wimped out — it sent a signal to Khrushchev that the U.S. was timid about “projecting power” right in its own “back yard.” The newly elected President Kennedy was worried about “U.S. fingerprints on the operation” — the Soviets darned well knew this was a U.S. operation, or in their thinking, it couldn’t be anything but a U.S. operation, so why did the Americans wimp out? What happened was just inconceivable to them.
Yeah, yeah, this was Eisenhower’s ill-conceived plan that was just foisted on Kennedy, blah, blah, excuse, excuse, but if Kennedy didn’t want to back up the exiles, he shouldn’t have OK’d it from the beginning. Kennedy’s version of the plan required everything to go right, which it didn’t, and then he left the exile army on the beaches to be killed or taken prisoner. Kennedy was worried about what the Russians would think if there was evidence of U.S. involvement, and what the Russians thought was that anyone would think that they didn’t think the U.S. was involved was astounding and why didn’t the Americans follow through what they started?
The other factor was the Vienna summit between Kennedy and Khrushchev where the young U.S. president was doing something along the lines of the Barack Obama “Apology Tour” based on his understanding of scholarly explanations about how WW-I got started. Khrushchev who was a simple man who only understood strength was amused.
Kennedy, through his youthful inexperience, created the state-of-mind in the Soviets and especially Khrushchev that he could get away with the stunt of placing short-range missiles in Cuba.
This critique of Kennedy is straight out of Donald Kagan’s “On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace”, where Kagan describes the background of five history-changing wars affecting Western civilization — The Peloponnesian War(Athens fighting Sparta), the Second Punic War (the deal with Hannibal fighting Rome with the elephants he got across the Alps) and World Wars I, II and III (with World War III averted being the Cuban Missile Crisis).
John Kennedy’s actions leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis is indeed like Ted Kennedy’s after he drove off that bridge. It was all about “what will people think of me if word get’s out about the Cuban exile army, what will people think of me that I drove off a bridge drunk with a woman who was not my wife in the car?”
What Ted should have done after freeing himself from the car was pound on the door of that house showing a light and call out “there is a car run off the bridge, call the Sheriff!”, who would have in turn dispatched the dive rescue team and gotten Mary Jo out safely out of the air pocket she was clinging to life in. If he had saved the life of this young woman in this way, everything else about the incident would have been forgiven and forgotten.
Exactly what Paul said, except I really couldn’t have said it better myself.
Paul, thank you for such an interesting answer. I think everyone agrees that the Bay of Pigs was botched.
I admit I was hoping to hear about an alternative strategy for dealing with the USSR starting with the detection of the missiles, but I would feel greedy asking for a second answer.
Thanks again.
Just to be clear: I really do understand your point that the missiles wouldn’t have happened if Kennedy had appeared tougher. You didn’t waste your breath!
(But once we are imagining a tougher Kennedy, we might imagine a tougher Khrushchev as well, one who goes ahead and places the missiles anyway. And I remain curious about whether there was a better way to handle the situation once the missiles were in place and then detected by the USA. )
What would Donald Trump have done” Called Khrushchev “Rocket Man” and then arranged a summit meeting.
What would Hillary Clinton have done? Reacting to how men in various capacities have humiliated her throughout her life, ordered the 101st and 82nd Airborne divisions to seize the missile installations and asked for the nuclear launch-code briefcase be placed under her pillow.