An SBC pastor from Iowa announces he is finished with the Republicans.
So, to sum it all up, I’m not voting for Hillary, and I’m not voting for Donald. Ever.
I want a new party. Maybe it is time we think about forming a new party. Donald Trump is going to ruin the GOP, I’m convinced of that. My party is over – I’m abandoning a sinking ship. He is a nuclear warhead looking for a place to detonate. I do not want to abandon the country to the Democrats — they are against everything I am for. They are devoted to the destruction of the American constitution’s freedoms, our way of life, and our moral foundations. If we give America over to the Democrats, there will not be an America — it will be a European-style socialist nation within a decade and headed down the same moral, spiritual, and economic sewer as those nations. But Republicans have shown themselves to be craven, weak, and inconsequential. Voting GOP will change nothing.
Almost simultaneously, Salon reprises and celebrates Russell Moore’s sniffing that the evangelicals supporting Trump aren’t r-e-e-e-a-l evangelicals.
Believe it or not, Southern Baptists have become the loudest chorus of anti-Trump voices within conservative evangelicalism. And as has happened in other precincts of the right, the real estate mogul’s candidacy has forced evangelical leaders to confront the contradictions between their values and their political allegiances. “My concern is not so much about the presidential election,” Moore told me. “I’m more concerned about the witness of evangelical Christianity, which I see compromised in the apologies from some Christian leaders for Trump and his behavior.”
How can you not love the irony? The first demographic to race to Trump’s side were the evangelicals, and the pastors are spitting mad because they’ve been displaced by some other Pied Piper.
Now, Moore and that pastor from Iowa will say the same thing: Those evangelicals aren’t regular church attendees; they’re not the r-e-e-e-a-l thing. Sorry — but they’re the exact same people whose votes such as Moore, Mohler, and Dobson have bartered for decades for political influence. What’s really going on here is plain-vanilla professional envy. Donald Trump has offhandedly one-upped them, and shown that they aren’t kingmakers at all — and you may be certain that the party establishment has noticed.
No wonder they’re so upset.
The stupid are like the poor: They will always be with us, and they will always be manipulated and exploited by amoral cynics. Ironically, the Internet — which has facilitated that manipulation — has also worked to undermine the influence of the once-mighty Evangelical Right. The difference is that Trump relies entirely on smoke-and-mirrors and bluster, whereas the Evangelical Right’s influence relies on a specific set of widely debunked and easily challenged claims.
The prognosis, then, is for more and louder fact-free noise, more manipulation and less information in our politics. It worked for The Donald — right? It probably is vain to hope that the Republican Party will reform itself and throw-out the nutjobs after this preposterous election cycle; it is much more likely it will put its energy into figuring-out how to deliver the propaganda voters want.