Moderator: Bruce Gourley
LAKSHMANAN
All right, let's take a quick call from Steven in Collinsville, Alabama. In the moments we have left, Steven, go ahead. What's your question?
10:53:58
STEVEN
Yeah, I grew up in (unintelligible) now playing for the Georgetown Hoyas, but this crucible, this withering effect on the Bush family, Bush 41 denounced the John Birch Society in 1966 in Harris County, Houston Texas. But now, that Baptist Fundamentalist Group, he came to embrace in '88. And Paul Kressler, who is solidly in the camp of Ted Cruz now. So it's going to be interesting, in Republican political history, to see how this all plays out for Bush in South Carolina.
10:54:29
LAKSHMANAN
Okay, thank you very much, Steven. Norm.
10:54:31
ORNSTEIN
Well, there, you know, there is a Bush history in South Carolina. And it's one that moves candidates sharply further to the right. The question here is whether Jeb Bush can pull out of the playbook the same thing that W. did in devastating John McCain with what was, if it didn't come directly from the campaign, it certainly was with a wink and a nod, a pretty scurrilous attack on McCain of having a child out of wedlock of another race when it was an adopted child from Bangladesh.
10:55:06
ORNSTEIN
If we get that kind of a campaign, it reinforces another phenomenon here, which I think the caller is eluding to, which is this process pulls the candidates further towards the extreme. And that's true in both cases, but much more on the Republican side. To win a nomination, you have to win over people who are not just angry, but more radical. And as you move in that direction, Rubio's moved sharply in that direction, it becomes much, much harder to move back.
Randall Balmer wrote:The religious right was never about the advancement of biblical values. The modern, politically conservative evangelical movement we know is a movement rooted in the perpetuation of racial segregation, and its affiliation with the hard-right fringes of the conservative movement in the late 1970s produced a mutant form of evangelicalism inconsistent with the best traditions of evangelicalism itself. Since then, evangelicals have embraced increasingly secular positions divorced from any biblical grounding, and supporting Donald Trump represents the logical conclusion of that tragic aberration.
Sandy wrote:Randall Balmer wrote:The religious right was never about the advancement of biblical values. The modern, politically conservative evangelical movement we know is a movement rooted in the perpetuation of racial segregation, and its affiliation with the hard-right fringes of the conservative movement in the late 1970s produced a mutant form of evangelicalism inconsistent with the best traditions of evangelicalism itself. Since then, evangelicals have embraced increasingly secular positions divorced from any biblical grounding, and supporting Donald Trump represents the logical conclusion of that tragic aberration.
I can't find the specific article this quote came from, Stephen. If this is Balmer, and it's a direct quote, then his credibility just sank to zero as far as I am concerned.
This is far too much of a broad brush to even be close to an acceptable, reasonable statement. I wouldn't argue the point that there are evangelicals, particularly those among the self-proclaimed leadership of certain segments of Conservative Evangelicalism, who do use their influence to perpetuate racial segregation, including getting involved with the Alt-right-Breitbart-KKK connection, and there are some evangelicals who have done a complete about face when it comes to their campaigns of principles and values of the 80's and 90's who are now supporting Trump, simply because he's got the R beside his name and they mistakenly and foolishly think he'll be their champion, especially when it comes to Supreme Court appointments. I'd go so far as to say that any Evangelical Conservatives who are relentless in their support for Trump are completely abandoning the "moral majority/religious right" principles that they used to unite their constituents against Bill Clinton in the 90's, and are nothing more than power-hungry hypocrites. But there are many Conservative Evangelicals, including some prominent leaders, who see how inconsistent it is to support Trump after years of touting the "values vote", probably more than the conservative media is reporting or that the so-called liberal media cares about. Many of the weightier voices in the SBC, like Russ Moore and Al Mohler, are never-Trumpers. ust last night, on 60 Minutes, we saw a clip of Georgia pastor Bryant Wright articulate a position on Syrian refugees that is completely counter to Trump's anti-Islamic, anti-immigrant, anti-humanitarian position. David Rogers(yes, Adrian's son) is pretty regular in his posts on Facebook and other social media that not only express his own position, which is not favorable toward Trump, but which catches the opinions and feelings of a lot of other Southern Baptists and Christians who share the same perspective. David is certainly a reflection of his father, especially when it comes to his compassion, and as a result of that, his rejection of Trump, particularly when it comes to immigration. Adrian Rogers was 100% behind the advancement of Biblical values, and his son is making an honest, and respected attempt at actually measuring politics biblically, rather than the other way around in trying to confirm Biblical values to the worldly, secular goals of right wing conservatism. And it seems that, as a whole, the SBC as a denomination is well out of the grip of
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