by ET » Thu Apr 26, 2018 7:07 am
Fea has been writing about this for close to two years now. I've been following his blog for several years and I've got his latest/upcoming book on pre-order and have read 3 of his other books so far ("Why Study History?", "Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?" (one of the 'anti-Barton' pieces William mentions) and "The Way of Improvement Leads Home"). I agree with much of what he writes about the folks for whom he coined the phrase "court evangelicals".
However, as William notes, I am still dubious of these columns attempting to explain why supposedly the "81% of (white) evangelicals" voted for Trump. I have had multiple conversations with family and friends on this issue. A few might be considered "supporters" of Trump. Most of the people I know just voted for him because either they considered not voting for him or voting for a third party to be a vote for Hillary or believe the only choice was the standard "lesser of two evils". Trump may be bad, but Hillary was worse. Some took the "we're voting for a politician, not a preacher" route to vote for him.
It seems like EVERY election cycle the media talk about the importance of capturing the (supposedly) important 'independents'. A candidate caters to their base in the primaries, then shifts more to the middle to win the independents and/or moderates in the general primary. I haven't seen nearly as much written about why enough of those folks voted for Trump to give him the victory over Hillary. I'd definitely like to see how many evangelicals would have had to abandon Trump for it to mean anything, but that would have to be computed on state-by-state basis.
Another tidbit - Fea dedicates his book to the "19%"...but if I recall, that 19% doesn't vote Republican anyway, so I'm not sure what merit they deserve for not voting for Trump. I think I shall pose a related question to Fea on his FB page.
I'm Ed Thompson, and I approve this message.