Pro-Trump preachers on message against impeachment probe
“Evangelicals understand that the effort to impeach President Trump is really an effort to impeach our own deeply-held faith values, and we’re not going to allow that to happen,” Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, said Nov. 1 on Fox Business. “That’s why you’re getting such pushback to impeachment from his evangelical base.” - BNG
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We do not have to choose between supporting the Democrats’ whole political agenda and uncritically supporting Donald Trump. Those two options are not even the in the top five best alternatives (maybe not even the top ten!).
…so many evangelicals love “winning” more than they love truth. It’s a shame.
Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.
Aaron,
If the demoncrats impeach Trump for calling for an investiation against the Bidens’ for their obvious quid pro quo with Ukraine in the 2016 election and the 1.5 Billion dollar deal with China (1 Billion in aid if they will fire the prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden’s energy company in Ukraine), that is their choice. It is entirely political. Yet, I have also heard the leftists say that they want to impeach the Vice-President as well. In addition to Pence, they want to impeach Bret Cavanaugh too. If Pence became the President I would be very happy. I like him much, much more than Trump. The attacks against Pence, however, would be worse than those against Trump, because Pence is a genuine Christian. Trump just thinks he is a Christian (and he is not). In November 2020 your choice will be to vote for the Republican nominee or the Democratic nominee, a third party vote which will be meaningless, or not vote at all for a president. I will vote for the Republican nominee because I agree for the most part with the Republican platform and I oppose the socialist platform of the democratic party which has moved so far left that it makes President Obama look like a moderate. Those are the choices as I see it.
Pastor Mike Harding
There are two groups that have put Trump in office: evangelicals and white males without a college education and there is enormous overlap between the two.
In other words, evangelicals hold all the cards. They could stand up and say: we support conservatism but we no longer support Trump. We want Pence instead.
And if they did that, this Trump nightmare is over. Immediately. And ironically, evangelicals would then have what they at least say they want: a Christian conservative that is not an immoral national embarrassment.
But they won’t do that. Why? I have no idea but I suspect it is because they secretly like the way Trump operates.
[Mike Harding]Aaron,
If the demoncrats impeach Trump for calling for an investiation against the Bidens’ for their obvious quid pro quo with Ukraine in the 2016 election and the 1.5 Billion dollar deal with China (1 Billion in aid if they will fire the prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden’s energy company in Ukraine), that is their choice. It is entirely political. Yet, I have also heard the leftists say that they want to impeach the Vice-President as well. In addition to Pence, they want to impeach Bret Cavanaugh too. If Pence became the President I would be very happy. I like him much, much more than Trump. The attacks against Pence, however, would be worse than those against Trump, because Pence is a genuine Christian. Trump just thinks he is a Christian (and he is not). In November 2020 your choice will be to vote for the Republican nominee or the Democratic nominee, a third party vote which will be meaningless, or not vote at all for a president. I will vote for the Republican nominee because I agree for the most part with the Republican platform and I oppose the socialist platform of the democratic party which has moved so far left that it makes President Obama look like a moderate. Those are the choices as I see it.
I appreciate the fact that you acknowledge there are actually 4 options. Many evangelical Trump voters have argued constantly since 2016 that there were only 2. Imo, the 3rd party vote is only meaningless because so many voters continue to believe so.
Which could be based upon the many failed efforts of third party candidates over the past several decades. It’s pretty obvious that third party candidates siphon votes from the two major party candidates, one of whom is always going to win. When you take votes from a candidate who disappoints, you end up helping a candidate who is worse. Not a winning strategy.
Blame it on our system, but that’s the way it works. If we had a British style of government, third, fourth, fifth, and more party candidates make sense. Or look at the way elections work in Israel. (with many similarities to Great Britain) Minority parties have a lot of leverage in deciding who will become the next prime minister. They often have to be coaxed by a major party to help form a government. Not so in the USA. One of the two major parties wins. Failing to support either usually helps the least desirable.
G. N. Barkman
[GregH]There are two groups that have put Trump in office: evangelicals and white males without a college education and there is enormous overlap between the two.
That’s right Greg, we Trump supporters are just a bunch of stupid hicks… we lack us n edjukashun… so we just listen to Rush Limbaugh while we are beating our wives and reading the Bible to find out the timing of the Rapture…
Man, I wish I could be really educated like the urban core, and the Prius driving, pro-abortion, pro-socialist, anti-God pioneers in suburbia!
[Mark_Smith]That’s right Greg, we Trump supporters are just a bunch of stupid hicks… we lack us n edjukashun… so we just listen to Rush Limbaugh while we are beating our wives and reading the Bible to find out the timing of the Rapture…
Man, I wish I could be really educated like the urban core, and the Prius driving, pro-abortion, pro-socialist, anti-God pioneers in suburbia!
No need to get all offended by the truth. That those two groups are who put Trump in office is indisputable fact based on numerous surveys.
Mike wrote:
In November 2020 your choice will be to vote for the Republican nominee or the Democratic nominee, a third party vote which will be meaningless, or not vote at all for a president.
Actually, I already know WA State is going blue and all its electoral votes are going for the Democratic candidate! My individual vote is only meaningful at the national level insofar as the WA State popular vote goes my way. Which is fine with me - there is a method to the electoral college’s madness.
Tyler is a pastor in Olympia, WA and works in State government.
[GregH]No need to get all offended by the truth. That those two groups are who put Trump in office is indisputable fact based on numerous surveys.
My take, is that it is not that simple. There was just as much disdain amongst these groups for Clinton as there was a passion for Trump. Since Trump did not win the majority vote, you could argue that if any minimally sizeable group reversed their position on Trump, he would not have won. It is easy to pick the majorities as those who allowed him to win, but that is just bad math and bad statistics. You could just as easily say that Independents put him in office. The independent vote was greater than the Republican vote and almost eclipsed the Democrat vote in turnout.
You could also say that if Clinton had turned just a small number of votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin (typically Democratic states), she would have won. Here he won on razor thin margins as a result of working class white Americans.
[dgszweda]My take, is that it is not that simple. There was just as much disdain amongst these groups for Clinton as there was a passion for Trump.
Indeed. The comparison I saw recently was playing Russian roulette with Trump vs. using a gun on yourself with all chambers loaded with Clinton.
Dave Barnhart
[G. N. Barkman]Which could be based upon the many failed efforts of third party candidates over the past several decades. It’s pretty obvious that third party candidates siphon votes from the two major party candidates, one of whom is always going to win. When you take votes from a candidate who disappoints, you end up helping a candidate who is worse. Not a winning strategy.
Blame it on our system, but that’s the way it works. If we had a British style of government, third, fourth, fifth, and more party candidates make sense. Or look at the way elections work in Israel. (with many similarities to Great Britain) Minority parties have a lot of leverage in deciding who will become the next prime minister. They often have to be coaxed by a major party to help form a government. Not so in the USA. One of the two major parties wins. Failing to support either usually helps the least desirable.
Yep, you keep proving my point. 3rd party candidates don’t work because voters buy into the idea that they can’t.
[dcbii]Indeed. The comparison I saw recently was playing Russian roulette with Trump vs. using a gun on yourself with all chambers loaded with Clinton.
One of the challenges is that people are looking at who carried Trump as if this was a popular vote. If a ton more people in South Carolina voted for Trump, it wouldn’t have mattered one bit, as the state was already carried. While Greg is proposing it is uneducated religious white males, because that is what a large number of voters were classified as, the reality is that most likely what carried Trump was 68,236 voters in Pennsylvania, 11,837 voters in Michigan, and 27,257 voters in Wisconsin who classified themselves as blue collar factory workers. These were the three states that flipped from historically democrat to Trump, and there electoral votes would have carried Clinton. That is only 107,330 voters. Now while Greg is right that Trump’s strongest and most vocal supporters fall into the class that he outlines.
The broader concern that I have over the impeachment process is that politics are becoming more and more partisan. This impeachment process just further drives the issue. Is Trump innocent? No, but lets not kid ourselves that Washington isn’t loaded with this garbage. The Democrats are pissed and they are going to take it out. We aren’t really solving anything as a country. The reason why we have crummy candidates is that the good people don’t want the headache of being a leader. What we are stuck with is a bunch of leaders that are highly partisan, and are just doing things through executive order and are skipping the legislative process. Trump is just feeding into what has already been building. Come on. We ridicule Trump for lying and saying he is going to do things like build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it, yet we have Warren who claims she was Native American and is proposing plans that are so far off reality it isn’t funny. I am not really seeing the difference. Washington has been loosing its way for quite some time, and the rigorous brain power is gone on both sides of the aisle.
Or maybe voters realize that our system is designed in a manner that makes it virtually impossible.
G. N. Barkman
[dgszweda]One of the challenges is that people are looking at who carried Trump as if this was a popular vote. If a ton more people in South Carolina voted for Trump, it wouldn’t have mattered one bit, as the state was already carried. While Greg is proposing it is uneducated religious white males, because that is what a large number of voters were classified as, the reality is that most likely what carried Trump was 68,236 voters in Pennsylvania, 11,837 voters in Michigan, and 27,257 voters in Wisconsin who classified themselves as blue collar factory workers. These were the three states that flipped from historically democrat to Trump, and there electoral votes would have carried Clinton. That is only 107,330 voters. Now while Greg is right that Trump’s strongest and most vocal supporters fall into the class that he outlines.
The broader concern that I have over the impeachment process is that politics are becoming more and more partisan. This impeachment process just further drives the issue. Is Trump innocent? No, but lets not kid ourselves that Washington isn’t loaded with this garbage. The Democrats are pissed and they are going to take it out. We aren’t really solving anything as a country. The reason why we have crummy candidates is that the good people don’t want the headache of being a leader. What we are stuck with is a bunch of leaders that are highly partisan, and are just doing things through executive order and are skipping the legislative process. Trump is just feeding into what has already been building. Come on. We ridicule Trump for lying and saying he is going to do things like build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it, yet we have Warren who claims she was Native American and is proposing plans that are so far off reality it isn’t funny. I am not really seeing the difference. Washington has been loosing its way for quite some time, and the rigorous brain power is gone on both sides of the aisle.
I am trying to make a different point and if the uneducated thing gets in the way, I will withdraw it.
My point is this: 25% of the country is evangelical and 80+% are Trump supporters. That is a huge voting block that represents maybe 40% of the people voting for him and up to 50% of those claiming he is doing a great job.
If just half of those evangelicals stood up and said they would not support him, Trump’s numbers would drop 10% which would be way more than enough for the Republican senators to suddenly find their “morality” again and support impeachment. Pence would finish out the term and likely be the Republican nominee in 2020.
[GregH]I am trying to make a different point and if the uneducated thing gets in the way, I will withdraw it.
My point is this: 25% of the country is evangelical and 80+% are Trump supporters. That is a huge voting block that represents maybe 40% of the people voting for him and up to 50% of those claiming he is doing a great job.
If just half of those evangelicals stood up and said they would not support him, Trump’s numbers would drop 10% which would be way more than enough for the Republican senators to suddenly find their “morality” again and support impeachment. Pence would finish out the term and likely be the Republican nominee in 2020.
Defintely this could happen. I can’t prove what I am about to say, but I would be interested if there is research out there on this. My gut says that most of the evangelical supporters of Trump are more of a supporter because they are against the other side of the fence. I know that you have these preachers saying crazy things, but I wonder if the actual people themselves are more scared of opposing individuals than they are of Trump. Most of the people I have talked to, don’t really like Trump, but they really, really, really don’t like Sanders, Warren, AOC… And so they put up with Trump.
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