Trumped up Religion

It is with hesitation that I write this article. Anytime someone tries to psychologize or explain the behavior or thought of another group of people, it is dangerous territory. Even historical explanations of contemporary events can be condescending. However, I feel like I am on solid enough ground to attempt an explanation of one interesting finding this election season.

According to polls, in five short years white evangelicals have flip-flopped on whether an elected official who commits an immoral act in their personal life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties.

White evangelicals are, statistically speaking, more likely to vote for Trump. In a recent poll Trump leads Clinton 55% - 2% among likely white evangelical voters.

The obvious conclusion is the shift in the above graph benefits the 2016 Republican nominee more than the Democratic.

So how did we get to this situation? How did Republicans get such loyalty that they have changed their mind on the value of Presidential candidates personal morality so drastically in five years?

To tell the story we have to go into the history of religion and politics in America.

Kevin M. Kruse has documented a large portion of this history in his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America.

For the purposes of this post, he traces a trajectory from the 1930s to the Eisenhower administration till the 1970s of increasing ties between evangelicalism and conservative (Republican) economics.

But that is of course not the whole story. In 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that abortion was legal in all 50 states. Segregationists did use this to their advantage and racism was a catalyst, but the average evangelical cared more about the spike in legal abortions (at least eventually).

Morality, especially pro-life and pro-nuclear hetero-normative family values, became another corner stone of the development of conservatism.

No one was more instrumental in coalescing conserve values than Ronald Reagan, President from 1981-1989.

He spoke the language of the evangelicals better and more consistently than virtually any other President in American history. (Note: Possible exceptions, Eisenhower and Carter).

So much so that Falwell and Weyrich, the leaders of the conservative group the Moral Majority, declared in 1989 that the religious right is solidly in place.

The Republican party had solidly coalesced conservative economics, conservative morality, and conservative politics.

The failed campaigns by Pat Robertson and Mike Huckabee showed that America did not actually want a President who was from the religious right.

However, it took the formation of the The Tea Party in 2009 to expose cracks in the unity achieved during the Reagan era. The Tea Party was largely (but not exclusively) libertarian. They were subtly opposed to traditional Reaganesque conservative politics.

For example, Reagan was for amnesty; Trump is not. And Trump got Tea Party support partly because of his immigration policies.

Abortion is still a motivator for Trump supporters, especially as there is currently a Supreme Court seat empty. But personal morality was/is not a central concern for the Tea Party, nor as we see by the graph above is it for the average evangelical in 2016.

This was a relatively quick (and MAYBE unplanned) bait and switch from personal faith and morality a mix of libertarian and conservative policies.