They appreciated having a president projecting toughness on the world stage. Like the Evangelical conservatives, the Tea Party GOP thought that Obama was weak and other countries did not respect us, while Donald Trump was commanding respect on the world stage. Other countries were put “before America because of political correctness.”
And now, I feel like Donald Trump puts America’s values in security before the opinions of other countries.
Back in the Obama era, where, let’s sit and drink a beer, we’ll talk it over and you’re all worked out. Where I think we need somebody like that, that is going to make somebody mad, like over at NATO, you’re not paying your fair share, you need to pay your fair share, cause we’re not footing the bill for everybody.
He demonstrates strength for our country.
TRUMP’S TEA PARTY RALLIES
President Trump spoke to the Tea Party base in his rallies, and those in my groups shouted repeatedly, “I love that.” For them, it defined Trump and an urgent call to action.
“He speaks his mind, [is] not afraid of criticism, and drives liberals crazy.” It reinforced their feeling that he is more trustworthy than other politicians. “He can afford to go out there and say exactly what he thinks and if it makes people mad, it just kind of bounces off of him,” because “he’s not so worried about, am I going to get reelected,” because he is already so wealthy that he is not trying to “stay in politics to get a ton of money and get all the benefits of a retired politician.”
A few wished he wouldn’t tweet and had a smoother style, but they got to why they thought he had strong support:
Well, he’s uplifting. He’s definitely selling his brand to his base, and he’s backing it up.
You can see that he actually believes what he’s saying. He’s not—it doesn’t come off like he’s saying something that he thinks he’s supposed to say. Especially like it could be a little bit of his style, but he’ll come off and he’ll actually say something that obviously wasn’t written on the paper, right?
The Tea Party base voters were desperate to keep Democrats from coming back in power. They said the Democratic Party had become socialist and too extreme and they can’t imagine anything positive will happen if they were to regain power.
Well, if you want socialism and all of us other Americans to be equal while he lives in his big nice mansion. At least one.
[Nancy Pelosi] represents what’s wrong, generally, with the Democratic Party and between her and Maxine Waters, it’s just everything is no. If you like it, I don’t. It doesn’t matter what it is. If I liked it before, and you like it now? I don’t like it anymore.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters was a focus for many of these Tea Party GOP, surely because she is African American and perhaps because she is the most vocal advocate for impeaching President Trump.
In 2018, the Tea Party GOP were motivated to turn out and to vote for Republicans, not because they supported the Republican Party or the GOP congressional leaders, but because they wanted to defend Donald Trump. They said it was more important than ever to vote in the off-year because they need “to maintain the momentum” of Donald Trump’s election:
Because for one, to maintain the momentum. Because I feel like that last election was an eye opener for a lot of people. Because a lot of people that probably would not have normally gone out and voted, voted because they were motivated to do so by Trump and by Hillary Clinton. And so if this same group of people aren’t motivated equally to go out and do that same thing this year, then we lose all momentum and then it doesn’t matter nearly as much what happens in 2020.
They did just that and helped President Trump defeat Red State Democrats, but the loss of control in the House more than slowed the momentum—as the government ground to an absolute halt over Trump’s bizarre insistence that the Democratic House fund his border wall.
Post-session postcards to Donald Trump
Keep pushing for illegal immigration enforcement, tax reform, and an improved healthcare system. Always be yourself but maybe tone it down a bit.
Mr. Trump, Continue the good work. Keep your eye on the ball and please run for re-election in 2020. You will have Carl’s vote.
Keep putting America’s well being in front of the opinions of the other countries. Keep our border secure but also be accepting to other cultures.
President Trump, thank you for bringing real hope back to America. Obama sold us a false “hope” based on socialism. You have brought us a hope based on capitalism and love of country. Thank you for standing up for America.
President Trump, I would like you to know that Middle America really appreciates what you have done and are say to do for all of us.
Continue the good job, focus on jobs, trade, improve infrastructure, threat less and keep the majority in the Congress.
Thanks for helping our country get back to being America. Thanks for helping the vets.
Stay the course, we have your back.
THE EVANGELICALS
One in four of the base are Evangelicals, and they are the biggest faction. The women I talked to in North Carolina came from the smaller towns outside Raleigh.7 They are the quintessential values voters at the core of the GOP who now look to President Donald Trump as a leader who is finally defending their values. Their conservatism is defined by their religious faith, which puts them on the defensive in a country that is increasingly liberal, secular, and politicized.
About 40 percent in my poll in September 2018 said they had to be cautious about people knowing their views. A third said atheists and people who don’t share their faith are now the biggest challenge to their values.8 So, not surprisingly, the moderator intervened to assure them they did not have to be apologetic about their social conservatism.
For all Trump’s unchristian behavior and style, the Evangelical GOP thank President Trump for sticking to his guns, to their social agenda, and for appointing socially conservative judges. They welcome his pushing back against liberalism after eight years of Obama and the failure of the GOP establishment. That is why the stakes are so high in the off-year elections and why they will be cadres in the battle to defend the Trump presidency.
THE STAKES
The Evangelicals’ conservatism is rooted in their religious faith, and half said they discussed policy issues like abortion with members of their congregation. They were unambiguous in their opposition to abortion. Several of these women said they could never vote for a candidate, even a Republican, who was pro-choice because it “went against my belief system.” About half said that they were “torn” on the issue of gay marriage, but only because they questioned whether the government should “have their hands in” a religious institution like marriage in the first place. (Ironically, they pointed to how the government had criminalized interracial marriage as an example of why government should not interfere.) In any case, they always came back to gay marriage as “against my religious beliefs.”
Being a conservative is a central part of their identity. These women came to understand that they were in our focus group to discuss politics, yet none called themselves Republicans. Instead, they defined themselves as conservatives many times throughout the evening and identified family members or friends as conservatives (or not) as well.
My son shares similar views, conservative views. But my daughter is—she went to UNC Ashford. I don’t need to say any more.
My daughter lives in Pennsylvania and her husband—they’re very conservative also.
I have most of my friends and family on Facebook, they’re all conservative and I think there’s only about two cousins that aren’t.
These Evangelical women believed they are now outnumbered by the secular-liberal younger generation and that their values are under attack from the mainstream media, educators, and Trump’s opponents. A recent local news story about a man assaulting a child for wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat was illustrative of the threat.
It’s the gentleman who yanked the h
at off that sixteen-year-old boy and then dumped soda on it. I mean for what reason? He had on a MAGA hat. My child has a MAGA hat and he will not wear it out because, well, most of his friends are not conservative.
Because these Evangelical GOP base voters feel their values are under attack, they have made their worlds smaller by unfollowing those who disagree on social media, by making a rule of not discussing politics with some family members, and even by canceling cable. Their guards were up so much that the moderator eventually had to reassure them that they were in a room of like-minded people where they were free to speak their minds without apology.
DONALD TRUMP IS DEFENDING THEM AND THEY ARE DEFENDING HIM
The Evangelical GOP understood their values are out of fashion and increasingly outnumbered, yet most felt hopeful about the future of the country because conservatives are led by a “president that’s a fighter, and the country hasn’t seen that for a long, long, long time.” The GOP establishment has disappointed them again and again.
Finally, they felt that conservatives are “on a good roll.” Part of this is psychological: after eight years of “feeling lost” under President Obama, Donald Trump is unapologetically defending their values and vision of America, which gives them hope. Part of this is about their policy agenda: they felt that the country was “turning away” from conservative policies during the Obama presidency, but now their “issues are actually being addressed.” For these reasons it was incredibly important for the Evangelical GOP to defend President Trump and to stop the Democrats in the November 2018 elections.
The Evangelical GOP women of Raleigh believe there has been a massive improvement in the country over the past year and a half. Just look at their postcards thanking Donald Trump at the end of the night! (See here.) Some pointed to the economy as evidence:
More people are working. And my 401k is doing fabulous.
As far as economics, just how the country seems to be progressing towards more jobs and things like that.
I do think he’s a smart, as far as business, good businessman and everything because I think that is something we needed at the time to help in our economic growth. Since Bush, since everybody, it’s just the jobs just seem like there wasn’t any, and then how much job growth we’ve gotten over the last few months.
Another mentioned progress on the border: “I feel like issues are actually being addressed. That stuff isn’t being skirted around. Issues, whether it’s agreed upon or not, about the border and immigration.”
The greatest improvement in their minds was in America’s standing on the world stage. They attributed this entirely to Donald Trump’s “strength” and “patriotism.”
Well, Obama took the apology tour and that was just bringing our country down across the board. So we really needed Trump to bring it back out from that. Our standing in the world has increased, whereas some people would say it has not but I believe that we are more respected because of the strength of Trump.
I think our country before Trump was almost a laughingstock and we’d never been that. So to have Trump be able to stand up to that image that was portrayed is completely opposite from what Hillary would’ve brought to the play.
He doesn’t cave in to those that—I put down evildoers, those who make threats to him.
They believe that Donald Trump “cares about America truly” and once again, “patriotism’s back.”
Judicial appointments could not be more important and they could not be more satisfied with Trump’s performance, or where the stakes were as high. The Supreme Court is so important because of their feelings about abortion: “I mean because of our religious beliefs, Roe v. Wade is very important to me and, you know, having the people that are in place that feel as I do is a good thing for me.” But that is just “one of many” issues in front of the court that they care about. Specifically, they also said they wanted to protect the Second Amendment.
Many in the base of the GOP held their noses and voted for Donald Trump because of the Supreme Court, including the husband of one of the women in the group. “My husband was unsure who he was voting for […] and he didn’t like either choice,” she explained, “but he said, ‘You don’t know how this can affect our country down the road after he’s out of the office’ regarding nominating judges, and that was the—that’s what convinced him to vote.”
Their bargain paid off. They are thankful that Trump appointed a conservative like Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and reacted enthusiastically to a video of Trump talking about his opportunity to fill a second vacancy.
[Judges] are there to interpret the law and not make their own laws according to what the party in charge wants. That’s what Donald Trump is doing, [that is who] he’s picking.
Really, instead of [the] Constitution in our country, there’s a lot of activism going on. So sometimes it seems to me that politics are infused with these activist things. So, I think [Trump] was barking those sentiments at the conservatives he was speaking to there [at the rally] because those are the things that feel threatened and I think he was trying to say, had Hillary won, she might’ve put an activist judge rather than an institutional judge.
Ensuring Donald Trump’s conservative nominees were appointed was more important than Republicans maintaining control of Congress in the midterms: “I think we have a lot on the line with, we talked about the Supreme Court justices and all those kind of things and I think these people that we move into position are part of that plan.”
THE DEVIL AND DONALD TRUMP
These Evangelical Christians admitted that Donald Trump set a less than holy example. He is not a “good Christian man” like Mike Pence. But they were willing to put up with those parts of the Trump package because he was appointing conservative justices to the Supreme Court, had the backbone to defend their conservative values and policy priorities, and had the patriotism to stand up for America on the world stage.
They were not as enthusiastic as you might have expected watching video clips of Donald Trump talking about his accomplishments because, like many other Republicans, these Evangelical conservatives had reservations about how Donald Trump expresses himself and his lack of self-control.
He’s annoying. Drives me nuts.
He doesn’t think before he speaks sometimes.
Sometimes he is repetitive.
He can be disrespectful, but the same time, you don’t want someone who hesitates, you don’t want someone who’s going to be afraid to say what he thinks either.
Wish he didn’t Twitter so much.
Those concerns were closely connected to worries about his lack of humility: he “makes petty comments unnecessarily about trivial things, and then I put his ego because it seems like sometimes it’s too big, therefore he comments. I feel like it’s an evil cycle for him.”
It the end, Trump’s style and shameless self-promotion were helpful weapons in the culture war. In the end, the women excused his braggadocio campaign stump speech because they think it helps him get around the unfair media coverage.
If he didn’t toot [his own horn], who would?
True.
I agree with you.
That’s true.
The media’s not going to do that, at least not the liberal media.
This allowed him to be more successful than other politicians who are “too reserved” to lead this way: “When you have someone that’s more soft-spoken that doesn’t toot his own horn, the media’s going to bash him either way.”
And you might think watching Donald Trump making offensive and lewd remarks about women might pause these social conservatives, but not for a second. They were quick to steer condemnation away from Trump and there was no erosion in their support.
I mean in the past Bill Clinton. I think he—I mean that was degrading to women and that’s another example of [Trump] speaking what he’s thinking but I’m neutral. I mean like I said, he doesn’t actually mean anything. I’m, you know, confident.
And the thing is,
if that’s the worst that they could find on him is that they—he said something bad, not that he did something bad as opposed to sort of like what Bill Clinton did. He did something bad, you know.
His words get him in trouble and women happen to be the issue and so again, the media or whoever is going to hone in on that issue so it just happens to be amplified.
The Evangelical GOP made a deal with the devil, and they are all-in. In their postcards to Donald Trump, they thanked him for putting the country on the right track and said they were praying for him.
Post-session postcards to Donald Trump
Thank you for making America great again. Please continue with the action items promised at election. I like the patriotism that you are bringing back to America.
Dear President Trump, I wanted to let you know how proud you have made me. Your love for this country stands out among other presidents—thank you so much for your salary donations—the VA is in great need of funds! Our family prays for you and your family—may God bless.
Thank you for leading our country in the right direction. You are doing a great job. It is good to see the jobs and economy grow. So good you are not allowing the USA to be disrespected.
Dear Mr. President, Thank you for your hard work. I pray that you continue in your efforts to help make America great. Always remember that your position is important because of our nation and its people not just on occupation. All of your actions and attitudes are seen. I pray grace and wisdom for you always.
You have done a great job and “We the People” truly appreciate [you] Gods [sic] Blessings to you and your family.
Thank you President Trump for leading our country in a more positive direction. I look forward to voting for you again in 2020. You have made an HUGE difference and for the better.
Rip Gop Page 15
