The two pivots Trump needs to make to secure the white evangelical vote

Last updated on: June 25, 2016 at 8:35 pm by Morgan Guyton

The two pivots Trump needs to make to secure the white evangelical vote 2016-06-25T20:35:01-05:00 Morgan Guyton

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I had thought there was no way Trump could be elected president because he wasn’t a bona fide evangelical and his attempts to speak evangelical were so awkward and clumsy. But I forgot that evangelicals always love a good conversion story. James Dobson’s recent announcement that Donald Trump has “accepted Christ” didn’t surprise me. It’s a textbook play. But now I’m a little bit worried he really will win the presidency. Because now evangelicals have the cover to support him. Since Jesus’ blood washes away our sin, Donald Trump’s “conversion” means that his past adultery, fraud, bankruptcy, support for partial birth abortion, and everything else can be filed away as the pre-conversion backstory. But there are two critical pivots he needs to make in order to prove that his conversion is “genuine” and lock down the evangelical voting bloc.

The most serious strategic mistake Trump has made so far on the campaign trail was to avoid jumping into the transgender bathroom controversy. He said that transgender people should use whatever bathroom they think is appropriate (which was a huge relief to hear from him actually). But if Trump wants to prove that his conversion to evangelicalism is genuine, scapegoating transgender people is the best way to do that. George W. Bush won the 2004 election largely because of the paranoia about gay marriage.

The exploitation of paranoia about protecting young white girls from sexual abuse has a long history in the evangelical community. It was the ideological foundation of racial segregation. Scapegoating on the basis of race still works for many white people, but doing so too openly makes many evangelicals feel uncomfortable. The beauty of transgender bathroom panic is that Trump can say that he’s not actually attacking transgender people themselves, but the pedophiles who would supposedly exploit transgender civil rights protections. He doesn’t have to say anything overtly mean. He just has to say something that sounds magnanimous like “Women are getting frightened; we’ve got to figure out a better solution.”

The other pivot Trump has to make is to start reciting the dispensationalist talking points about Israel. It’s not enough to be Israel’s BFF. Hillary is Israel’s BFF. It’s one thing to use AIPAC’s talking points and promise never to contradict or question Netanyahu. That may work for the Jewish Zionist crowd. But Christian dispensationalists are a different audience listening for a different set of cues. Part of Donald’s “born again” experience will need to involve coming to the realization that it’s worth spending trillions of dollars fighting wars in the Middle East because something about the end times. So Trump’s evangelical advisors need to teach him how to talk about the end times.

These two pivots will give most evangelical voters enough cover to say something like, “I really wasn’t sure about that guy, but I’m so glad that the Lord has been moving in his life.” For the sake of the church’s future, I hope that evangelicals go all-in for Trump and he loses so decisively that their voting bloc is shattered forever.

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