Donald Trump: Born-again Christian?Yeah, and I am Marie of Roumania.
The presumptive Republican nominee captured a significant number of evangelical voters during the Republican primary, and that may be due to recently accepting “a relationship with Christ,” according to evangelical leader James Dobson.
... Dobson, a Christian psychologist and founder of the Focus on the Family group, said he knows “the person who led [Trump] to Christ. And that’s fairly recent.”
“I don’t know when it was, but it has not been long,” Dobson said in an interview with Pennsylvania megachurch pastor Michael Anthony following that meeting in New York. ”I believe he really made a commitment, but he’s a baby Christian.”
I'm sure I've said this before, but the guy who really underestimated the ability of Republicans to accept a completely phony conversion to religious right values is Rudy Giuliani. I still think he would have been the Republican nominee in 2008 if he'd announced, some time in 2006 or 2007, that he'd suddenly seen the light on abortion and gay rights, and now unswervingly opposed both. Look what's happened in the last two election cycles: The Republicans have nominated Mitt Romney, a moderate on social issues when he was governor of Massachusetts, and Trump, a libertine who was also not an opponent of abortion or gay rights until it became politically expedient.
Why didn't Giuliani flip-flop on these issues in '08? Was it integrity on his part? I doubt it -- I assume he just thought he was such an American hero after 9/11 that he could defy party dogma.
Romney, at least, seemed to be reverting to the tenets of his faith. Trump is transparently phony -- but because religious rightists think he can smite liberals, most of them doesn't care. Giuliani probably didn't think he could get away with fraud that flagrant. Now he knows that gulling voters in his party is ridiculously easy.
These people will accept any Republican nominee. What other choice do they have? My wife, a Brooklyn girl, dismissed Giuliani's chances in 2008 thusly. "Nobody with that strong a New York accent will ever be elected President."
ReplyDeleteShe said pretty much the same thing about Christie this year. Right twice.
My impression is it's got zilch to do with personal sincerity, everything to do with power.
ReplyDeleteThat a Republican candidate might hold personally doctrinaire sectarian beliefs is seen as problem, as it's beyond possible that he may question or limit their ability to call shot on 'morality'. In contrast, a non-believer poses no such problem, since his commitment to outsource all choices on the morality front to the Religious Right will never be reneged on due to doctrinaire scruples.
Trump, a libertine who was also not an opponent of abortion or gay rights until it became politically expedient.
ReplyDeleteTrump being a libertine is a good point well taken. I've been familiar with him as a (ridiculous) public figure in NY for over thirty years.
But I'm not aware of where he's been an opponent of gay rights. No doubt I'm wrong and I've missed something. He's a jerk, but he's a cosmopolitan jerk. I don't think he resents gay rights at all. But maybe he said something to appease the gay -haters that I missed. As terrible as he is, being anti-gay is not something I as a gay person can really hang on him. I don't think he is, but again, maybe I missed something.
Steve as Italian/American when will start pronouncing Rudy's name in his proper Calabrese? Its GHOUL-iani. OK?
ReplyDeleteChris Wallace: "Are you saying that if you become President you might try to appoint justices to overrule the decision on same-sex marriage?"
ReplyDeleteTrump: "I would strongly consider that, yes."
as reported at http://www.towleroad.com/2016/01/donald-trump-gay-marriage/
If Trump is a Christian because he said he reads the bible (and other things he's said seem to prove that he's never opened the book) then when I walk through a parking lot, I'm a Mercedes sedan.
ReplyDeleteI think it's rather telling that in the US, we're facing a choice between electing a buffoon and a career politician and in Iceland, their newly-elected president is a historian.
Eric -
ReplyDeleteBad news: Anyone elected to the office of president, even in Iceland, is a politician, regardless of how he or she makes a living.
Tis oft my thought, Eric, we should just let the religous nutballs have their dog-damned little apocalypse. Let 'em destroy the world, it's overpopulated, and when their precious lord and master doesn't come floating down out of the sky on a flying unicorn with a thousand angels on flying unicorns to carry them all away to paradise we can get on with cleaning up the mess that has been made.
ReplyDeleteFar the more likely thousands upon thousands of spacecraft, vast flying butcher shops piloted by ravenous vaguely reptilian creatures repeated with horns and forked tail. You know, hungry lizards. We did, afterall, invite them to "Come. Eat!"
@Leo Artunian - Maybe they become politicians, but that doesn't necessarily apply in all cases to their previous occupation. In any case, Iceland is different (I know - I've lived there) - domestic affairs generally run themselves (witness the popular reaction to the banking crisis; they're just about the only country that took real action). A historian is in a better position to have the perspective to deal with other countries. I'd say more, but the tenor of the comment indicates to me that you are someone who delights in the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.
ReplyDelete@Ten Bears - That's not going to help me if I get killed in the scuffle. Better to send them to colonize Mars where they can fight among themselves all they like without ruining things for the rest of us. There are times I would like their rapture to be real. It would rid the world of a lot of disagreeable people (and probably lower rental costs).
Let us hope Trump has gulled all the "Christian" Zionists like Dobson, the ones who say the US must formulate a foreign policy at all times which stands by the theft of Palestine. This of course involves war crimes like the invasion of Iraq, the attempted overthrow of Assad etc.
ReplyDeleteThere are no problems with a complete reversal of "invade the world, invite the world." But one without the other is a guarantee of deserved calamity....deserved by the US of course.
Eric, keep in mind that the president in Iceland has no power; it's a symbolic position as in Italy or Israel, the prime minister is the head of government.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny to see how con-man Trump has managed to con the Christian con-men. Unless - Dobson knows that it's all bullshit, and he's in on the con.
ReplyDelete