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| The religious right's vision of Trump. |
Of course one wouldn't know this if one read the glowing tributes he is given by several religious right groups such as the Family Research Council and the American Family Association:
Trump Deals in Taxes Hold'em
And let's not forget Franklin Graham's advice to that Trump not reveal his tax returns.
So why are these folks, who are so quick to talk about values and morality, are as easily quick to give Trump a pass on both? An article in Politico reveals what should be obvious:
The one group Trump has paid outsized attention to—and consistently delivered for—is the social conservative movement. He reinstated and even toughened the Mexico City Policy, which eliminates U.S. funding for international nongovernmental organizations that perform abortions. He rescinded President Barack Obama’s protections for transgender students to use preferred bathrooms in public schools. He signed legislation that routs federal money away from Planned Parenthood. He cut off funding to the U.N. Population Fund, which critics say has long supported coercive abortions in China and other countries. He stockpiled his administration with pro-life evangelical Christians in critical roles, including Tom Price as secretary of Health and Human Services, Betsy DeVos as education secretary and Mike Pence as vice president. And, most significantly, his Supreme Court pick, Neil Gorsuch, a conservative originalist in the mold of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, won confirmation.
. . . “How ironic it is,” says Ralph Reed, president of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, “that Donald Trump, of all people in the Republican Party, would become a champion for social conservatives.”
. . .After eight years in which conservatives—and particularly evangelical Christians—believed themselves to be under siege from secular forces in the federal government, the judiciary and popular culture, Trump’s presidency feels like a renaissance. Not only do they have a seat at the table again, as they did during the famously evangelical-friendly George W. Bush years; many of these activists say Trump has already surpassed the 43rd president as an ally and advocate.
“The Bush administration didn’t come close to being this friendly to social conservatives,” says Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America. (“Who knew?" she adds, laughing. “I can’t say I would have ever guessed that a billionaire playboy from Manhattan would wind up being the closest ally of Christian conservatives.”) ( Family Research Council president Tony) Perkins, for his part, tells me: “I’ve been at the White House for meetings more in the first four months of the Trump administration than I was during the entire Bush presidency.”
I should be disturbed by this, but to tell the truth, I'm not. Sometimes, it's a good thing for your opposition to get all that they want because they tend to reveal themselves to be exactly what you have said they are.
It's one thing to label a pig as a glutton. But dumping a pile of food in front it and pointing as the pig sloppily chows down sends a better message. In that same regard, Trump giving the religious right so much power isn't necessarily a bad thing. Just watch how quickly these groups and their personalities abandon their masks of propriety and show themselves to be what the lgbtq community has always said they were - gluttonous fanatics trying to maneuver the country to their direction.
We see this now in how much religious right leaders are fawning and lauding over Trump while he sinks lower and lower. With every revelation that Trump is a devil, here they come with another pair of plastic wings and slightly bent halo to take the glare off of the new debasement. And another spritz of goody-goody God spray to cover up the smell of Trump's sulfuric depravity and incompetence.
It was never about preserving values with these groups. It was always about control by any means necessary - a smartly cynical value but one unbecoming of those calling themselves Christians.
As much as I despise Trump, the one thing he is doing right is figuratively giving the religious right enough rope to hang themselves. And with the speed of the direction they are going, they won't wait for the chair to be kicked from under them.
They themselves will jump off.
