The evangelical voter split #TrumpvsCruzinthepews

The evangelical voter split

by digby

This Ron Brownstein analysis of the Republican electorate and Cruz and Trump’s respective strengths within it is fascinating. His thesis throughout these primaries has been that this is really about a divide between high school educated working class white Republicans and college educated white Republicans. In this case he drills down even further to find that the divide exists within the evangelical world as well and that the two candidates are splitting there as well.

It’s a long article worth reading all the way through but this gets to the central point:

Though Cruz led big among col­lege-edu­cated evan­gel­ic­als in the latest Quin­nipi­ac Iowa sur­vey, the poll placed Trump ahead of Cruz by 32 per­cent to 30 per­cent among evan­gel­ic­als without a col­lege de­gree. The NBC/WSJ/Mar­ist Poll in Iowa showed Cruz still lead­ing Trump among blue-col­lar evan­gel­ic­als, but with a much nar­row­er ad­vant­age (nine per­cent­age points) than among their col­lege-edu­cated coun­ter­parts (23 points).

Craig Robin­son, founder of The Iowa Re­pub­lic­an web­site and former polit­ic­al dir­ect­or for the state GOP, said Trump’s strength with these work­ing-class evan­gel­ic­als “doesn’t sur­prise me at all. He def­in­itely has this ap­peal to the hard-work­ing blue-col­lar little guy.” As for Cruz, Robin­son ad­ded, “I don’t think he’s a lock at all” for these voters.

Work­ing-class evan­gel­ic­als rep­res­ent a po­ten­tially pivotal block not only in the South, but also across key Mid­west­ern battle­grounds that also vote in early March. In 2012, non­col­lege evan­gel­ic­als cast more than one-third of the Re­pub­lic­an bal­lots in South Car­o­lina and Geor­gia, al­most ex­actly one-third in Ohio, and about one-fourth in Flor­ida, Illinois, and Michigan, the exit poll fig­ures show. They will also carry sig­ni­fic­ant weight in oth­er South­ern and heart­land states like Ten­ness­ee, Arkan­sas, Ok­lahoma, Mis­sis­sippi, Mis­souri, Wis­con­sin, and Kan­sas.

Cruz has cour­ted these voters partly by mov­ing closer to Trump’s po­s­i­tions on im­mig­ra­tion and trade. But mostly Cruz is bet­ting on his as­sidu­ous or­gan­iz­ing through re­li­gious net­works. His “Faith and Re­li­gious Liberty Co­ali­tion” has at­trac­ted en­dorse­ments from some 400 con­ser­vat­ive re­li­gious lead­ers, in­clud­ing prom­in­ent na­tion­al fig­ures such as Fo­cus on the Fam­ily founder James Dob­son and Bob Vander Plaats, pres­id­ent of the Iowa Fam­ily Lead­er. And, like San­tor­um and Mike Hucka­bee be­fore him, Cruz has worked dog­gedly to at­tract homeschool­ing fam­il­ies. In South Car­o­lina, “Cruz is work­ing the evan­gel­ic­al pas­tors and get­ting them en­gaged, and he is do­ing that pretty ef­fect­ively,” says Or­an P. Smith, pres­id­ent of the Pal­metto Fam­ily Coun­cil, a lead­ing so­cial con­ser­vat­ive group there.

Many ob­serv­ers be­lieve this or­gan­iz­ing—and Cruz’s un­waver­ingly con­ser­vat­ive re­cord on so­cial is­sues such as gay mar­riage—has provided him a clear edge with evan­gel­ic­als for whom cul­tur­al is­sues and per­son­al val­ues are para­mount. Den­nis Googe, a small busi­ness own­er from Rock Hill, South Car­o­lina, who at­ten­ded Don­ald Trump’s re­cent rally there, is one of them. Though Googe said he ad­mired Trump, he planned to vote for Cruz “be­cause he is sol­id in his be­lief against abor­tion and ho­mo­sexu­al and les­bi­an mar­riage, and Mr. Trump some­times comes across as he may not be.” 

Cruz’s re­cent at­tacks on Trump for em­body­ing “New York val­ues” may help the sen­at­or ce­ment oth­er evan­gel­ic­als like Googe torn between their ad­mir­a­tion for Trump’s ar­dor and their “Chris­ti­an con­vic­tions,” as Googe puts it. Trump gave Cruz an as­sist in that ef­fort by mangling a bible verse dur­ing his Liberty speech on Monday.

Cruz’s prob­lem, many ana­lysts say, is that even many evan­gel­ic­als this year may find Trump’s anti-es­tab­lish­ment, anti-im­mig­rant, anti-trade ar­gu­ments more com­pel­ling than so­cial is­sues. The evan­gel­ic­als drawn to Trump “are a dif­fer­ent class of voters,” says John Brabend­er, the chief strategist in 2012 for San­tor­um. “My im­pres­sion is they are first and fore­most driv­en by who they are as far as oc­cu­pa­tion, in­come, life­style, than wheth­er they are evan­gel­ic­al or not.” 

Watch­ing from South Car­o­lina, Smith agrees that Cruz may find it more dif­fi­cult than many ex­pect to dis­lodge Trump from his beach­head among evan­gel­ic­als, es­pe­cially work­ing-class ones.

Tellingly, Smith says, the sin­cer­ity of Trump’s re­li­gious faith is draw­ing much less dis­cus­sion than de­bates about Rom­ney’s Mor­mon re­li­gion did in 2012. “There is not a lot of ob­ses­sion among blue-col­lar evan­gel­ic­als with minor points of theo­logy,” Smith says. “Those things go to the mar­gins when people feel des­per­ate and the Re­pub­lic­an primary elect­or­ate feels to me a little des­per­ate right now.”

Personally, I think this just exposes one of the central fallacies about the Republican coalition. The white working class types who call themselves social conservatives and identify as evangelicals say this out tribal identity more than ideology. They are economically screwed every which way, with little hope of any improvement. But lets not kid ourselves, these economically despairing, non-ideological, casual evangelicals are mostly drawn to the GOP because it is the party that doesn’t have blacks, mexicans, feminists, liberals, city slickers and hippies in it, none of whom they can stand and all of whom they blame for the country going to hell in  handbasket and the death of their own prospects . It’s not complicated. That’s the fundamental complaint about “political correctness”  — the necessity to pretend that you don’t hate all those people.

Trump is speaking to all that much more emphatically than Cruz or anyone else on the scene. He’s giving these folks permission to let their freak flag fly and providing a way to connect with each other without all the trappings of religion and phony piety they are usually required to pretend to care about. They don’t have to sit through arcane lectures about tax policy and “small government” or pretend to care about a bunch of abstractions about the gold standard or “tort reform!”. Trump is about guns, race, law and order and American dominance, period. That’s the stripped down “conservatism” these folks really care about. It’s obvious to them that this is what is needed to make America — and their own lives — “great again.”

The question is whether he will be able to capture enough of the rest of the coalition to win the nomination. So far, it’s looking pretty good.

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