Religious conservatives will never abandon Trump

They may feel queasy about voting for Trump, but the alternative is too terrible to bear

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | AP Photo/ Evan Vucci, gonin/iStock)

Religious conservatives are among the most reliable Republican voters. And while most evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in 2016, many of them have been queasy about him ever since. Mormons, too, voted for him in underwhelming numbers. Indeed, as the journalist Tim Carney notes in his new book Alienated America, Trump did best with the GOP primary voters who attended church the least.

So why is it that religious conservatives who voted so reluctantly for Trump — if they voted for him at all — now seem primed to do so in even greater numbers in 2020? Because for many of them, the alternative appears to be voting for late-term abortion and their own cultural marginalization.

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.