HAS IT REALLY BECOME A TWO-MAN GOP RACE AFTER IOWA?

…Should we be more afraid of this man than Donald Trump?

 

There couldn’t be more of a difference in candidates than that of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

 

The one issue that has defined the difference between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz was how Cruz ended his meeting in a small town in Iowa.  Where Trump usually ends by his boasting and asking the crowd to keep his poll ratings up and repeating what he’s going to do to “Make America Great Again”, Senator Cruz uses a different approach.  To end his last get-together in Iowa of about 150 Iowans, Cruz used the bible quote of “Awaken the body of Christ that we might pull back from this abyss.”

 

To me, the difference between these two candidates, and their Iowa popularity, shows that the traditional conservative white evangelical Christians that usually are of one mind, are now divided.

 

It is obvious that Ted Cruz was counting on the traditional ideological souls of the conservative white evangelicals.  The conventional wisdom said that if he could not win or come in as a close second in Iowa, he may not have the momentum for going further in following primaries.

 

But in Iowa, with he and Trump continually trading the #1 position in the polls every other day, this tell me that some of these conservative evangelicals are using their support of Trump for showing their shared anger and resentment which is, pardon the pun, “trumping their normally devout faith”.

 

Could it be that the “abyss” that the Texas senator had quoted was his way of referring to Donald Trump…..or does it actually refer to something that is deeper in the souls of these devout Christians?

 

We are all aware of the famous line from the 1970’s movie, “NETWORK” where the character Howard Beale yells, “I’m mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”  Could it be that the support for Trump, by these Iowa Christians, is just their way of demonstrating their anger?  I mean their angst against the nation’s perceived attitude of being pro-abortion, same-sex-marriage, and the many things that seem to be against their feelings of religious liberty?

 

We all know how much of Trump’s campaign is targeted at the angry, low or middle-class Americans.  Was this group, that is usually all on the same page with their religious affiliations, being split by these two Republican candidates?

 

The reality of what went on in Iowa was demonstrated by some comments that have come directly from the Cruz team in Iowa.    As Cruz himself has been preaching, “If Trump is in the #1 position after the results of the Iowa Caucus, he could go all the way!”  Cruz is probably correct.  “If Trump could win in Iowa, he could probably win anywhere.”

 

To demonstrate how divided some of the traditional Iowa conservative evangelical Christians are, even the 8-term, Iowa governor, Terry Branstad, who was not endorsing any candidate, he had said that supporting Senator Cruz would be a bad move.

 

But on the other side, the anxiety over a possible Trump win by the older Christian political leaders, they have turned Cruz into a savior.

 

What has been interesting is the response by some of those that were sure that if Trump had won Iowa, he would go all the way to the White House.

 

One of these individuals was Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), not a Cruz supporter.  But he was seriously afraid of Trump and he made stopping Trump a personal cause.  That was especially since Trump has regularly campaigned saying “If I’m elected president, I’ll be able to do whatever I want. ”  Sasse himself has been critical of President Obama’s use of executive orders.  He is adamant that those restrictions should also apply to someone like a President Trump.

 

But is the story of the GOP campaign possibly coming down to Trump and Cruz?  One supporter of Mike Huckabee said the following: “I was in Camp Huckabee until last week, and I decided that if I voted for Huckabee, it would be a vote for Donald Trump. It’s now a two-man race.”

 

This issue has also hit another candidate, Marco Rubio, who took a strong third-place finish in Iowa.  He is now trying to strengthen his campaign in New Hampshire. Rubio was invoking God much more in his Iowa stump speeches and it obviously got some of the evangelical Christians to come his way.  Rubio is now getting much more support, so he may have a chance to make it a three-man race.

 

But the reality is that depending on who they support, groups that loathe or support either Trump or Ted Cruz are all in desperate prayers for their candidates.  Whichever side wins, the losing sides will be convinced that America is going to go to hell.

 

With that in mind, I guess who am I to tell an ideological, white, conservative, evangelical Christian that they are wrong?

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016