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Dear Christian leaders:
This weekend, many of you will gather together to assess the 2016 election and revel in the outcome. Congratulations, you earned it.
Though not every Christian leader backed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, most of you did. And if you look at the results, it’s clear he would not be president-elect if it weren’t for the vote of the faithful.
Trump won Catholic voters — a true swing group — by a whopping seven points. That’s the best margin for a GOP presidential candidate since Reagan won them by nine in his historic 1984 landslide. Furthermore, by the time the final numbers come in, we may also discover Trump received the most support ever from white evangelicals.
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That gives you something you haven’t truly had in the political realm since you played a vital role in re-electing George W. Bush in 2004: leverage.
Politics is not a game of access. It is a game of leverage, and leverage is a must when you’re dealing with a strong man like Donald Trump. The Republican Party was poised to jettison you once and for all to the kiddy table prior to this election, but now you have leverage. You did far more to help Trump win than anyone other than Trump himself.
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And you need to have this list accomplished by the end of 2017 because expectations are high, and you’re still dealing with a man of questionable character. So the longer you let him off the hook, the more likely he slithers away. When you’re doing business with people of a shady reputation, you always make them pay up front.
If I may be so bold, you want – at a minimum – the following:
– Something that really draws blood from Planned Parenthood and not a token, exception-filled abortion restriction bill that really won’t save any babies. Something like a full, permanent defund that hits it in the wallet where it hurts most. And do to it what Scott Walker did to the mobocracy in Wisconsin when he defunded that.
And you want it both in the budget and a continuing resolution should the budgets be deadlocked. Enough with allowing one of the Democrats’ biggest sugar daddies being subsidized by taxpayers. And you want President Trump to publicly urge GOP state legislatures across the country to follow his lead. Use the bully pulpit!
– You want the next Antonin Scalia — and that’s not William Pryor, who went after Judge Roy Moore in the Bush years. He’s more like the next John Roberts. The next Scalia, who can sit there for 25 years and be a rock, is Ted Cruz, R-Texas (A, 97%) (whom I’m sure senators would line up to confirm just to get rid of him) or Mike Lee, R-Utah (A, 100%).
– You want a culture warrior as attorney general to undo the damage done by Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch — another position Cruz would be perfect for. And no, progressive Rudy Giuliani isn’t what we’re looking for.
– You want every Obama imposition on religious freedom or promotion of trans-nonsense via executive order rescinded.
– You want an executive order declaring the federal government will not seek to punish believers who disagree with immorality — including in the military — in addition to the repeal of the Johnson Amendment.
– You want a speech/op-ed from President Trump using his bully pulpit to say the “era of going after people’s livelihood for their private religious beliefs in America is over. I’m a capitalist and believe in freedom, which made America great, and this represents neither. We respect one another’s differences. That’s true tolerance.” Use that bully pulpit to reset the culture.
– Again, because culture trumps politics, you want a commission on the protection of the American family. A true look at what happens to a society that gives up on the traditional family unit, gender roles, fatherhood, etc. On the record. In detail. Something we can use to share with the nation in the years ahead.
– You want President Trump to mobilize state Republican parties to encourage/pressure all these GOP state legislatures to start reasserting federalism on cultural issues as a checks and balance on cultural transformation via fiat from the Left.
Once more, these are just suggestions, and I’m sure you have even better ones. I’m offering these to at least get the conversation started.
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- Discussion
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Why Christian leaders must act now to use the leverage they have with @realDonaldTrump. My latest for @CR https://t.co/jxNzQ9BmYN
— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) November 14, 2016
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