“Those men have never spoken for me or, frankly, anyone I know,” saidMs. Hatmaker, the author of popular inspirational Christian books.
.. The fault lines among evangelicals that the election of 2016 has exposed — among generations, ethnic groups and sexes — are likely to reshape national politics for years to come, conservative Christian leaders and analysts said last week in interviews.
.. To these pragmatic players, the election boiled down to only two issues, both that could be solved with Supreme Court appointments: stopping abortion and ensuring legal protections for religious conservatives who object to same-sex marriage.
.. “I do not think there’s any way to get evangelical women in any force to show up for Donald Trump at this point,” Mr. Moore said.
.. Several polls show that Mr. Trump is underperforming among evangelicals compared with previous Republican nominees, who commanded about 80 percent of the white evangelical vote. Mr. Trump received 65 percent to 70 percent of white evangelical support
.. “the millennial generation has a lot less patience for Trump.” Of the 33 influential millennial evangelicals she profiled for a cover story two years ago, she says she can now find only one, Lila Rose, who is pro-Trump, and even she has been publicly critical of him.
.. The student body president, Jack Heaphy, as well as some students interviewed on campus, defended Mr. Falwell and Mr. Trump.
.. “I believe the vast majority of students on campus will be voting for Mr. Trump on Nov. 8 — not because he’s the perfect candidate, but because his policies align most with the viewpoints of students,” Mr. Heaphy said.
.. “It’s inconceivable that someone could run an organization named the Family Research Council and support a man like Donald Trump for president,” said Matthew Lee Anderson, 34, the author of several books and the blog Mere Orthodoxy.
James Buchanan: Worst. President. Ever.
People are debating who will be more disastrous for the country, Trump or Clinton. But James Buchanan takes the cake.
.. But Obama and Bush can both take heart. And Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton can gain solace, perhaps, from knowing that no matter how badly they do, they almost certainly won’t rank last.
.. things were going well for the country, at least in an economic sense. There had been a bad downturn 20 years before, with multiple causes, like war in Europe, the dissolution of the Bank of the United States, and overspeculation in, oddly enough, slaves and Western land. The great acquisition of land under President James Knox Polk, from Oregon to California to Texas, reinvigorated the economy, and a boom lasted for the next two decades.
.. Buchanan wanted to be a hero, and thought if the case could be decided broadly, it could settle the question of slavery in the Union for good.
.. Taney castigated Scott, whom he said was not a citizen, being a slave, and thus could not bring any suit. He also wrote that the Constitution gave no state or territory the power to institute or, conversely, prohibit slavery. Thus all the compromises about it, going back to the 1820s, were invalid, and, in fact, the Fugitive Slave Law, requiring anyone who knew about it to return slaves to their owners anywhere in the country, was in force.
.. the decision at the time, there was a practical downside, too. Now no one knew whether he or she wanted to go West, to use the railroads, or to start a business that railroads might profit from. Railroad stocks started to decline in value, and then a contagion hit, and it was free fall.
.. Yet the South did not succumb as badly. Its agrarian culture was self-sustaining, and its cotton still had a market in Europe. There was a surge in arms sales there as well
.. He said too many people had speculated in land and slaves and the like and “deserved the gambler’s fate.” Eventually, he noted, the youth and energy of the rugged American individuals would triumph, though there would clearly be an interim of rough times.
.. exacerbating the killings, some done by the wild-eyed anti-slavery radical John Brown.
.. He supported mercenary William Walker’s forays to conquer Nicaragua and Guatemala, and sent troops to try to annex parts of Paraguay, primarily to acquiesce to his Southern base that wanted more slave states to come into the union.
.. A standoff ensued until Buchanan sent troops otherwise guarding Kansas, where there was a real problem, out to calm the nonfatal—except to one pig—battle.
.. Lincoln no doubt was a man with plans and savvy, but I contend that the bar was set so low by his predecessor that maybe if there were no James Buchanan, the “Worst. President. Ever,” there would have been a few notches more on the presidential-rating scale for Abe Lincoln to climb.
Hillary Clinton’s Moral Conflicts on Abortion
For the most part, Clinton’s stance matches the official stance of the United Methodist Church, or UMC—the tradition in which she was raised and remains a faithful member. Clinton, who calls herself an “old-fashioned Methodist,” told a Newsweek interviewer in 1994 that abortion is morally wrong. One of her biographers, Paul Kengor, notes that she has turned to the UMC’s Book of Resolutionswhen she has wanted help reaching a decision or when grappling with a moral question.
.. This may explain Clinton’s recent comments on NBC’s “Meet the Press” during which, to the dismay of many pro-choicers, she described the fetus as an “unborn person.” She has also declared her support of some “late-pregnancy” restrictions that would go into effect perhaps as soon as the “unborn person” is viable, except in cases of rape or incest or when the life or mental or physical health of the mother is at risk.
.. Based on his reading of scripture, he concluded that not until God “breathes life” into a body does “personhood” start. Human life, then, begins at birth with the first breath, he said; while abortion may be morally suspect, it does not qualify as murder.
.. “almost half of unwanted pregnancies end in abortion.”
.. For Clinton and the UMC, the primary concern is to ensure the safety of women who, regardless of their reasons, opt for abortion.
.. In the 1930s, illegal abortions accounted for 14 percent of maternal deaths in the U.S.
.. Cathy Lynn Grossman, based on interviews with people close to her, calls Clinton a “Social Gospel Methodist to the core.” Clinton often says she cherishes the UMC for its call to social justice and is particularly inspired by the teachings of Methodism’s founder, John Wesley: “Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.”
Liberalism’s Big Bet
As a gesture, it was immensely powerful. Anyone who came of age with Ronald Reagan found more to recognize in the Democratic Party’s rhetoric last week than in Donald Trump’s self-aggrandizing George Wallace imitation.
.. Yes, the convention’s showmanship was strikingly unifying, bipartisan, moderate — but Hillary Clinton’s domestic agenda is not. She’s running as a liberal, full stop, with a platform well to the left of where her party stood five or 10 or 20 years ago.
.. But on social issues, Clinton and her party aren’t even offering the fig leaf of her husband’s “safe, legal and rare” formulation.
.. But the absence of outreach is still notable, especially in a campaign that the Democrats are casting as a kind of national emergency.