Inside the Trump campaign's plan to re-energize evangelicals

[DonViejo]

Alayna Treene14 hours ago| updated 10 hours ago

President Trump’s re-election campaign is developing an aggressive, state-by-state plan to mobilize even more evangelical voters than supported him last time, campaign officials tell Axios.

Why it matters: Trump captured 81% of the evangelical vote in 2016, a huge accomplishment considering they make up roughly a quarter of the electorate and play a prominent role in swing states like Florida.

According to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center, more than two-thirds of white evangelicals still support Trump, along with almost half of white Catholics and white mainline Protestants.

The goal: Paint Trump as a champion of socially conservative issues and warn evangelical voters that his defeat could destroy the progress he's made.

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https://www.axios.com/trump-campaign-plan-energize-evangelicals-2020-2f8f08cc-14ab-404d-9a61-d339153c3ce9.html

[hedda_foil]

1. They have a strategy to register a million new evangelical voters.

Final paragraph of the article:

The bottom line: "Getting this right and making sure we're maximizing their energy is huge," said Ralph Reed, a longtime Trump ally and head of the Faith & Freedom Coalition. Reed's group pledged this week to spend $50 million on get-out-the-vote efforts and register approximately 1 million new evangelical voters in battleground states.

[bobbieinok]

2. Sure hope dem biggies are finally paying attn to the danger posed by Evangelicals!

[Initech]

3. Right wing evangelicals are the reason we're in this mess. They do not need re-energizing.

And they can and should go fuck themselves for this piece of shit administration.

[Bayard]

4. Time for billboards everywhere

With words like, Rapist, and Traitor, overlying his smirking face.

Also--did anyone else notice all the nasty rethug ads running during the debates?

[Crunchy Frog]

9. Yes. Disgusting.

[shanti]

5. "destroy the progress he has made?"

Right, like the Supreme Court picks? How, pray tell, is that destroyed?? The damage has been done! They just don't want it stopped.

[karynnj]

6. This is also what the Republicans did in 2004 -- mostly by anti LGBT resolutions on ballots

This caused a huge wave of evangelical voters. That is why even though the Kerry campaign exceeded all of their district level targets in swing states and got more than 8 million more votes than Gore did 4 years before. (Gore got around 50.5 million to put this in context.)

There is another possible parallel here. In 2016, like 2000, many people on both sides were not sufficiently motivated to vote. In 2004, BOTH sides were energized. The Kerry team obviously knew that their voters were coming out - as they were. However, the Republicans also greatly exceeded THEIR 2000 turn out - by around 12 million.

We KNOW that our side is motivated and will very likely exceed all previous totals. The scary takeout from 2004 is that Republicans will likely use white nationalism and bigotry to bring out their base too.

[VOX]

7. I anticipate that the 2020 election will attain a new, higher level of weirdness.

Trump and his lieutenants will be utterly insufferable, and they’ll be playing dirtier than ever. They will do/say *anything* to stay in power. Russian interference will be a significant factor. The likelihood of violence, by mobs or loners, will increase as the Trumpists’ rhetoric grows increasingly insane.

Sadly, this not a difficult prediction. You can practically see it coming.

[Crunchy Frog]

8. They've basically become an army of RW zombies.

It's like a quarter of our country belongs to a deranged, brainwashed cult.