Free Republic

Influential Iowa evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the 2024 Republican primary race last week, and former President Donald Trump wasn’t happy. Vander Platts, who reportedly voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020, responded equally fiercely on X, formerly Twitter. In one post, Vander Plaats said Iowa “will exhibit higher standards when they choose @RonDeSantis over a Chump.” Just returned from an Iowa stronghold for @realDonaldTrump Person to Person told me they are done with him. While they long to leave the topic of ‘golden showers’ and return to the discussion of gold standards,The final...

The history of evangelicalism in America is shot through with fear—but it also contains an alternative. White conservative evangelicals in America are anxious people. I know because I am one. Our sense of fear, perhaps more than any other factor, explains why evangelicals voted in such large numbers for Donald Trump in 2016 and continue to support his presidency. The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson once wrote, “Fear is not a Christian habit of mind.” The great poet of the Jersey shore, Bruce Springsteen, sings, “Fear’s a dangerous thing. It can turn your heart black you can trust....

I know a televangelist candidate when I see one. To hear the pundits and experts in Washington tell it, the problem with Ted Cruz is that he doesn't play well with others in the Senate, he's too hardheaded and doesn't compromise. In other words, he's exactly what the Republican primary voters want. On this score, I side with the Republican primary voters. If Cruz's problem is that he is a conservative who has no regard for senatorial decorum and fights too hard for the right things, I'm all in. But there is a far bigger problem with Cruz: Donald Trump...