That they kept their noses shut and voted, in the hope that he would advance their policy priorities and achieve their goals.
But beneath all this there is another explanation. One that is raw and more fundamental.
Evangelicals support Mr. Trump regardless of who he is. They support him because of who he is, and because of who they are. He is their protector, the bully who is on their side, the one who offers security amidst their fears that their country as they know it, and their place there, is changing and changing rapidly. White straight married couples with children who regularly go to church are no longer the American mainstream. An entire way of life, one in which their values were dominant, could be on the verge of extinction. And Mr. Trump offered to restore them to power, as if they had not been in power all along.
“You’re always one generation away from losing Christianity,” said Micah Schouten, who grew up in Sioux Center, recalling something a former pastor once said. ‘If you do not teach it to your children, it will end. It stops right there. ”
Finally, Mr. Trump recognized something, said Lisa Burg, a longtime resident of the nearby Orange City. There’s a reason she thinks people will still support him in November.
‘The one group of people that people felt like they could dis and mock and mock was the Christian words. “Just the middle class, Central American Christians,” said Mrs. Burg. ‘That was the one group you left behind that you could just completely put up with and regret. And he admitted that, you know what? Yes, it is ok that we have our set values. I think people finally said, ‘Yeah, we finally have someone who’s ready to say we’m not bad, we need to have a voice too. ”
Declared Jason Mulder, who runs a small design business in Sioux Center: ‘I feel like on the coasts, in some of the cities and things, they look down on us in rural America. You know, we’re a bunch of hicks, and know nothing. They do not understand us the same way we do not understand them. That we do not want them to tell us how to live our lives. ”
He added: ‘You’re kidding we do not get it, well, you do not get it either. We do not speak the same language. ”
