Trump Splits the Evangelicals

A fissure has opened wide among South Carolina evangelicals, the Greenville News reports.

“The cracks began to open in 2012 when a twice-divorced Newt Gingrich won South Carolina, but it’s been ripped wide open by a twice-divorced Trump. As candidates court the roughly 65 percent of GOP voters in the state who count themselves as evangelicals, many of those voters are looking beyond faith to choose their candidate.”

Evangelicals “are split into two camps and the divide has grown… Trump, and to a lesser extent Cruz, have tapped into the ‘populist evangelicals,’ those working-class folks who listen to conservative talk radio, are drawn to mass rallies and hold the idea that motivating great masses of people is the way to achieve political influence… Rubio has garnered the support of the bulk of the GOP evangelical power brokers… ‘cosmopolitan evangelicals,’ the strategy-minded, highly educated evangelicals who are reliant on their connections.”