The GOP needs more Mormons

Mormons aren’t angry. Yeah, that’s a sweeping generalization. But in comparative socioeconomic terms, it also happens to be true. Trump taps into and channels the anger of many white working-class voters who lack a college education and feel disadvantaged by the globalized economy and abandoned in communities lacking in basic social and communal support. Meanwhile, Mormons on the whole come in at or above the average on a range of indicators (education level, marriage rates, income level), and active members of the church take part in a thick web of social and religious practices that support and sustain fellow Latter-day Saints, very much including when they fall on hard times. Which means that in Trumpian terms, Mormons have less to be angry about than lots of other Americans.

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Mormons disapprove of Trump’s garish lifestyle. Plenty of conservatives claim to care about the character of those who seek the highest office in the land, but Latter-day Saints really mean it. They admire people like, well, Mitt Romney: clean cut, honest, morally upstanding, committed to charity, devoted to family. They prize modesty, even among the wealthy. Trump exemplifies none of these virtues. From his casinos and beauty pageants to his serial marriages and tendency to brag about his all-around wonderfulness, Trump is a case study in how the vices of gluttony and pride can grotesquely disfigure a life. That in itself would be enough to inspire skepticism about his candidacy in Mormon-heavy precincts of the intermountain west.

Mormons dislike vulgarity. I suspect that Trump definitively lost the LDS vote the moment he declared, “Ted Cruz is a p-ssy.” That kind of language is simply unacceptable in Mormon circles — and many church members would certainly consider it to be beneath the dignity of anyone running for the presidency.

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