Why did social conservatives hook up with Trump?

Unless a President Trump really did come through with a great Supreme Court pick, religious conservatives were arguably the Republican constituency least likely to be well-served by a Trump administration. During the primaries Trump indicated—unequivocally—that he is in favor of both gay marriage and the transgender project. Trump was also remarkably consistent in his view that First Amendment rights ought to be curtailed. So he was an unlikely champion for religious institutions and believers under assault from the effects of Obergefell, the Supreme Court ruling that enshrined same-sex marriage as a fundamental right.

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When it comes to abortion, notwithstanding his frequent support of Planned Parenthood, Trump may or may not have had a genuine conversion on the subject. But no reasonable assessment of his priorities would assume that abortion was an issue he would have been willing to expend political capital on as president.

In an election full of oddities, one of the foremost might be this: that the group that had the least in common with Trump, and had perhaps the least to gain from his election, will be the one damaged the most by him. Supporting Trump could very well do to religious conservatism what supporting Bill Clinton through his Monica travails did to feminism: expose it as a fully partisan and transparently hypocritical movement with no claim to moral authority.

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