Practice may not make perfect for Donald Trump but the Republican nominee has clearly refined his appeal to evangelical voters in the past year.
One year after Trump was booed at the conservative Values Voters Summit for calling Marco Rubio “a clown”, the Republican nominee gave a more polished speech where he ignored politically divisive issues like abortion and same-sex marriage and instead focused on school vouchers and changing federal law to allow tax exempt churches to engage in political advocacy.
For Trump, school choice, which he advocated in a speech on Thursday, was a needed innovation. “The education can’t get worse,” he said while also pledging to “campaign to get the states to reallocate another $110bn of their education budgets to school choice programs”.
Speaking from teleprompters, it served as a pointed contrast to his speech a year ago which seemed to focus on the importance of saying “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays”.
This year, Trump was still not a natural in front of a crowd of ardent social conservatives, even once referring to attendees as “you people”. Trump also railed against the Obama administration for not admitting Christian refugees from Syria into the United States, a major cause of concern for evangelicals Christians who have long advocated for minority Christian communities in the Middle East. Not mentioned was Trump’s own refugee policy, which would be a blanket ban on anyone from the region entering the United States.
Trump did seem to recognize that no one would mistake him for a devout evangelical. At one point in the speech he joked that his support for repealing the Johnson amendment, which would allow churches to engage in partisan politics while keeping their tax-exempt status, was the only way he could get into heaven. But the biggest applause was not for Trump himself but for when he proclaimed: “Hillary Clinton is unfit to be president.” The room exploded in applause and one attendee could be seen waving his tricorne hat in support.
The Values Voter Summit is sponsored by the Family Research Council and has a constellation of conservative groups represented. Even the far-right John Birch Society had a table in the group’s exhibition hall.
But Trump’s performance seemed to ease the concerns of attendees who represented some of the most ardent cultural warriors in the party, a group that has long been uncomfortable with the party’s nominee, and preferred other candidates like Ted Cruz during the primary.
Dylan Miller, a rising community college freshman from north-west Florida said the speech changed his mind about Trump.
“He doesn’t seem maniacal”, the teenager said, contrasting Friday’s speech to the Republican nominee’s frequent televised performances. Miller had said he had always planned on voting for Trump “because he wasn’t Hillary” but Trump’s performance made him feel far more comfortable with his vote.
Another attendee, Sarah Ocker, a student at Tulsa Community College in Oklahoma, said she was closer to voting for Trump after his speech. She said that she “agreed with a lot” of what Trump said, particularly about “religious liberty”. But Ocker still had major hesitations about Trump and couldn’t commit to voting for him, although she was “hoping” she could find a reason to do soby November.
Vernon Lewis of Marshall, Texas, was further along in the process.
Lewis had once thought he would have to hold his nose to vote for Trump, but after Trump granted him and other Christians a private meeting in New York, as well as seeing his speech on Friday, Lewis said he was enthusiastic.
“He is a very gentle guy.”
