2016.03.22 特朗普在盐湖城

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How Donald Trump Could End the Republican Lock on the Mormon Vote
The GOP front-runner's rhetoric may cost him support in Tuesday’s Utah caucuses, and spell trouble for the party in November.

By Jack Jenkins

Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Salt Lake City on March 18. (John Locher / AP)
MARCH 22, 2016
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Utah voters head to caucus sites across the state on Tuesday, where polls show the overwhelmingly Mormon electorate is expected to hand Republican front-runner Donald Trump a resounding defeat. Given Trump’s surprising success at courting evangelicals, some may be puzzled as to why Mormon voters—long thought to be a key component of the Religious Right—would reject Trump's charms. But for many Utahans, the businessman’s attacks on other religious groups, while popular with some, hedge uncomfortably close to the Mormon faith’s own troubled past.

Mormons—like modern-day Muslims—have a long history of being rejected by their fellow Americans because of their beliefs. Throughout the 19th century, followers of Joseph Smith were repeatedly expelled from lands by people who saw them as strange, foreign invaders, with some opponents even declaring them non-white. Angry, anti-Mormon mobs eventually murdered Smith during his short-lived campaign for president, and longstanding tensions between his flock and the U.S. government led to violent clashes and short-lived wars in pockets of the American West. So intense was the American rejection of Mormonism that the U.S. secretary of state once recommended that President Rutherford B. Hayes act to limit Mormon immigration into the country, a moment Utah Governor Gary Herbert saw as eerily reminiscent of Trump’s call to ban all Muslims from entering the United States last December.

“Utah exists today because foreign countries refused to grant the wishes of a misguided president and his secretary of state,” Herbert wrote in a Facebook post responding to Trump’s proposal. “I am the governor of a state that was settled by religious exiles who withstood persecution after persecution, including an extermination order from another state's governor. In Utah, the First Amendment still matters. That will not change so long as I remain governor.”

Trump, for his part, has tried harder to appeal to Mormon sensibilities since invoking his Muslim ban, launching a series of attacks on opponents that cast them as somehow un-Mormon. Last Friday, the Republican front-runner tweeted disparaging remarks about Senator Ted Cruz. Trump, who claims to be Presbyterian, said Cruz “should not be allowed to win” Tuesday’s Utah caucus because his views are out-of-step with the roughly 60 percent of the state’s population that identifies as Mormon.

“Mormons don't like LIARS!” Trump tweeted.

Hours later, Trump questioned the Mormon piety of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and two-time GOP presidential candidate who also happens to be a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). Romney, who won a whopping 93 percent of the vote in the 2012 Utah caucus, came out against Trump early March, calling him “a phony, a fraud.”

“Do I love the Mormons? I have many friends that live in Salt Lake City—and by the way, Mitt Romney is not one of them,” Trump told the crowd at a rally. “Are you sure he's a Mormon? Are we sure?”

Trump later claimed he was joking, insisting his point was that Mormons are “a very smart people” who should ignore Romney and back him in the Utah caucus, where 40 coveted delegates are at stake. But The Donald’s famously unshakable confidence—which has won him scores of evangelical Christian voters across the country—belies his consistently dismal support among Mormons. In fact, Mormon views of Trump are so toxic that he runs the risk of damaging the GOP’s longstanding lock on LDS members, who currently constitute the most reliably Republican religious group in the United States.

Trump, for instance, drew 11 percent support in the Beehive State in one recent poll—a distant third behind Senator Ted Cruz (53 percent) and Ohio Governor John Kasich (29 percent). And as BuzzFeed’s McKay Coppins points out, Trump has noticeably struggled to accrue Mormon votes throughout the 2016 election season, losing heavily Mormon counties during the primaries in Idaho and Wyoming—states where he placed second and third overall, respectively. In Oneida County in southeastern Idaho, where roughly 3 out of 4 voters are Mormon, Trump won just 17.8 percent of the vote, whereas Cruz walked away with 59.9 percent.

So what explains Mormon distaste for Trump? Some of it could be cultural, such as how Trump’s proclivity for insults and foul language contrasts sharply with the LDS church’s formal opposition to “any type of unclean or vulgar speech or behavior.” Some of it could be demographics; According to The New York Times, whites without high school diplomas are particularly likely to back Trump, but Mormons are significantly more likely than the general population to have at least some college-level schooling, with only 9 percent claiming less than a high-school education.

But anti-Trump sentiment among LDS members likely cuts deeper than curse words or educational achievement, and eventually circles back to acute disagreements over Trump’s notoriously hard-edged policy agenda—especially his inflammatory statements regarding undocumented immigrants. Trump continues to win praise—and votes—from his anti-immigrant base for proposing to deport all of 11.3 million immigrants in the United States, and drew cheers when he referred to people who travel across the U.S.-Mexico border as “rapists” and “criminals” during his speech announcing his campaign for president last year.

According to data from the Public Religion Research Institute, Mormons don't share Trump’s apparent disdain for migrants, with 45 percent saying that immigrants strengthen American society, compared to only 36 percent of Republicans who say the same. Utah Mormons in particular favor providing undocumented immigrants with a pathway to citizenship if they meet certain requirements, with 68 percent percent supporting the measure compared to 57 percent of Republicans generally.

And while Trump’s proposal to ban Syrian refugees and Muslims altogether from entering the country enjoys broad support among most GOP voters, repeated calls to exclude an entire religious group continue to trigger the exact opposite reaction in Mormon circles. When Trump announced his anti-Muslim proposal last year, the LDS Church issued a declaration implicitly condemning the idea—its first and only public statement regarding the 2016 election thus far.

“The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is neutral in regard to party politics and election campaigns,” the statement, which also included a quote from LDS founder Joseph Smith championing religious freedom, read. “However, it is not neutral in relation to religious freedom.”

Political leaders in the state have embraced that message. Utah’s Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox didn’t mince words when discussing Trump’s attack on Mitt Romney’s faith, describing the former governor as “a great Mormon” and dismissing Trump’s comments as “[something I] never thought I would see a candidate for president do and say, especially someone in the Republican Party.” He also retweeted a message from Senator Orrin Hatch’s press secretary.

“Not sure how any Mormon could support Trump. As far as threats to religious liberty, Obamacare has NOTHING on him. #NeverTrump,” the tweet read.

Nominating Trump, it seems, could cost Republicans their longstanding support from Mormon voters: A Deseret News/KSL poll released over the weekend found that if he becomes the GOP nominee, many Utah voters plan either to stay home or switch parties, meaning the state could end up supporting a Democratic presidential candidate—either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders—for the first time in more than 50 years. In the meantime, some are even calling on Mormons to be the driving force to deny Trump the GOP nomination.

Trump may be right that Mormons don’t like liars. But they also don’t like people who bash immigrants, or those who discriminate on the basis of religion.

And if the polls are any indication, they definitely don’t like Trump.

Jack Jenkins is a reporter at ThinkProgress.



唐纳德-特朗普如何结束共和党对摩门教徒选票的锁定
这位共和党领跑者的言论可能会使他在周二的犹他州党团会议上失去支持，并在11月给该党带来麻烦。

作者：杰克-詹金斯

3月18日，唐纳德-特朗普在盐湖城的一次竞选集会上发言。(John Locher / AP)
2016年3月22日

周二，犹他州的选民将前往该州的核心会场，民意调查显示，绝大多数的摩门教徒选民预计将让共和党的领跑者唐纳德-特朗普大败而归。鉴于特朗普在讨好福音派方面取得了令人惊讶的成功，一些人可能会对摩门教选民--长期以来被认为是宗教右派的一个重要组成部分--拒绝特朗普的魅力感到疑惑。但对许多犹他人来说，这位商人对其他宗教团体的攻击，虽然受到一些人的欢迎，但与摩门教信仰本身的混乱历史对冲得令人不安。

摩门教徒与现代的穆斯林一样，有着因其信仰而被美国同胞拒绝的悠久历史。在整个19世纪，约瑟夫-斯密的追随者多次被视为陌生的外国入侵者而被逐出土地，一些反对者甚至宣布他们是非白人。愤怒的反摩门教暴徒最终在斯密短暂的总统竞选中被杀害，他的教众与美国政府之间长期存在的紧张关系导致美国西部一些地区发生暴力冲突和短暂的战争。美国对摩门教的排斥如此强烈，以至于美国国务卿曾经建议卢瑟福-海斯总统采取行动，限制摩门教移民进入美国，犹他州州长加里-赫伯特认为这一时刻让人不禁想起去年12月特朗普呼吁禁止所有穆斯林进入美国。

"犹他州之所以有今天，是因为外国拒绝满足一个误入歧途的总统和他的国务卿的愿望，"赫伯特在脸书上回应特朗普的提议时写道。"我是一个由宗教流亡者定居的州的州长，他们经受住了一次又一次的迫害，包括另一个州的州长的灭绝令。在犹他州，第一修正案仍然重要。只要我继续担任州长，这一点就不会改变。"

就特朗普而言，自从引用他的穆斯林禁令以来，他更加努力地吸引摩门教徒的感情，对反对者发起了一系列攻击，把他们描绘成某种程度上的非摩门教徒。上周五，这位共和党领跑者在推特上发表了对参议员特德-克鲁兹的轻蔑言论。自称是长老会成员的特朗普说，克鲁兹 "不应该被允许赢得 "周二的犹他州核心小组会议，因为他的观点与该州约60%的人口认同为摩门教徒的观点不一致。

"摩门教徒不喜欢说谎者！" 特朗普在推特上说。

几个小时后，特朗普质疑米特-罗姆尼的摩门教虔诚度，这位前马萨诸塞州州长和两届美国共和党总统候选人恰好也是耶稣基督后期圣徒教会（LDS）的虔诚成员。罗姆尼在2012年犹他州的党团会议上赢得了高达93%的选票，他在3月初站出来反对特朗普，称他是 "一个假货，一个骗子。"

"我爱摩门教徒吗？我有很多朋友住在盐湖城--顺便说一下，米特-罗姆尼不是其中之一，"特朗普在一次集会上对人群说。"你确定他是摩门教徒吗？我们确定吗？"

特朗普后来声称他是在开玩笑，坚持认为他的观点是，摩门教徒是 "非常聪明的人"，他们应该忽略罗姆尼，在犹他州的核心会议上支持他，那里有40个令人垂涎的代表。但是，唐纳德出了名的不可动摇的信心--这为他赢得了全国各地数十名基督教福音派选民的支持--与他在摩门教徒中一贯令人沮丧的支持率相矛盾。事实上，摩门教徒对特朗普的看法是如此之毒，以至于他有可能破坏共和党对LDS成员的长期锁定，而LDS成员目前是美国最稳定的共和党宗教团体。

例如，在最近的一次民意调查中，特朗普在蜂巢之国获得了11%的支持率，远远落后于参议员特德-克鲁兹（53%）和俄亥俄州州长约翰-卡西奇（29%）。正如BuzzFeed的McKay Coppins所指出的，特朗普在整个2016年选举季中明显地努力积累摩门教徒的选票，在爱达荷州和怀俄明州的初选中失去了摩门教徒占多数的县，他在这两个州的总排名分别是第二和第三。在爱达荷州东南部的奥尼达县，大约每4个选民中就有3个是摩门教徒，特朗普只赢得了17.8%的选票，而克鲁兹获得了59.9%的选票。

那么，摩门教徒对特朗普的厌恶是什么原因呢？其中一些可能是文化因素，比如特朗普喜欢侮辱和粗俗的语言，这与LDS教会正式反对 "任何类型的不洁或粗俗言论或行为 "形成鲜明对比。部分原因可能是人口统计学；根据《纽约时报》的报道，没有高中文凭的白人特别有可能支持特朗普，但摩门教徒比一般人更有可能至少拥有一些大学水平的学校教育，只有9%的人声称自己的教育水平低于高中。

但是，LDS成员中的反特朗普情绪可能比骂人的话或教育成就更深，并最终回到对特朗普众所周知的强硬政策议程的严重分歧，特别是他关于无证移民的煽动性声明。特朗普提议将美国境内的1130万移民全部驱逐出境，并在去年宣布竞选总统的演讲中把穿越美墨边境的人称为 "强奸犯 "和 "罪犯"，从而继续赢得他的反移民基础的赞誉和选票。

根据公共宗教研究所的数据，摩门教徒并不认同特朗普对移民的明显蔑视，45%的人认为移民能加强美国社会，而只有36%的共和党人持相同看法。犹他州的摩门教徒特别赞成为符合某些要求的无证移民提供入籍途径，68%的人支持这一措施，而共和党人中只有57%的人支持这一措施。

虽然特朗普禁止叙利亚难民和穆斯林进入美国的提议在大多数共和党选民中得到广泛支持，但一再呼吁将整个宗教群体排除在外的做法在摩门教徒圈子里继续引发完全相反的反应。当特朗普去年宣布他的反穆斯林提案时，LDS教会发表了一份声明，含蓄地谴责了这一想法--这是LDS教会迄今为止关于2016年选举的第一个也是唯一一个公开声明。

"耶稣基督末世圣徒教会在政党政治和选举活动方面是中立的，"声明中还引用了LDS创始人约瑟夫-斯密倡导宗教自由的一段话，写道。"但是，在宗教自由方面，它不是中立的。"

该州的政治领导人已经接受了这一信息。犹他州副州长斯宾塞-考克斯在讨论特朗普对米特-罗姆尼的信仰的攻击时毫不吝啬，将这位前州长描述为 "伟大的摩门教徒"，并将特朗普的言论斥为"[我]从未想过我会看到一位总统候选人会这么做和这么说，尤其是共和党的人。" 他还转发了参议员奥林-哈奇的新闻秘书的消息。

"不知道任何摩门教徒怎么会支持特朗普。就对宗教自由的威胁而言，奥巴马医改对他毫无影响。#NeverTrump，"该推文写道。

看来，提名特朗普可能会使共和党人失去来自摩门教徒选民的长期支持。上周末发布的Deseret News/KSL民意调查发现，如果他成为共和党提名人，许多犹他州的选民计划要么留在家里，要么换党，这意味着该州可能最终支持民主党总统候选人--希拉里-克林顿或伯尼-桑德斯，这是50多年来的第一次。与此同时，一些人甚至呼吁摩门教徒成为拒绝特朗普获得共和党提名的推动力。

特朗普可能是对的，摩门教徒不喜欢说谎者。但他们也不喜欢那些抨击移民的人，或者那些基于宗教的歧视。

如果民意调查有任何迹象，他们肯定不喜欢特朗普。

杰克-詹金斯是ThinkProgress的一名记者。