Roundtable Media Group

Ben Carson’s endorsement of Donald Trump is the personification of the false choice Evangelicals are presented with. We endorse the lesser of two evils, because we hate the alternative, but we never get around to calling the lesser evil, evil.

Where do we go first:

First: Thank those who have downloaded.

Second: Prayers for Marty’s wife.

Campaign update:

• Record on Mondays…so we are recording before this happens, and it will post after…talk about having to think 4^th
  • Ohio, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, and Missouri,
  • Somewhat funny that these votes are being conducted on the “Ides of March”
  • GOP side, here’s what matters:
    • Trump wins both Ohio and Florida, he will get the delegates to win before the convention
    • Trump wins Florida by not Ohio (based on polling, this is the most likely). I still say that it 50/50 on whether it goes to the convention
    • Trump wins neither: It goes to the convention
  • By the time this posts, I expect that Rubio will have dropped out.
    • I also wouldn’t be surprised if Kasich dropped out, although I believe that if the Cruz/Rubio campaigns wanted to stop Trump, they’d rally around Kasich, because the map looks better for him than Cruz.
  • No matter what happens, the GOP will be in trouble.
    • Events of the weekend will galvanize Trump’s base, but drive away anybody else already not on board.
    • For every vote that Trump gets, it will cost him at least 3 votes in the general
    • More and more people within the Republican party are coming out and saying that they will not support Trump under any circumstances.
      • Rubio came out and said “it’s getting harder to honor the commitment to support Trump, assuming he is the eventual nominee.”
    • Democrats:
      • Hillary will be the nominee…the flawed, flawed nominee

Carson’s Trump Endorsement

• How can he betray his principals by supporting a man who has none?
• Campolo: Ice Cream and Manure quote.
• Personification of what has been happening between Jesus people and politics since Falwell
  • Scariest moment of the last 40 years: Falwell giving speech at Liberty and comes out to “Hail to the Chief”
    • Demonstrated that the siren song of power had become too much to resist
  • Thought is that we will choose to support the lesser of two evils.
    • For evangelicals, that boils down to Gay Marriage and Abortion. Little has been done to mitigate against either…and in some cases, the work of the GOP has exacerbated.
      • Abortion Trends since Reagan
        • Peaked under Reagan/1 term Bush
        • Fell under Clinton
        • Fall plateaued under Bush
        • Fell continued under Obama
          • This is not to make a complete Post Hoc argument, but the trends are worth considering.
        • Wallis quote from God’s Politics
          • (Try to Find it)
        • Ben Carson’s endorsement of Donald Trump is the personification of the false choice Evangelicals are presented with. We endorse the lesser of two evils, because we hate the alternative, but we never get around to calling the lesser evil, evil. Attaching ourselves to the power structure with some hopes to change it from the inside, we lose sight of the fact that it is not our influence that is affecting the politic, the politic captivates our attention. Because if power wants anything, it is the sustaining and acquisition of more power. We say that “we’re going to change the system from the inside”, but never get around to it, because the growing black hole of the next election cycle beckons.
          • Case and point. Many of the current candidates have been campaigning for a year. And we still have 8 months to go until November. If we are in constant campaign mode, there is no opportunity to govern.
        • Why does this matter:
          • Because too many times we base the spiritual health of our country by who is in the oval office.
            • 2008, when Obama was elected, you and I saw too many people lament it.
            • So here is my question, what are those people going to do when Trump is the nominee? Will they continue with the “lesser of two evils argument”
            • My prediction: there is a growing number of Jesus people who recognize that the GOP is not the sole representative of Christendom. You’ll see more moderate and even liberal Christians become more vocal about their desire to see a better politic.
            • Moreover, you’ll see the church wake up to the realization that our responsibility as Christians does not trickle down from the Oval.
              • If we want the moral and cultural climate of our country to change…it won’t be because of politics. Politics is good to be engaged in, but it serves as a terrible end goal.
                • And in a funny way, the politic that doesn’t try to claim to have the monopoly on God’s favor is exactly the politic that the framers had in mind.
              • If you are a Jesus person, I want you to go to your pastor and ask two questions:
                • How is our church ministering to the least of these?
                • How can I help?

Chicago Trump Riot:

• The protestors themselves?
  • Justified? Beyond the pale?
• Trump
  • Any Responsibility?
    • Trump’s assertion that his 1^st amendment rights had been violated…demonstrates a poor understanding of the first amendment
      • It is not the police, Obama, the DOJ, or governmental agency interrupting his events.
      • These are private events. Trump is free to exclude whomever he pleases.
        • Previous events had significant scrutiny on whom they let it. The Chicago event did not have any.
      • Trump usually kept his events to the suburbs. This was in the middle of downtown…on a college campus…in a diverse state…that has a history of activism and tension.
    • Trump’s rhetoric from the podium:
      • “I’d like to knock the hell out of them”
      • “In the ‘good ole days’, these guys would leave the building on a stretcher”
      • “If you happen to ‘rough a protestor up’, I’ll take care of your legal bills, believe me.”
      • General dehumanizing of people. When you make someone less of a human (ban all Muslims, Mexicans are rapists and murderers, these protestors are bad people, not the people we need, not the people who made America Great), it is then easier to treat them like less of human beings.
      • Trumps campaign compares favorably to that of George Wallace.
    • Response from Paul Ryan:
      • “The candidates need to take responsibility for the environment at their events. There is never an excuse for condoning violence, or even a culture that presupposes it.”
        • Translation: “Hey Trump, nobody to blame for this, but you!”
        • Once again, for a sitting Speaker of the House to publicly admonish his current front runner is stunning. This doesn’t happen.
      • Chicago/UIC police
        • Did not advise the candidate to cancel the rally.
        • Came out almost immediately and said that the campaign is responsible for the cancelling of the rally
        • Directly contradicts what the Trump campaign inferred. The only out is if Trump consulted with private security and secret service, and not local law enforcement.
          • That is the Trump way…tell enough of the truth that it makes it plausible.
        • 1964 LBJ/Goldwater ad.
          • 1964, Goldwater only won 6 states. LBJ won 61% of the popular vote.
          • I think lots of our Republican friends are saying that either the I left the Republican party, or the Republican party left me.
        • Trump doubled down during the Sunday shows:
          • “I don’t condone violence at my rallies, but if a protestor flips you off, you have every right to sucker punch that person, and I’ll pay for your legal fees” MPT, 3/13/16
        • Why it matters:
          • Relates to Carson. We relate our identity often with our politics, when as Jesus people our identity is in Christ.
          • Because of the relationship between the GOP and evangelicals have had since the 80’s, (and currently have in the form of Falwell Jr. and Robert Jeffress, and at times Franklin Graham) there is a growing number of people who relate the vitriol of the candidate to Jesus.
            • That is untenable. The lesser of two evils argument from earlier doesn’t work here, because the lesser evil paints Jesus to be a hostile, xenophobic, demagogue.
            • If we as evangelicals are serious about wanting to bring Christian values into the public square, then follow the lead of Russell Moore, of Jim Wallis (strange allies), of Max Lucado, and say: “we cannot…we will not support this candidate. We will protest vote and vote third party. We will write in “Nope, Try again”. If this is Republicanism, then Republicanism does not align with the gospel.

Fun heart warming story:

• Young Muslim girl heard some of the rhetoric from the political campaign. As such, she become obsessed with making sure that the door locks on the front door were all engaged. Her parents posted something about it to their social media. It went viral.
  • What happened was that people started posting to comfort this family. Including soldiers, who have been deployed to forward areas in Muslim countries. These soldiers posted to this young ladies feed and said “that if that ever happened, they’d be the first to stand watch in their front yard to defend the family”.

Fun Segment:

Thunder

Baseball Starting