“We thank you for the upcoming election, Lord — or caucus, as we call it in Iowa,” said Hundley, speaking from the sanctuary of his evangelical Christian church in his slight Texas drawl as his parishioners bowed their heads.
“It doesn’t matter what our opinion is,” he went on. “It’s really what’s your opinion that matters. But you’ve given us the privilege of being able to exercise a beautiful gift. The gift of vote. We thank you for that.”
While Hundley stops short of suggesting to his parishioners which candidate divine guidance should lead them to support, he is among more than 300 pastors and other faith leaders who’ve been described as supporters by former President Donald Trump’s campaign. It’s a message that some members of Hundley’s First Church of God have taken to heart, saying their faith informs their intention to caucus for Trump.
Ron Betts, a 72-year-old Republican who said he plans to caucus for “Trump all the way,” said he felt the former president “exemplified what Jesus would do.”
Yet sheep aren’t lemmings. They don’t blindly follow the crowd off a cliff to their doom (urban legend is false though). The shepherd is supposed to guide and protect while still allowing them the freedom to be themselves within the herd
Within the bounds of the shepherd’s rules. They can’t go past the guidelines he sets, and they don’t try to. And wouldn’t you know it, those guidelines benefit the shepherd more than the sheep.
There are republican operators out there whose sole objective intent based on how they spend their time (I have between 2 and a half and 5% confidence interval) is to transfer blame from political leadership to the electorate. This is how they work.