YOU CAN'T BE BOTH CHRISTIAN AND TRUMPIST:

[N]ow that Trump is out of office, his calculation has changed. The deal is off. And, as is often the case, he is the one who broke it. Religious conservatives should see this as a blessing, however -- an opportunity to break from Trump and correlate their politics with their values. [...]

In the following months, Trump became even more combative. Reports dribbled out of Florida as the 2022 midterm elections drew nearer that the former president was dismayed at the enthusiastic response of the pro-life movement, and particularly of its religious arm, to the Dobbs decision. Trump had always stressed that abortion was for state governments to decide and that the problem with Roe, ultimately, was that it was the product of judicial activism. But most of the people who voted for him on the issue did not see it that way. Religious pro-lifers see abortion as primarily a moral problem where concerns over constitutional interpretation are often of secondary importance. And so, in the weeks and months following the decision, many pro-lifers began pushing for a more ambitious strategy. Working it out in the states was good, but to keep energy in the fight, abortion had to remain a national issue. Not long after Dobbs, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced a bill that would ban abortion nationally at 15 weeks. It won widespread approval within the movement. That included former Vice President Mike Pence, who during the administration often played liaison to Trump's evangelical voting bloc. Pence praised the initiative as "profoundly more important than any short-term politics."

But this kind of talk freaked out Trump. He was already mulling his next presidential run, and he started to see the very voters who propelled him to victory in 2016 as a liability in 2024. In private, it was said, Trump frequently fretted about abortion and especially the vigor with which pro-lifers were reacting to Dobbs. If they wanted to be "really smart," Trump said, they would focus on limiting late-term abortions, a position that is more popular than heartbeat bills and early trimester abortion bans. In general, Trump wondered if Dobbs might end up being "bad for Republicans."

It didn't take long for Trump to get the answer he wanted. After the 2022 Republican wipeout in the midterm elections, he was quick to place the blame on the most ardent pro-life activists. "It wasn't my fault that the Republicans didn't live up to expectations in the MidTerms," he wrote on Truth Social. "It was the 'abortion issue,' poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters." And, since that wasn't harsh enough, Trump specifically pointed the finger at the many pastors, street activists, and rosary-bearing prayer warriors who had been his most ardent supporters since 2016: "Also, the people that pushed so hard, for decades, against abortion, got their wish from the U.S. Supreme Court, & just plain disappeared, not to be seen again."

This gets at a central quandary for groups considering a tactical alliance with Trump: He considers any deal binding in perpetuity -- but only on his partners. Trump, however, is free of obligation. The genie becomes the one making demands, while his discoverer gets to spend 3,000 years in a lamp. All the while, Trump will disown their contributions and express regret at partnership with them in the first place, discarding and staining the cause in the process.

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