chapotraphouse

To his very very limited credit, Douthat tries to pin her down on the immigration stuff (and then keeps letting her weasel out of it):

Douthat: But wait. Isn’t that a reasonable thing to say? Don’t you want people in the position of the Christian supporter of Donald Trump to say: I support deportations, but the way we’re deporting people to a prison in El Salvador seems like a violation of natural law? ...

Stuckey: It might be reasonable. I’m not saying that it is always unreasonable to listen to those critiques of Trump or to see those highlights of supposed cruelty from the Trump administration and say: Wow, that does seem bad.
I’m saying that if Christians are looking to have credibility with the left or credibility with progressives or credibility with the world, and they are looking for an escape route to no longer like Donald Trump or support Donald Trump, that they so easily — without thinking — latch on to the deeply feeling stories that we are given and say “This is just too far for me” without even digging in and asking the question: But is this true? Or what is the other side to the story? That’s what I see as a form of toxic empathy. That’s what leads to what I call the mushy middle. That’s where I see a lot of evangelicals are going. That’s the question that I always want people to ask, whether I’m talking or The New York Times is talking.
But is this true? If it sounds too good or too bad to be true about either side, that’s the question that we need to ask: But is this true, and what is on the other side of it? Like I said, not always unreasonable, but it’s unreasonable if you’re not using reason.

Douthat: ...A president whose stance on immigration doesn’t just say we need to build the wall, he also clearly uses the language of scapegoat and cruelty around the very large number of people who have understandable reasons to migrate to the United States, whether or not it’s reasonable for the United States to welcome them.
Sincere Christians recoil from this man, recoil from his takeover of the Republican Party and, in the process, end up kind of inevitably pulled somewhat to their left on issues where previously they were further to the right. But isn’t that understandable? Doesn’t that seem understandable to you as someone who disagrees with these people?

Stuckey: It’s totally understandable, and I have given a lot of credit to that over the years not only because I sincerely understand it but because it’s more persuasive when you try to steel-man someone’s concerns rather than diminish them. I’ve never voted for Donald Trump in a primary because I’ve had plenty of issues with how Donald Trump talks or conducts himself.
My critiques have been from the right, though. I have been troubled by some of the things that he said about abortion and worried if he was really strong enough on the issues that I care about or if the second term would only be about a personal vendetta. I’ve actually been very pleasantly surprised and pretty satisfied with a lot of the things that he has actually done in the way of conservatism.
What I want the other side to understand is that I hear you, I absolutely hear you. However, from my perspective, the other side is worse. Was Donald Trump my pick in the primary? Obviously he was the pick of a lot of people, but was he my pick in the primary? ...