most religious conservatives embraced Trump because they thought an immoral bully protecting them was better than a bully attacking them.

I’ve mulled over this for a while, and here’s what I’m currently concluding. Most of the religious conservatives saw that Secretary Clinton had a strong set of values that she stuck to. They saw that there would likely be fights between her and them on those issues. But with Trump, they didn’t see someone who stuck to any set of values, and took a risk that someone who is apathetic on so many issues, wouldn’t butt heads with them.
Yes, Trumps is personally immoral, but he might not encourage any laws which they deem to be immoral.

This is anecdotal but a lot of my conservative Christian friends are repulsed by Trump, but more repulsed by Hillary, and are hoping Trump augers in soon.

My point was just recognizing these two stances helps one understand why others do that. It was primarily something that came to me when I noticed how people were talking past one an other over the marches after the inauguration. It was something I first recognized when getting frustrated with how people dealt with the abortion issue.

While I hinted at it above, one thing that can confuse things a little is that sometimes the ‘honoring’ approach is hard to distinguish from ‘virtue signaling’ which is much more about group identity and boundary maintenance. You see that with how people with a concern about the environment will do things that really don’t change outcomes much if at all but are more about showing they honor the rules. Often virtue signaling is designed to be easily seen and being costly in some sense is often valuable for such signaling.

The same thing pops up in religion a lot with tokens of virtue that one uses to signal commitment. Things like going a bit extreme over modest dress or what foods you use. Indeed there’s a lot of crossover there since I’d argue many aspects of contemporary political behavior really are old religious behaviors.

I think the shift between Kantian and Utilitarian is largely due to matters going from academic to real. It concerns me that so many people, particularly members of the Church, engage in moral signalling during discussions but when it comes to action, choose the Utilitarian vs. the principled road.

This is a fascinating case study for me and this framework goes a long way to helping me think through this. Thanks!!

Beyond that, to be honest, I don’t quite understand the promoting/honoring values dichotomy. It would seem that most cultures do a good amount of both honoring and promoting different sets of values. There are simply numerous cultures in the US who have a wide range of values, many of which conflict. Plus, most people’s values aren’t developed out of careful philosophical rumination, but simply because of a surrounding culture. Their friends and family think a particular way, and they mimic those patterns of thinking to gain attention and validation. To add to that, there is an ever-ending supply of writing and information to confirm whatever biases different people have.

I’m not entirely sure that voters’ choices were even informed entirely by values. Although most everyone has some sort of value set, most are incapable of articulating their values to the extent that they can justify actions based on them. To add to that, people often hold contradictory values. Many Trump supporters may be or have been at some point vehemently opposed to authoritarianism. Yet they turn a blind eye to Trump’s repeated praise of authoritarians and his undoubted authoritarian tendencies, which is showing already in his first week as president. People voted for Trump for a wide range of reasons. It may have been a single issue, a vague perception that he would somehow be better, subconscious distrust of women as leaders, subconscious racism, some sort of general image that Trump conveyed, tribalism, etc.

Trump of course is a valueless person. He is an absolute narcissist who craves attention, controversy, outdoing his foes, and winning (according to his often contradictory and incomprehensible criteria) at all costs.