I'm sorry. Is there someone out there that doesn't believe Trump "became a Christian" simply to get their vote. Does a Catholic grandma care if her new son-in-law is actually a Catholic? He gets baptized and that's good enough for grandma. Grandma knows, but it makes her feel better anyways.
And would those people who supported Trump because of the smokescreen have supported Trump if he was openly atheist?
This right here was exactly my point. You (FIPurpose) were claiming that Christians don't have an unreasonable stranglehold on politics in this country, and that an atheist could win the presidency, and using Trump as your example. My point is that he's actually a counterpoint against your position.
As for whether Trump is a "real Christian" or not: that's as unknowable as it is irrelevant as it is an undefinable term.
To make this easier for our Parliamentary counterparts, you have to imagine the 2 major parties both as actually coalitions of smaller factions. So often politicians are then subdivided down into what kind of Dem. or GOP that they are.
In Parliamentary elections when there is a minority government, suddenly much smaller parties have a much bigger say in what gets down. The size of their own party hasn't changed much, but the 2 main parties were unable to gain enough traction to form their own government. We saw this possibility in both the last UK and Canadian election. But with a majority government, (even a difference of 2-3% of seats) the minority parties go from deciding legislating to being sidelined MP's.
The GOP federally can be roughly thought of a coalition between Neoconservatives, Christian Right, Tea Party, Moderates, Libertarian, etc. The GOP has been floundering as demographics have been slipping away from them. While the Christian Right isn't the smallest group, the relative minority position the GOP has in both the Senate and a tenuous re-election for president means that all minority factions will be given full attention.
Consider the other factions of the GOP, I would say that the Moderates have also made up a smaller portion of the caucus more recently. However John McCain along with a few other Moderates yielded huge influence by being the deciding vote against repealing Obamacare. The Moderates have also been able to throw their weight around to some extent. The problem is that the GOP is living on the edge, so they have to do everything that appeases everyone in their party even to the detriment of independent/swing voters.
So I believe the Christian Right is currently influential because the GOP is in many respects a "minority government", not because the Christian Right provides a majority of the GOP electorate.