The Culture War Still Works for the GOP

There were a host of serious issues that should have concerned Virginia voters in Tuesday's election and for many Democrats issues over healthcare, building a green economy, offshore wind energy sources, infrastructure and other economic issues were the prevailing concerns.  Sadly, on the GOP side of the aisle it was all about the culture war that the GOP has long used to induce voters to vote against their own best interests.  And Glenn Youngkin and the other statewide GOP candidates had no problem ginning up emotions - hysteria might be the better description - through lies and false facts (in today's morally bankrupt GOP, lying is never an obstacle).  Once again, god, guns, gays and pretty much overt racism carried the day for the slim majority who voted for the Republicans.  Now, the national GOP seems poised to use the same game plan nationwide to stir up fear and hatred to try to further its authoritarian agenda.  Comments on Facebook - by in some cases former friends - indicate that large number of white voters are laping up the hatred and bigotry.  A piece in Politico Magazine looks at what will likely dominate the GOP game plan through the mid-terms and into 2024 whether or not Trump is on the ballot.  Here are excerpts:

In the Virginia governor’s race, pundits have been calling Tuesday night’s Republican win — depending who you listen to — a referendum on President Joe Biden, a verdict on the Democrats’ performance in Congress or the result of a smart Republican strategy for handling former President Donald Trump.

But it’s just as reasonable to credit what’s been happening right in the middle of Virginia.  The state has been stirred by a wave of local unrest, with protests at school board after school board, a very local version of a big national argument stirred up by right-wing media and grassroots groups.

And that suggests the real lesson for Republicans on Tuesday. One of their most powerful political assets is alive and well: the power of cultural issues over policies.

In the broadest sense, “cultural” matters have been challenging and bedeviling Democrats for well over half a century. The backlash to civil rights pulled the South away from the Democratic Party in the mid-’60s; crime, welfare, campus and urban violence eroded white working-class loyalties.

All through this period, Democrats were arguing that the public, by large measures, preferred their actual policies — their approaches to education, health care, taxes. . . . . Spoiler alert: It didn’t.

A six-point program to make schools better and college more affordable will mean very little if voters believe their neighborhoods are unsafe; and while demagogues will eagerly feed such fears, they will motivate voters only if there is an underlying reality to them.

That kind of visceral response to an issue is a perennial “feature” of school board fights. Almost 50 years ago, fights over textbooks in Kanawha County, West Virginia, led to mass boycotts, shootings and the dynamiting of at least one elementary school. Fights over what books should or should not be in school libraries are more or less constant local arguments. Now, the combustible issue of race in America and how to teach about it has quickly become the Republican Party’s issue of choice. And Democrats face a significant challenge in pushing back.

On the one hand, there are clear and compelling arguments to be made for teaching kids very directly about the nation’s scarred past. Texas children ought to know that the original constitution of the Republic of Texas protected slavery and barred Indians and “Africans” from becoming citizens. New York children ought to learn that suburban developments barred Black people from buying homes.

This is not “critical race theory” — an academic concept not taught in elementary or high schools. It’s just history. . . . . It’s not hard to pump up the fears of conservative or moderate white suburban parents that such a critique amounts to an attack on some basic, and seemingly colorblind, American values.

What makes all this so maddening for Democrats is that there is plenty of evidence that Black voters themselves don't widely share such views, any more than they support the “defund the police” campaigns of last year. Eric Adams, New York City’s next mayor and Jim Clyburn, House Democratic whip, have pushed back strongly against them.

For Democrats, one lesson of Virginia may well be that their candidates in 2022 and 2024 — most definitely including Biden — will need to find ways to position themselves loudly and clearly against these views, every bit as much as the party needs to push back against the tsunami of lies from GOP candidates that will be unleashed about what and how our nation’s children are being taught.

Right now, the mainstream of the national Democratic Party is still overwhelmingly focused on policy, not culture. They’re trying to govern, which is the job they were elected to do. But at some point they’ll need to start campaigning again, and if Democrats believe that the passage of an infrastructure program and a large social spending bill will provide the ammunition to repel a new GOP-launched culture war, they are deluding themselves.

For Republicans, the signal from Virginia is very clear. The party is already marshaling the troops for the next culture war. The next three years may be a time of scorched earth in America’s towns and suburbs. And Democrats, if they want to win, cannot be conscientious objectors.

Minorities, gays, Jews, Muslims et al had best brace themselves for very ugly attacks and endless lies coming from the GOP at all levels.