Republicans Are Turning the Mid-Terms Into A Culture War

Some are questioning the wisdom of the apparent Republican effort to turn the 2022 mid-term elections into a full blown culture war - a culture war that a silent majority of Americans do not support.  The forces behind the Republican effort are laid out in a piece in New York Magazine that blames the growing culture war on the Christofascists and evangelicals who largely control the GOP base and who are desperate to inflict their beliefs and dogma on all of society.  This desperation likely comes from the shrinking number of church going Christians in America and the growing number of "Nones" who have walked away from organized religion completely which means that the window is closing for those who want a theocracy.  The irony is that by pushing a full blown culture war, Republicans may be making their chances of victory in November smaller, especially if polling described in a column Washington Post that indicates a silent majority of Americans do not want want the Christofascists are selling, namely complete bans on abortion, open discrimination against blacks and gays, and other aspects of the Christofascists hate driven agenda.  First these highlights from New York Magazine:

The conventional wisdom on how to run a midterm campaign if your opponent controls the White House is pretty simple: ride the wave, stay focused on your most popular talking points, and don’t do anything to give the opposing party the chance to turn the election into something other than a referendum on the president, especially if said president is unpopular. The textbook target in a midterm election is the so-called median voter, typically a centrist who isn’t necessarily that focused on politics and definitely doesn’t belong to either party’s base. If there is any issue of great concern to said median voter that won’t lead to conflicted reactions, then talk about it again and again, emphatically.

Translated into the context of the 2022 midterms, Republicans have all the ingredients for a simple midterm message: an unpopular president, a discouraged Democratic base, and a simple economic issue that gives Democrats a lot of problems they cannot solve (inflation).

But are Republicans campaigning that way? So far, by and large, no. Instead, to a remarkable extent, Republican candidates and elected officials are going whole hog into culture-war topics. They’re pushing near-total bans on abortion, making law-and-order demands for a crackdown on crime, and railing against the alleged “woke indoctrination” of public-school students on matters of gender, sexuality, and race.

So what’s going on? Are Republicans incapable of message discipline or out of touch with an electorate that’s relatively progressive on cultural issues? Are they consumed with “base mobilization”? Or maybe they’re just mirroring Donald Trump’s self-destructive tendencies?

The most obvious reason Republican politicians are serving up culture-war fare is that their party base is dominated by conservative Christians who are more concerned about the supposed deterioration of traditional values than just about any other political topic. Indeed, there is some evidence that such voters are in a counterrevolutionary state of mind, anxious to use a Republican resurgence to roll back recent progressive gains on a wide range of issues, and free of any inhibitions about displaying their religious motivations.

These are not people willing to accept LGBTQ+ rights and same-sex marriage as just part of the contemporary landscape. . . . key elements of the GOP base are not inclined to hide their light under a bushel at present, even if conventional political thinkers in their party wish they’d keep a lower profile. And because of the importance of turnout in non-presidential elections, Republicans by and large don’t want to do anything to dampen base enthusiasm, even if it flows from theocratic yearnings that will be difficult to satisfy down the road.

And an ancient, religion-based hostility to public education (a.k.a. “government schools”) has found new energy in concerns about COVID-19 lockdowns and the power of teachers unions, which bleeds over into “parental rights” agendas long set by homeschoolers and others wanting public subsidies for private education. . . . In other words, a variety of circumstances have made right-wing culture-war politics something of a flavor of the month beyond the fever swamps in which it typically festers.

For many of these people, the 2022 midterms are not an opportunity to deny Democrats power or even seize more power for themselves; they’re an opportunity to aggressively govern in a culturally conservative manner without much fear of voter backlash. With the wind at their backs, Republicans are doing what they and their voters want, which is to redirect a culture perceived as godless and disordered back into its customary channels.

Trumpism means never having to moderate and never retreating. Worse yet for the country, when Republicans fail electorally, Trumpism tells them they should double down on base-exciting extremism. Don’t expect them to retreat.

The question remains, however, as to whether this is a smart strategy regardless of the demands of the Christofacists and ignorance and hate embracing evangelicals.  Culture war issues may excite the GOP base, but they also have the potential to excite those who do not want Christofascist dictated social norms and standards.   The column in the Washington Post suggest those opposed to the GOP religious based agenda are likely the majority of Americans - something Democrats need to capitalize on and stress the Christofascist threat:

To hear Republicans tell it, fed-up citizens are standing up to leftist teachers and school administrators who have been infecting little ones’ minds with unpatriotic historical revisionism and outré social theories.

But what if most Americans don’t actually believe that? A new poll from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research suggests a genuine silent majority of people who think what’s happening in schools is just fine — and many of them believe there should be more discussion of race and sexuality.

These are not people we hear much from at the moment, when conservatives have successfully whipped up a very loud moral panic over how race and sex are discussed in schools. But consider some of the poll’s findings:

• By 58 percent to 12 percent, Americans oppose “prohibiting books about divisive topics from being taught in schools.” (The rest are undecided.)
• By 53 percent to 21 percent, they oppose “prohibiting teachers from teaching about sex and sexuality in schools.”
• 71 percent say their local school system is either focusing too little on racism or focusing the right amount, while just 27 percent say it is focusing on it too much.
• 71 percent also say teachers in their local schools are either discussing issues related to sex and sexuality the right amount or not enough. Only 23 percent say teachers are discussing sex and sexuality too much.

But isn’t the anger we’re seeing explode at school board meetings real? Yes, in the sense that a political phenomenon can be simultaneously organic and manufactured. There are some genuinely angry parents, but the school panic has been planned and promoted by powerful right-wing interests and media outlets.

That effort has borne significant fruit in the form of state legislation aimed at silencing and intimidating teachers and school officials. But it doesn’t seem to have convinced most Americans that there’s much left-wing indoctrination on race and sex going on in their schools.

Which is why it’s so important that Democrats not just try to change the subject when Republicans promote their moral panics, but actively push back on them. Not only would it be the right thing to do, but it could also be an extremely effective midterm election strategy, both to convince independent voters that giving Republicans more power is dangerous, and to motivate Democratic voters to get to the polls.

Yet that’s not happening.