The Unholy Alliance: Trump, Walker and Evangelicals

Once upon a time evangelicals and many Republicans argued that character mattered as they blew Bill Clinton's affair in the White House all out of proportion. They argued that if one's personal character was lacking, the self-styled "godly folk" should and "family values" crowd should never vote for such a person.   That day and a Republican Party that stood for semblance of decency is dead and gone and now both evangelicals and the GOP are defined by hatred of others, thinly veiled or open racism, and the embrace of fascism. Political power and the ability to impose a religious dogma anathema to Christ's gospel message on all of society is all that matters.  Indeed, those who are the antithesis of Christ;s message and true Christian virtue are the darlings of evangelicals and other "conservative Christians" as evidenced by Donald Trump and his Georgia acolyte, Herschel Walker, who displays the same never ending dishonest and abusive treatment of women that defines Trump.  A column in the New York Times looks at the abject moral bankruptcy of evangelicals and those in the GOP who put their quest for power above moral decency.  Here are highlights:

This will sound quaint. In May 2016, The Washington Post ran the story of how Donald Trump, in his real estate days, would call reporters, pretending to be his own spokesman, to brag and leak nuggets about nonexistent romances with famous women. I thought that would knock him out of the race.

The story hit on a Friday, so I scrambled to rewrite my column on the assumption that Trump wouldn’t last the weekend. But the scoop didn’t make a dent.

The next day, The Times splashed a piece on the front page reporting that dozens of women had accused Trump of “unwelcome romantic advances” and lewd and “unending commentary on the female form.” Again, he emerged unscathed with his base.

I still didn’t learn my lesson, though. That October, when the “Access Hollywood” tape showed Trump yucking it up about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women, noting that “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” I once more figured he couldn’t survive as leader of the party of “family values” and the religious right. He could.

Once, there were limits, things that could disqualify you from office, especially in the party that claimed a special relationship with Jesus.

But those limits don’t exist anymore. Conservatives have sacrificed any claim to principle. In an unholy transaction, they stuck with Trump because there was a Supreme Court seat and they were willing to tolerate his moral void in order to hijack the court. They didn’t care how he treated women as long as he gave them the opportunity to rip away rights from women. They wanted to impose their warped morality, a “Handmaid’s Tale” world, on the rest of us.

Christian-right leaders made clear that, no matter what Trump said or did to women, he was preferable to Hillary Clinton, who supported abortion rights.

Now, in Georgia, conservatives are turning a blind eye to sordid stories coming out about Herschel Walker, who demonstrates no qualifications for serving in the Senate. His sole credential is that he was once excellent at carrying a football.

Story after story has emerged about reprehensible behavior and lies concerning women and children, and about falsifying his personal history.

On Friday, The Times published a story confirming The Daily Beast’s reporting, and in a startling development added that in 2011, Herschel pressured the same woman to have another abortion. They ended their relationship when she refused; she had their son, now 10.

There’s more: His ex-wife claimed he pointed a pistol at her head and told her he was going to blow her brains out; he has four children with four different women, but hadn’t publicly acknowledged three of them. His 10-year-old was one of those hidden.

Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans should be ashamed to promote this troubled person for their own benefit.

Republicans have exposed their willingness to accept anything to get power that they then abuse. As Lindsey Graham said out loud, with his fellow Republicans shushing him, they want a nationwide ban on abortion after 15 weeks. And Herschel Walker is key to that.

“In a lot of ways, Mr. Trump became a mentor to me,” Walker wrote in his memoir in 2008 . . . Walker takes after his mentor with his lies, hypocrisy and know-nothingness on issues. Still worse, he’s following his mentor by denying his transgressions as a womanizer, even as he tries to smash women’s rights.

It is little wonder that the younger generations are exodusing institutional religion in droves - Christians may be a minority in America within 50 years - give the never ending display of moral bankruptcy, hatred and bigotry that define much of Christianity in America.