Evangelicals Are Killing Christianity, Is the GOP Next?

Over night the U.S. Senate race in Nevada was called for the Democrat incumbent thus locking in Democrat control of the Senate and the further obliteration of the GOP's fantasy of  "red wave" - one Facebook friend called what happened a "pink fart in a puddle."   The recriminations and backbitting among Republicans is fast underway with a growing chorus blaming Donald Trump and his backing of bad candidates and constant self-promotion that kept him in the eye of independent voters and less motivated Democrats and reminded them of the danger today's GOP poses to individual rights and democracy itself.   However, even if Trump were jettisoned tomorrow - somthing that would not be a quiet affair - the GOP remains faced with a problem: the extremism of its base, especially evangelicals who remain key GOP primary voters. As a post from yesterday noted, some believe the electoral disaster will do nothing to push the GOP base to face objective reality.  Evangelicals and other far right "Christians" almost by definition do not believe in objective reality and worse yet are increasingly desperate to push a culture war to inflict their beliefs on all of society.  The Dobbs ruling by the ayatollahs on the U.S. Supreme court is the most prominent  exanple.  The irony is that evangelicals are killing Christianity and driving away people in droves because of their hate and extremis, Now they are the main base of the GOP and may likewise be the GOP's downfall as the majority of Americans reject the party's extremism.  A piece in The New Yorker looks at the party's dilemma:

Savvy sportswriters know that the dramas are often richer in the losing team’s locker room, but, no matter how crushing the defeat, the shortstop does not usually try to assault the second baseman. One cannot say the same about the post-midterm atmosphere among Republicans. Within hours of the G.O.P.’s dismal failure to produce a “red wave,” the knives were out for the Party’s presumed leader. “Republicans have followed Donald Trump off the side of a cliff,” David Urban, one of the ex-President’s former advisers, told the Times.

The specific gripe that these Republicans have with Trump is not of a moral or a legal nature. The problem, in their eyes, is that Trump effectively handpicked the candidates who underperformed in some of the country’s most crucial races. Many of these duds had won Trump’s favor for only one reason: fealty to a lie. As Chris Christie put it, “The only animating factor [for Trump] in determining an endorsement is ‘Do you believe the 2020 election was stolen or don’t you?’ ” . . . . On the morning after the election, Trump reportedly lashed out at people in his circle who he says advised him to back the likes of Oz—including his wife, Melania. What a guy.

Republicans are forever stomping around, insisting that they’ve had enough of Trump’s excesses, only to get over it and once again line up behind him. Why should this time be any different? The best reason to think that it will—really, the only reason—is that now there is an alternative. “DeFuture” was the enormous headline on the front page of Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post on Wednesday. It ran, of course, with a photograph of a smiling Ron DeSantis, the resoundingly reëlected governor of Florida. If that headline was too subtle, the Post followed it the next day with a front-page cartoon of Trump teetering on the top of a wall: “Trumpty Dumpty.”

The postmortems are still accumulating, but they already suggest a pattern. The Republicans had no trouble turning out their base. Their struggle was in winning over the independent voters who customarily reject the party in power. And this time around the G.O.P. had enormous advantages, from the high rate of inflation to the low popularity ratings of the sitting President. . . . . . The electoral problem was simple: the Republicans were too extreme, and not just on one issue.

DeSantis’s ascent on the national scene is a reflection of his political success in Florida . . . . But it’s hard to see what solution he would offer to the extremism problem. DeSantis, like the ex-President, is a steadfast culture warrior—and he shares Trump’s willingness to use cruelty as a political weapon.

The seeming shift in enthusiasm from the former President to DeSantis suggests that many Republicans intend to replace one cult of personality with another, to move away from Trump, and his particular fixations, without altering the nature of Trumpism.

That is a cynical kind of choice. But in one important way it might also signal some small progress. The glimmer of hope in this election lies in the scattered indications that the era of Stop the Steal, and the Republican Party’s overt challenges to democracy, may be receding. Quietly, even the most ostentatious election deniers who lost on Tuesday promptly conceded defeat.

You can trace the effects of the midterms on Presidential politics by observing who is acting relaxed and who is anxious. At a press conference on Wednesday, Joe Biden, who turns eighty this month, was positively ebullient. DeSantis merely basked in what he called “a win for the ages.” Trump, on the other hand, exhibited a frenzied urgency.

That DeSantis has become a Trump fixation makes sense. One political truism holds that, at any given time, only two people in politics really matter: the President, and whomever the President is arguing with. For more than half a decade, Trump has been one of those two people. Now he has a challenger.

Personally, I do not see the GOP base changing anytime soon.  Change will come as the older white evangelicals literally die off.   More electoral defeats will help, but likely will not be enough to end GOP extremism.