The Closed Conservative Mind

Being a "conservative" nowadays is something far different than twenty or thirty years ago when the Republican Party clearly stood for Democracy.  Now, in order to retain power, the Party will resort to all kinds of efforts to undermine democracy rather than change its agenda.  Worse yet, its current leader clearly wants to be an autocrat or monarch.   Adding in all of this is the aversion to objective facts and modern knowledge that studies indicate is a characteristic of the conservative mindset.  In contrast, the same studies show that liberals are open to new ideas and willing to change opinions based on facts and happenings. The division within America isn't only political but also in the very way facts and information is processed which leaves so-called conservatives far more likely to fall victims to true fake news, con-artists and conspiracy theories. One might say that conservatism is a mental condition, not just a political outlook.  A column in the New York Times looks at the closed nature of the conservative mind.  Here are excerpts:

In the continuing debate over whether liberals or conservatives are more open minded, whether those on the left or the right are more rigid in their thinking, a team of four Canadian psychologists studied patterns of “cognitive reflection” among Americans.

They found that a willingness to change one’s convictions in the face of new evidence was robustly associated with political liberalism, the rejection of traditional moral values, the acceptance of science, and skepticism about religious, paranormal, and conspiratorial claims.

Conversely, the authors — Gordon Pennycook of the University of Regina, and James Allan Cheyne, Derek J. Koehler and Jonathan A. Fugelsang of the University of Waterloo — found that an aversion to altering one’s belief on the basis of evidence was more common among conservatives and that this correlated “with beliefs about topics ranging from extrasensory perception, to respect for tradition, to abortion, to God.”

In their forthcoming paper, “On the belief that beliefs should change according to evidence,” the authors develop an eight-item “Actively Open-minded Thinking about Evidence Scale.” People taking the test are asked their level of agreement or disagreement with a series of statements.

Pennycook and his co-authors concluded: People who reported believing that beliefs and opinions should change according to evidence were less likely to be religious, less likely to hold paranormal and conspiratorial beliefs, more likely to believe in a variety of scientific claims, and were more politically liberal in terms of overall ideology, partisan affiliation, moral values, and a variety of specific political opinions.

In other words, there is one more item to add to the constantly growing list of factors driving polarization in America: Those on the left and right appear to use substantially different cognitive processes to interpret events in the world around them, large and small.

[I]n “Combating Fake News: An Agenda for Research and Action,” a research report released in May 2017 by Harvard’s Kennedy School and Northeastern University: “While any group can come to believe false information, misinformation is currently predominantly a pathology of the right.” Some conservative voters “are even suspicious of fact-checking sites,” the report continued, leaving them “them particularly susceptible to misinformation.”

Liberals, they write, “perform better than conservatives on objective tests of cognitive ability and intelligence” while conservatives “score higher than liberals on measures of self-deception” and “are more likely than liberals to spread ‘fake news,’ political misinformation, and conspiracy theories throughout their online social networks.”

Separate studies of the language used by presidents — both “The Readability and Simplicity of Donald Trump’s Language,” and an analysis of the language used by the last 15 presidents on the blog Factbase — concluded that President Trump speaks at the lowest level of all those studied, . . . .

Stenner makes the case that the authoritarian revolution began in the 1960s: “Once the principle of equal treatment under the law was instituted and entrenched by means of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act,” traditional conservatism — “fidelity to the laws of the land and defense of legitimate institutions” — took a back seat to authoritarianism “as a factor driving expressions of racial, moral and political intolerance.”

Trump is determined to use authoritarian means to restore race to the core of his campaign.

Last week, Trump sent dozens of armed federal forces in camouflage to quell Black Lives Matter protests in Portland.

On July 19, Trump responded to a direct question from Chris Wallace of Fox News about whether he would “accept the election” win or lose. Trump answered: “I have to see. Look, you — I have to see. No, I’m not going to just say yes. I’m not going to say no.”

And on July 20, Trump threatened to send more armed troops to New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland to quell dissent, noting that these cities’ mayors were all “liberal Democrats.”

Put another way, Trump plans to echo George Wallace and take his stand in the schoolhouse door or, even more ominously, to use urban America as his Alamo.

A Challenger to Republicans

As a former Republican activist and eight year Republican party city committee member - I even incorporated the Republican Party of the City of Virginia Beach, something the SCC records confirm - I continue to be shocked by the self-prostitution to Donald Trump that has been a party wide phenomenon in the GOP.  Trump's blatant dishonesty, hie rejection of science and  knowledge, and his public embrace of white supremacists and Christian extremists are anathema to what the Republican Party once claimed to stand for.  And I say this as one who grew up in a Republican family.  Were they still living, my parents and grandparents would be appalled at what the GOP has become and the horrid individual to whom so many - likely the majority - to whom both Republican elected officials and rank and file party members have sold their souls to. Decency, morality and any sense of supporting the rule of laws has been jettisoned by today;s Republicans,  And for what?  Merely staying in office and the associated perks have become the be all and end all for Republicans,  A column in the Washington Post throws out a challenge - a gauntlet, if you will - to those in the GOP who have sold their souls to Trump.  Here are highlights:

Republican senators, you know he is a danger to the republic. It is not too late to say so. It is not too late to help save your country, and maybe your self-respect.

You know it is wrong for a president to be spreading vile fictions about the death of a young woman 19 years ago. You know it is corrosive when he lies, and lies, and lies. And you know it is contemptible when a president, with his nation on edge as civil unrest spreads, can do nothing but threaten, divide and incite.How do I know you know? Because nothing in your careers, before the age of Donald Trump, hints at a willingness to tolerate such odious behavior.

Yes, I’m talking to you, Lamar Alexander. And you, John Barrasso. And Roy Blunt. Richard Burr. Susan Collins. Mike Crapo. Joni Ernst. Cory Gardner. Chuck Grassley. Mike Lee. Lisa Murkowski. Rob Portman. Jim Risch. Pat Roberts. Marco Rubio. Ben Sasse. Tim Scott. Dan Sullivan. John Thune. Roger Wicker.

And others in your caucus, too. Even you, Lindsey Graham. Even for you, it’s not too late.

Five years ago, could any of you have imagined excusing a leader who praised white supremacists, called his former opponent a criminal and a “skank,” mocked the weight and appearance of your fellow leaders?

Could you have imagined tolerating a president who sought to bend law enforcement, diplomacy and intelligence collection to his personal needs and whims?

You know, you all know, that he has imperiled the country and cost thousands of lives with his contempt for science and expertise.

Many of you have championed funding for the National Institutes of Health. Could you have imagined, five years ago, biting your tongue when a president told a country in peril that a virus would “magically” disappear? Would you have endorsed dangerous nostrums or mocked sound public health advice?

You know that he has eroded what turns out to be the surprisingly fragile system of checks and balances laid out in the Constitution that you have sworn to support and defend. Five years ago, you would not have tolerated a president spending money that Congress — your Article I branch — had explicitly decided not to spend, or shrugging off any attempt at congressional oversight, or firing inspectors general at will.

You know that he has dangerously eroded the United States’ security and standing in the world with his impulsiveness, his contempt for allies, his trashing of core American values and his naive embrace of America’s foes.

How do I know you know? Because many of you have spent your careers defending those values, building the institutions that undergird them, cultivating relationships across oceans. You shuddered when he trusted Russia’s leader over our own intelligence community, when he hailed the boss of the Chinese Communist Party as “a good man” and “a very, very good friend,” when he “fell in love” with the criminal strongman of Communist North Korea. Before the age of Trump, you could not have imagined staying silent in the face of such abominations.

So why do you stay silent now? Why does your colleague Mitt Romney seem so lonely in maintaining his moral compass?

It’s not hard to guess. You see your former colleagues Bob Corker and Jeff Flake, cast into political irrelevance for raising the most timid of objections. You think, better to stay viable. Keep your head down, don’t provoke the bully, and you can help restore sanity when he is gone.

But if he is reelected, restoring sanity may not be an option. The republic will be forever altered, as you know.

And you know this, too: Joe Biden would be a better choice for the country, at this moment. Of course, you disagree with many of his policies. You dislike some of the people he would bring into government. But he would respect the Constitution, the rule of law, simple human decency and the norms that have kept this experiment alive.

So why not hang together, announce you are voting for Biden, and help save your country? Explain that the president has left you no other honorable choice. You can still campaign for a Republican majority in the Senate to act as a check on a Democratic administration and its judicial picks. At best, you might help save your party and rescue your country.

At worst, you would meet the fate of Corker and Flake. That may seem unbearable to you. But if Trump is reelected, history will remember them far more kindly than those who, silently or actively, were complicit in the degradation of our democracy.

Never Trumpers Will Host Their Own "Republican Convention"

In some ways I respect the "Never Trump" Republicans and former Republicans in that they have put principle and I would argue basic decency ahead of party unlike those in the GOP who have shamelessly prostituted themselves to Trump, Lindsey Graham being but one of many examples.  On the other hand, had these same Never Trump Republicans ceased being apologists for horrid GOP policies and a take from the poor to give to the rich agenda with a heavy dose of Christian nationalism years earlier, perhaps the GOP could have been saved from a Trump takeover. I left the GOP decades ago now because I saw where the party was headed and in good conscience simply could not be part of it. Am I now a Democrat?  Yes, but by default at first and now because of the national emergency of sending Trump - and those who sold their souls to him and to Christofascists and white supremacists - into forced retirement.    Anything that weakens GOP unity and can peel off votes from Trump and Trump Republicans (a term that is the opposite of what the GOP elected officials once stood for) is to be applauded.  And yes, I have donated to the Lincoln Project because its anti-Trump ads are first class. Now, the anti-Trump movement is going to have its own convention to run concurrent with the Trump/GOP gathering in Charlotte which will likely be part religious crusade and KKK rally.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at this development.  Here are highlights:

Conservative critics of President Trump will hold a convention of their own during the Republican National Convention, with plans to craft their own statement of principles and offer it to a post-Trump electorate.

“The Trump administration has failed, and that’s provided us with an opportunity to offer an alternative vision,” said Evan McMullin, who ran against Trump as an independent in 2016 and has been part of multiple anti-Trump efforts since then. “We’ll be ready in the wake of what we see as a coming Trump defeat.”

The Convention on Founding Principles is scheduled to run from Aug. 24 to Aug. 27 in Charlotte, the city hosting this year’s RNC. The Republicans for a New President campaign, the chief organizer of the event, is planning an online component and a backup plan for a virtual convention if the RNC is canceled. Asked about the plans on Friday morning, the president’s campaign brushed them off.

“These Trump haters are sad, pathetic, and irrelevant,” said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtagh.

The Convention on Founding Principles grew out of an event Trump critics held at the National Press Club this year, concurrent with the Conservative Political Action Conference. Organizers were pleasantly surprised when more than 300 people attended their counter-conference, prompting a move to a larger room.

The August event, said McMullin, would more closely resemble an actual political convention. There will be debates and voting on a statement of the attendees’ principles, and a vote on whether they supported a particular candidate for president — presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, or a “well-known third-party candidate.”

“After Trump’s expected loss to a cross-partisan coalition of voters in 2020, principled conservatives will continue to pursue a new direction for the party through a range of activities, intellectual, electoral and otherwise,” McMullin said. ‘Since 2016, principled conservatives have become more organized and more effective and this convention and campaign represent the next steps in the development of this strengthening movement.”

The GOP’s Closing Argument: Denying Basic Facts

As I type this post, the House of Representatives has voted to impeach Donald Trump for high crimes and misdemeanors - only the third time in the nation's history.  Throughout the day Republicans have resorted to histrionics - one Republican insanely equated the day's proceedings to the biblical trial of Christ - and most importantly denied the existence of proven facts. Seeing the moral degradation of today's GOP - something that in my view directly correlates to the rise of the Christofascist within the party - I am ashamed to have ever have been a Republican.  Like their Christofascist and white supremacist masters, today's congressional Republicans are morally bankrupt. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the GOP's denial of facts - some even admitted by Trump.   Here are article highlights:

It’s often been said that the two sides in the current impeachment debate can’t even agree on basic facts. But increasingly for the GOP, that’s also true of well-established and indisputable facts.

Some Republicans have said President Trump’s actions were bad but not impeachable. But a few of them have set out to argue for an alternate reality: One in which it’s not conceivable that Trump did something wrong, because the things that happened didn’t actually happen.

Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) led the way last week by arguing that Trump hadn’t even asked Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate his political rival in their July 25 phone call. . . .

Trump not only specifically requested an investigation of Joe Biden in that July 25 call with Zelensky — he said, “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it ... It sounds horrible to me” — but he also asked China and Russia to take similar actions at other junctures. Trump said publicly, “And by the way, likewise, China should start an investigation into the Bidens.”

He also, in 2016, asked Russia to find and turn over Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, saying, “Russia, if you’re listening: I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” Trump said the last one was a joke; the events since then sure seem to call that into question. Trump has now asked three countries to look into his political rivals.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) then echoed the argument on the House floor. “Joe Biden was not the opponent of Donald Trump," King said. "He’s in a 21-way primary.”

It is true that Biden hasn’t won the Democratic nomination. But he is indisputably Trump’s campaign rival, as are all of the Democrats running. Trump himself has made clear he views Biden as a rival, devoting lengthy portions of his speeches to attacking Biden. Meadows’s implication is that Trump didn’t have a personal motivation to push for investigating Biden, which is patently ridiculous.

Even the White House has admitted the aid was withheld. On the House floor Wednesday, Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) maintained not just that military aid to Ukraine wasn’t used as part of a quid pro quo but also that the aid wasn’t withheld.

Added Rep. Jim Baird (R-Ind.): “The president did not commit any crimes. He did not break any laws. And there was no quid pro quo.”

Except that there rather clearly were quid pro quos, as multiple witnesses have attested and as Mulvaney himself momentarily confirmed. It has been extensively shown — including in text messages we can see with our own eyes — that a White House meeting for Zelensky, in particular, was understood by the Ukrainians to be tied to announcing the investigations. . . . . there were quid pro quos, and according to multiple witnesses in both cases, they were communicated to Ukraine.

Has the Republican Party Rejected Democracy?

As the Democrat presidential veer to the left, the Republican Party has veered far right and, as a column in the New York Times, suggests looks to a form of authoritarian rule to maintain its power.  Indeed, in today's GOP, the goal is to thwart the will of the majority of voters and restrict the voting of anyone outside of its increasing racist and religiously extreme white base. The GOP tools to accomplish this?  Voter ID laws, gerrymandering, using legislative rules to block bills that otherwise have popular support - think Mitch McConnell - and outright intimidation. Frighteningly, while today's GOP bears no resemblance to the party I and my family once belonged to and actively supported, far too many Americans refuse to open their eyes to what the GOP has become.  Those who do, seemingly embrace minority rule and the shredding of American institutions.  Here are some column highlights:

A number of observers, myself included, have written pieces in recent years arguing that the Republican Party is no longer simply trying to compete with and defeat the Democratic Party on a level playing field. Today, rather than simply playing the game, the Republicans are simultaneously trying to rig the game’s rules so that they never lose.

The aggressive gerrymandering, which the Supreme Court just declared to be a matter beyond its purview; the voter suppression schemes; the dubious proposals that haven’t gone anywhere — yet — like trying to award presidential electoral votes by congressional district rather than by state, a scheme that Republicans in five states considered after the 2012 election and that is still discussed: These are not ideas aimed at invigorating democracy. They are hatched and executed for the express purpose of essentially fixing elections.

The idea that one party has become so radically different from the other, despite mountains of evidence, is a tough sell.  It’s a hard sell to make for one very simple reason: It doesn’t have a name, this thing the Republicans are trying to do. It’s not true democracy that they want. But it’s also a bit much to call them outright authoritarians. And there’s nothing in between.

Or is there?

A couple of weekends ago, I tripped across a 2010 book called “Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War,” by Steven Levitsky and Lucan A. Way. If you pay close attention to such things, you will recognize Mr. Levitsky’s name — he was a co-author, with Daniel Ziblatt, of last year’s book “How Democracies Die,” which sparked much discussion. “Competitive Authoritarianism” deserves to do the same.

What defines competitive authoritarian states? They are “civilian regimes in which formal democratic institutions exist and are widely viewed as the primary means of gaining power, but in which incumbents’ abuse of the state places them at a significant advantage vis-à-vis their opponents.” Sound like anyone you know?

But today, incredibly, the phrase has begun to bring to mind the United States of America. I literally gasped as I read certain passages, notably the part about the important role of a strong party in winning elections and in controlling legislatures. “Legislative control is critical in competitive authoritarian regimes,” the authors write. They list four reasons. You can bet Mitch McConnell knows every one of them, and probably a couple more. For one, there’s President Trump. Think of his efforts to do things like politicize the institutions of the executive branch, to try to turn the Department of Justice into his personal law firm. Think of his threat in 2016 that he would honor the results of the election “if I win,” and his recent musings about staying beyond two terms. Think of his commerce secretary’s attempt to add a citizenship question to the census, which would benefit the Republicans electorally. These are all manifestations of competitive authoritarianism. Second — and maybe even more so — there’s the Republican Party. The gerrymandering enabled them to maintain their House majority during the Obama years even as Democratic House candidates were winning more votes. But there’s much more. “Recent Republican behavior — from the 2016 stolen Supreme Court seat to the legislative shenanigans that followed gubernatorial defeats in North Carolina and Wisconsin to voter suppression efforts across numerous states — suggests a party whose commitment to democratic politics has weakened,” Mr. Levitsky said.
 “The fact that the Republican Party has grown increasingly authoritarian poses a greater threat to American democracy than Donald Trump.”

George H.W. Bush Dead at 94 - Reflections of a Former Republican

George H.W. Bush died yesterday at the age  of at 94.  Like all all previous presidents, Mr. Bush looks better and better in retrospect as the regime of Der Trumpenführer continues to be increasingly defined by corruption, possible treason, and crudeness and boorishness.  Yes, Bush made many mistakes, foolishly embraced Lee Atwater's racist smear of Michael Dukakis,  and failed to be able to convince voters that he deserved re-election in 1992,  Yet, he had class and integrity again, especially in contrast to the current occupant of the White House.  He valued science, knowledge and embodied what the Republican Party once was before the open ascendancy of the Christofascists and white supremacists within the party.  Like Bush the party he led is dead and gone.  The New York Times looks at Bush.  Here are excerpts:

Historians will measure the presidency of George H.W. Bush in familiar ways — by how well or poorly he managed the major domestic and international challenges of his time, his leadership qualities, the moral and social legacies he left for future generations.

Yet, at the moment of his passing, it is difficult not to take note of the profound differences between the 41st president of the United States and the current occupant of the White House, Donald Trump. Beyond a desire to be president — Mr. Bush was more competitive and ambitious than his self-effacing personality sometimes suggested — there is almost nothing in common: the one gracious and modest, the other rude and vain; the one prudent, the other brash; the one steady, the other unmoored.

Mr. Bush’s death on Friday is also a moment to recall a less quarrelsome political order, when relations with traditional allies were more cordial than combative, when government attracted people of talent and integrity for whom public service offered a purpose higher than self-enrichment, when the Republican Party, though slowly slipping into the tentacles of zealots like Newt Gingrich, still offered room for people with pragmatic policies and sensible dispositions.

Fingers pointed in every direction after his defeat [by Bill Clinton] — a deteriorating economy, a divisive convention in Houston, a disjointed campaign. But one big reason for Mr. Bush’s precipitous fall was Mr. Bush himself, chiefly his inability to convince Americans that he understood the depth of their fears or could summon up a coherent plan for addressing them.

A Times editorial after his defeat called Mr. Bush “an incomplete president” — good at some things but clumsy at others. Fate had dealt him one of the strongest hands in foreign affairs ever awarded a new president, and for the most part he played that hand cleverly and energetically. But when it came time to rescue a depressed nation, he had little to offer, either spiritually or in terms of coherent policy. With the economy in decline in the winter of 1992, he told a New Hampshire audience, as if reading from a cue card, “Message: I care.” That very formulation, a bit precious and patronizing under the circumstances, fell well short of the kind of the emotional jolt the moment called for. His opponent, Mr. Clinton, found a much more resonant message: “I feel your pain.”

Mr. Bush’s political persona was no less baffling. . . . . often in the heat of combat, Mr. Bush’s good manners and amiable disposition gave way to bombast and shrill exploitation of fears of race and crime. His 1988 campaign infamously strove to tie his opponent, Michael Dukakis, to an African-American named Willie Horton who committed rape after being released on a weekend furlough program — an effort for which Mr. Bush’s attack-dog campaign manager, Lee Atwater, later apologized.

So hapless was Mr. Bush’s last year in office that it was easy to overlook his early successes. He began smartly, moving quickly to end the ideological combat of the Reagan years, broke cleanly on environmental issues with his indifferent predecessor — the upgrade of the nation’s clean air laws was a major achievement — faced up to the savings and loan scandal and offered creative approaches to the debt of developing nations, especially in Latin America.
 Foreign policy was Mr. Bush’s great strength, and of his diplomatic contributions, two stand out. One was to keep America and the Soviet Union moving forward along a path to peace charted by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, a path that in time led to the reunification of Germany, the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the dissolution of the Soviet Union and, more broadly, the end of nearly a half-century of Cold War. His second big achievement was the skillful orchestration over many months of a collective global response to Iraq’s aggression in the Persian Gulf. A war that began on January 17, 1991, was over in weeks, with Saddam Hussein’s air force neutralized and his ground troops on the run. Some critics have said that Mr. Hussein would not have been so bold as to invade Kuwait had Washington not shamelessly cultivated him over the years; others faulted Mr. Bush for not pushing Mr. Hussein all the way back to Baghdad and removing him from power. Such a course, Mr. Bush said later, would have “incurred incalculable human and political costs … We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq.” Which is exactly what his son, George W. Bush, a less cautious man, set out to do 12 years later — with disastrous results. Perhaps, in a second term, Mr. Bush might have found a clearer sense of direction on domestic issues. We will never know. But if he is measured by his leadership and choices on the global stage, historians will almost certainly treat him more kindly than the voters did in 1992.

I think most decent people would happily exchange Bush for the current foul and toxic occupant of the White House.  RIP.

How Pastors, Not Politicians, Turned the Republican Party Racist

I grew up Republican and was a member of the City Committee of the Republican Party of Virginia Beach for eight years.  During that period, I viewed Republicans for the most part as "the good guys."  But something changed over the years and I have always credited the GOP's decline into a party of extremism and racism to directly correlate with the rise of the Christofascists in the party.  As the Christofascists infiltrated the party, moderates and I would argue sane people not motivated by simple greed (the true motivation for the worship of tax cuts) and racism and/or religious extremism fled the party.  A friend and former classmate recently linked to a lengthy piece in Forbes written by a former Republican that focuses mostly on the South but lays out how pastors, especially Southern Baptist pastors, were key to the transformation of the GOP and accomplished the "Southern Strategy" that Richard Nixon and his strategist, Lee Atwater envisioned.  Here in Virginia, The Family Foundation in alliance with Jerry Fallwell and now his son and Pat Robertson and his minions have played a major behind the scenes role in turning the Virginia GOP into a neo-Confederate party where racism is no longer disguised and is synonymous with calls for "religious liberty.  Take the time to read the entire piece.  Here are article highlights: 

“White Democrats will desert their party in droves the minute it becomes a black party.” Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority, 1969.

Thirty years ago, archconservative Rick Perry was a Democrat and liberal icon Elizabeth Warren was a Republican. Back then there were a few Republican Congressmen and Senators from Southern states, but state and local politics in the South was still dominated by Democrats. By 2014 that had changed entirely as the last of the Deep South states completed their transition from single-party Democratic rule to single party rule under Republicans. The flight of the Dixiecrats was complete.

Reasons for the switch are not so hard to understand. . . . . Southern anger over the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights reforms was no secret and no surprise.

While the “why” behind the flight of the Dixiecrats is obvious, the “how” is more difficult to establish, shrouded in myths and half-truths. Analysts often explain the great exodus of Southern conservatives from the Democratic Party by referencing the Southern Strategy, a cynical campaign ploy supposedly executed by Richard Nixon in his ’68 and ’72 Presidential campaigns, but that explanation falls flat.

Crediting the Nixon campaign with the flight of Southern conservatives from the Democratic Party dismisses the role Southerners themselves played in that transformation. In fact, Republicans had very little organizational infrastructure on the ground in the South before 1980, . . . The flight of the Dixiecrats was ultimately conceived, planned, and executed by Southerners themselves, largely independent of, and sometimes at odds with, existing Republican leadership. It was a move that had less to do with politicos than with pastors. Southern churches, warped by generations of theological evolution necessary to accommodate slavery and segregation, were all too willing to offer their political assistance to a white nationalist program. Southern religious institutions would lead a wave of political activism that helped keep white nationalism alive inside an increasingly unfriendly national climate. Forget about Goldwater, Nixon or Reagan. No one played as much of a role in turning the South red as the leaders of the Southern Baptist Church. There is still today a Southern Baptist Church. More than a century and a half after the Civil War, and decades after the Methodists and Presbyterians reunited with their Yankee neighbors, America’s largest denomination remains defined, right down to the name over the door, by an 1845 split over slavery.

Spirituality may be personal, but organized religion, like race, is a cultural construct. When you’ve lost the ability to mobilize supporters based on race, religion will serve as a capable proxy. What was lost under the banner of “segregation forever” has been tenuously preserved through a continuing “culture war.” A fight for white nationalism and white cultural supremacy has in some ways been more successful after its transformation into an expressly religious, rather than merely racist crusade.

So long as pastors or priests (or in this case, televangelists) are willing to apply their theological creativity to serve political demands, religious institutions can be bent to advance any policy goal. With remarkably little prodding, Christian churches in Germany fanned the flames for Hitler. The Southern Baptist Church was organized specifically to protect slavery and white supremacy from the influence of their brethren in the North, a role that has never ceased to distort its identity, beliefs and practices.

At that time [1956], there may have been no more influential figure in the Southern Baptist Convention than W.A. Criswell, the pastor of the enormous First Baptist Church in Dallas.

At a convention in South Carolina, Criswell turned his popular fire and brimstone style on the “blasphemous and unbiblical” agitators who threatened the Southern way of life. Beyond all the boilerplate racist invective, Criswell outlined an eerily prescient rhetorical stance, a framework capable of outlasting Jim Crow. In a passage that managed to avoid explicit racism, he described what would become the primary political weapon of the culture wars:

Don’t force me by law, by statute, by Supreme Court decision…to cross over in those intimate things where I don’t want to go. Let me build my life. Let me have my church. Let me have my school. Let me have my friends. Let me have my home. Let me have my family. And what you give to me, give to every man in America and keep it like our glorious forefathers made – a land of the free and the home of the brave.

Long after the battle over whites’ only bathrooms had been lost, evangelical communities in Houston or Charlotte can continue the war over a “bathroom bill” using a rhetorical structure Criswell and others built. He had constructed a strangely circular, quasi-libertarian argument in which a right to oppress others becomes a fundamental right born of a religious imperative, protected by the First Amendment.

Criswell’s bizarre formula, as it metastasized and took hold elsewhere, could allow white nationalists to continue their campaign as a “culture war” long after the battle to protect segregated institutions had been lost.

Southern Baptists remained at the vanguard of the fight to preserve Jim Crow until the fight was lost.

Evangelical resistance to the civil rights movement was not uniform, but dissent was rare and muted. Southern Baptist superstar Billy Graham was cautiously sympathetic to King. . . . . However, in public Graham was careful to keep a safe distance and avoided the kind of open displays of sympathy for civil rights that might have complicated his career.

In 1968, the Southern Baptist Convention formally endorsed desegregation. That same year, in a remarkably passive-aggressive counter to their apparent concession on civil rights, they elected W.A. Criswell to lead the denomination.

Defeated and demoralized, segregationists in the 1970’s faced a frustrating problem – how to rebuild a white nationalist political program without using the discredited rhetoric of race. Religion would provide them their answer. Armed with the superficially race-neutral rhetorical formula Criswell had described, prominent Southern Baptist ministers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson would emerge to take up the fight. All they needed was a spark to light a new wave of political activism.

In 1967, Mississippi began offering tuition grants to white students allowing them to attend private segregated schools. A federal court struck down the move two years later, . . . . It was the status of these schools, a growing source of church recruitment and revenue, that finally stirred the grassroots to action. Televangelist Jerry Falwell would unite with a broader group of politically connected conservatives to form the Moral Majority in 1979. His partner in the effort, Paul Weyrich, made clear that it was the schools issue that launched the organization, an emphasis reflected in chain events across the 1980 Presidential campaign.

The rise of the religious right is usually credited to abortion activism, but few evangelicals cared about the subject in the 70’s.

In August of 1980, Criswell and other Southern Baptist leaders hosted Republican Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan for a rally in Dallas. Reagan in his speech never used the word “abortion,” but he enthusiastically and explicitly supported the ministers’ position on protecting private religious schools. That was what they needed to hear.

Evangelical ministers, previously reluctant to lend their pulpits to political activists, launched a massive wave of activism in Southern pews in support of the Reagan campaign. The new President would not forget their support. Less than a year into his Administration, Reagan officials pressed the IRS to drop its campaign to desegregate private schools.

For decades, men like [Lee] Atwater had been searching for the perfect “abstract” phrasing, a magic political dog whistle that could communicate that “N…r, n…r” message behind a veneer of respectable language.

It was religious leaders in the South who solved the puzzle on Republicans’ behalf, converting white angst over lost cultural supremacy into a fresh language of piety and “religious liberty.” Southern conservatives discovered that they could preserve white nationalism through a proxy fight for Christian Nationalism. They came to recognize that a weak, largely empty Republican grassroots structure in the South was ripe for takeover and colonization. . . . Religious nationalists began to purge traditional Republicans from the region’s few GOP institutions.

Russell Moore became the President of the Southern Baptist Convention’s social outreach arm in 2013. In that capacity, he began to challenge many of the darker elements of the church’s history. From a post in the church traditionally dedicated to hand-wringing over gay rights and dirty movies, Moore criticized those who stirred up hatred against refugees and ignored matters of racial justice. He drew sharp criticism when he denounced the Confederate Flag, explaining, “The cross and the Confederate flag cannot co-exist without one setting the other on fire.”

The real fury came when Moore applied to Donald Trump the same standard of conduct Baptists had demanded of Bill Clinton.

As religious leaders lined up solidly behind Trump last fall, Moore commented, "The religious right turns out to be the people the religious right warned us about."

Today, W.A. Criswell’s Dallas megachurch is pastored by Robert Jeffress, who has remained faithful to the most bigoted strains of the olde tyme religion.

Billy Graham’s son, Franklin, retooled the ministry he inherited, turning it into something a civil rights era segregationist could love without reservation. Graham, who earns more than $800,000 a year as the head of his inherited charity, has made anti-Muslim rhetoric a centerpiece of his public profile and ministry.

Jerry Falwell's son also inherited the family business, serving now as president of his father's university. His support for Trump is less surprising than Graham's, and far less of a departure from his father's work. Falwell spoke in support of Trump at the Republican National Convention.

Public perception that a “Southern strategy” conceived and initiated by clever Republicans turned the South red is worse than false. By deflecting responsibility onto some shadowy “other” it blocks us from reckoning with the past or changing our future. History is a powerful tide, especially when it runs unseen and concealed. A refusal to honestly confront our past leaves us to repeat our mistakes over and over again.

No one needs to say “N..r, n..r” anymore. With help from evangelical pastors, this new generation of politicians has found a new political party and a fresh language with which to stir old grievances and feed their power. By merely refining their rhetoric and activating evangelical congregations, a new generation of Southern conservatives grow ever closer to winning a fight their forebears once thought was lost.

Not surprisingly, a recent survey found that a majority of evangelicals admit to being racists.  "Religious liberty" today equates with a right to discriminate against gays but also ultimately to discriminate against blacks, one of the bedrocks of the Southern Baptist Church and its allied evangelical churches. As has been the case through so much of history, organized religion is a pervasive evil.  Hopefully, with the flight of younger generations from religion  over time its toxic power will die in America.

Women - A Vanishing Breed Among Congressional Republicans

As the base of the Republican Party has become increasingly concentrated among aging whites, Christian extremists, white supremacists and vulture capitalists, something has happened to Republican women in Congress: they are vanishing.  At this time, it appears that only 13 women will be among the Republican caucus in 2019 - down by 10 from the present Congress.   To anyone sentient, the reason should be obvious: women do not like the GOP's racist, male privilege based  agenda and will vote against Republicans even when the Republican candidate is a woman.    Yet the GOP seems shocked and ponders how to regain support from women.  Jettisoning much of the current GOP platform would be an obvious choice if one is in touch with objective reality, but don't hold your breath waiting for reality to set in.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

About a half dozen House Republican women gathered this week for a somber, post-election dinner.

Exchanging thoughts about the brutal results for GOP candidates, they realized something depressing, according to one attendee. That small dinner group represented about half the total number of Republican women who would serve in the House next year.

Just 13 GOP women have won election so far to serve in the next Congress, down from 23 this year. With a half dozen races yet to be resolved, the House GOP — the minority party next year — is all but certain to have the lowest number of women in its ranks since 1994.

That drop-off came amid a national political climate that saw female voters sharply break from Republicans. Women favored Democrats over Republicans for Congress, 59 percent to 40 percent, according to exit polls.

It has set off a debate within the Republican Party about how to address this crisis, both in terms of appealing to female voters and recruiting and retaining women in Congress.
“I think the Republicans have to get off of defense on this issue,” Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) said Friday in an interview.

Cheney was the uncontested winner this week in the race for House Republican conference chairwoman, which puts her in charge of the party’s communications and messaging strategy. She will become the party’s highest-profile woman in Congress, trying to rebuild and rebrand its battered image.

But she does not see any need for course corrections on policies relating to women, arguing that Democrats create silos for female issues that treat women in a condescending way. . . . She said that issues like security and a strong economy cut across gender lines and that if Republicans made that argument better and had more women making the pitch, they would win more support. “We need more women running for office, no doubt,” Cheney said.  Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) could not agree more. . . . . . “Take a look around,” she told the GOP lawmakers. “This is not reflective of the American public.”

Stefanik said she then asked Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the minority leader candidates, what their plans were to recruit and elect more women.  “I was struck that I really didn’t get an answer,” she recalled in an interview Friday.

Just one new Republican woman, so far, will be sworn in for her first term in January.  Yet when Cheney and Stefanik look across the aisle next year, they will see a record number of female Democrats, at least 89.

Trump won two years ago despite more than a dozen women accusing him of improper conduct or sexual assault, charges he denies. After his win, the Democratic Party and liberal activists focused early on recruiting and advancing female candidates. The reaction to the #MeToo movement further encouraged Democratic women, culminating in the clash over sexual misconduct allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and the GOP’s treatment of his accusers.

Kavanaugh denied the allegations. Trump mocked one of his accusers, .  . . Stefanik took a more nuanced view, believing that the terrible standing with women was pretty well baked before last month’s confirmation vote.  “We were having problems with women voters before that,” she said.

Cheney sees her main focus as sharpening the party’s message. She intends to do a lot more than just stand behind McCarthy, the incoming minority leader, to provide a better visual backdrop.

She wants to go after Democrats for supporting a “socialist economic policy” like single-payer insurance and how such a national health program would limit women’s medical choices. “That would be a disaster,” she said.

I'm sorry, but Cheney - a child of privilege who has ridden her parents' fame to success - is clueless on the issue of heath care access.  The more I see and with a background of doing legal work for  hospital system, single payer insurance is the only way all citizens will have equal access to adequate healthcare. 

Kaine Calls Out Stewart's Praise and Encouragement of White Supremacists

Republicans faced a moment of truth in 2016 as to whether or not the party retained any shred of morality when they nominated Donald Trump as their presidential candidate.  Some 70,000 voters spread across three states failed the test of morality when they gave Trump an Electoral College victory - sadly, the Electors failed the test of morality when they rejected their constitutional duty to protect the nation from an unfit demagogue.  Now, in 2018, Virginia faces a test of the morality in the U.S. Senate contest between Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican extremist and white supremacist Corey Stewart. Stewart embodies everything morally deficient in today's Republican Party as he bases his campaign on racial hatred and pandering to religious extremists who make the biblical Pharisees look to be the height of moral decency.  Over the weekend, Tim Kaine blasted Stewart for the ugliness that under-girds his campaign and his connections to racists and anti-Semites.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) attacked Republican challenger Corey A. Stewart for his ties to white supremacists in a speech to more than 1,000 cheering Democrats on Saturday, unloading on the brash defender of Confederate symbols who won the GOP nomination last week.

“My opponent likes to praise and encourage white supremacists, those who organize hate-filled rallies like the tragedy in Charlottesville and perpetrate online filth and anti-Semitism,” Kaine said. “This week the American press was filled with stories about his bizarre connections to spreaders of hate. And Israeli newspapers were filled with articles about his ties to notorious anti-Semites. Is this who Virginia is in 2018? Is this what the Senate needs?”

Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors since 2006, leads Virginia’s second-largest jurisdiction with a swaggering style that he touts as “more Trump than Trump.” His efforts to crack down on undocumented immigrants in the county stretch back more than a decade. He [Stewrt] embraced the Confederate flag and monuments in a bid for governor last year, a strategy that startled many establishment Republicans but nearly propelled him to victory in a primary battle with former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie. Gillespie, who went on to ape some of Stewart’s hard-edge messaging, lost in a landslide to Democrat Ralph Northam in November.

During the gubernatorial primary race, Stewart twice appeared with Jason Kessler, founder of Unity and Security for America (USA), a fledgling group that calls for “defending Western Civilization.” Kessler went on to organize the Unite the Right rally, which sparked deadly unrest in Charlottesville last summer.

Stewart also called Paul Nehlen, a self-professed “pro-white” candidate for Congress in Wisconsin, “one of my personal heroes” for challenging House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.).

In his speech Saturday, Kaine also took aim at the Trump administration for separating hundreds of migrant children from their parents on the nation’s southern border — a practice that Kaine suggested was rooted in racism. . . . . “On the night before Father’s Day, that’s what this nation has come to with this president. . . . Is there any doubt that if these children had light skin and were speaking English that they wouldn’t be loaded into cells and rooms in a windowless Walmart in the hundreds and the thousands on the southern border of this country?”

Kaine laid out what he called his “positive vision” for the country, including “health care for all,” affordable college and criminal justice reform. He eventually pivoted to a full-throated condemnation of Stewart, starting with the county board chairman’s record on taxes, education, climate change and abortion.

[E]ven the Koch brothers — refused to support him,” Kaine said, referring to the founders of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group that has announced that it will not back Stewart.

It goes without saying that The Family Foundation - Virginia's faux "family values" organization and leading hate group - supports Stewart.

McCain, Palin and the GOP Descent into Insanity

When John McCain selected Sarah Palin - the idiot of Wasilla - as his vice presidential running mate, he likely sealed his own defeat in 2008.  For many now former Republicans, Palin's selection began the exodus from the GOP and her proud embrace of ignorance, religious extremism and dog whistle calls to white supremacists embodied what has now come to define the Republican Party.  McCain in his twilight still does not fully accept his responsibility for paving the way for Donald Trump and transformation of the Republican Party into something foul and toxic.  But as a piece in New York Magazine notes, history may see McCain's horrible mistake as a pivotal moment in setting the course for the train wreck now consuming the nation.   I had long respected McCain who had been held prisoner at the "Hanoi Hilton" with a long time friend of mine, but his selection of Palin was just too much to stomach and helped confirm my support for Obama. Here are article highlights:

When historians — or, really any of us — look back at President Trump’s ascent to the presidency, they will identify many moments over the years, big and small, that could be identified as warning signs of the catastrophe to come.

But in purely political terms, one other moment leaps to mind: the day in 2008 when John McCain upended expectations by picking then-Alaska governor Sarah Palin to be his vice-presidential running mate. It’s not as if Republicans hadn’t worn the badge of anti-intellectualism before (see: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush). But Palin personified a dangerous new strain. She (infamously) didn’t read much; put forth few policy positions beyond “drill, baby drill”; excelled at whipping up crowds into a frothing frenzy; and attacked Barack Obama in brazen, personal terms. Stylistically, she seemed to be almost completely at odds with McCain, a deeply conservative traditionalist who prefers military wars to cultural ones.

But by and large, the GOP base adored Palin. Its loving embrace of such an unhinged figure was an early sign that the Republican Party was far more willing to tolerate qualities once thought to be disqualifying for public life than many people understood.

Throughout the campaign, and since, McCain has steadfastly defended Palin. But in a story reported from his Arizona ranch, . . . . reports that McCain does have regrets about his VP pick. The reason for his discontent — which he has elaborated on in an upcoming book and movie — is that he wishes he had trusted his instincts and picked Joe Lieberman instead.

[I]it’s striking that, even at this late stage, McCain won’t admit that Palin represents the same variation of grievance politics he now abjures.

McCain, who President Trump has taunted in grossly personal terms (“I prefer war heroes who weren’t captured”) has been one of the few Republicans to consistently take on the president. He has attacked Trump’s “spurious, half-baked nationalism” and furiously criticized his continuous praise of Vladimir Putin. And while he often votes for the president’s priorities, making his everlasting “maverick” label something of a joke, he was the deciding “no” to kill Obamacare repeal in the Senate, an act of apostasy that has earned Trump’s perpetual ire.

[McCain is] also out of sync with the GOP base in most other ways. He’s a national-security hawk in a time of Republican isolationism, a centrist on immigration in a party full of America Firsters. Beyond his policy positions, McCain is out of step in another important way: he wants Republicans to step back from the toxic, grievance-based ideology that now dominates the party.

McCain framed the problem as a bipartisan one. But it’s the Republican party where “the bombastic loudmouths” have really gained control in recent years, culminating in the party’s surrender to President Trump. John McCain has always called himself a maverick, but he’ll end his life as all but an outcast.

It is facile to draw a straight line from Palin to this sad state of affairs. But it is striking that, even now, McCain cannot, or will not, fully reckon with the forces he helped unleash.

Republican Cowardice in the Face of Trump

Some - including me on numerous occasions - say that the Republican Party has been completely taken over by Trump and that most Republicans now subscribe to Trump's racist and misogynist agenda.  For many in the GOP the statement is sadly only too true.  For others, rather than stand up and try to save some shred of decency for the Party, they cower in fear and cowardice and allow the reprehensible become increasingly normalized in the GOP.  They fear the Party base and the treat of a primary challenge more than they respect honor and decency. Some fear for Trump's wrath.  Whatever the motivation, the act little better than the "good Germans" who allowed Hitler's rise.  Former Republican David Jolly calls out the cowards of the GOP in a lengthy column in the Washington Post and calls on them to put country first, which is their true duty as members of Congress.  Here are column excerpts:

We might as well impeach Trump. That was the sentiment of a sitting Republican member of Congress confiding in conservative blogger and radio host Erick Erickson. The anonymous member said [Trump] the president was an “idiot,” “evil,” “stupid.”

It was hardly the first time: During the later stages of the 2016 presidential campaign, GOP strategists anonymously expressed concern that Trump might win. In 2017, Sen. Susan Collins, seemingly unaware that she was on a hot microphone, acknowledged that she was “worried” about the administration. Still others have reportedly suggested that they think the president should be removed from office, though they, too, have almost always done so on background.

 

[T]he one consistent refrain I hear is, “I’m just keeping my head down, trying not to get noticed.” Some have privately described to me that serving in Congress during the Trump administration is “miserable.” Moreover, a colleague who has decided to call it quits confessed he was doing so to try to salvage his political career by not being forever branded a “Trump Republican.”

Like Erickson’s anonymous interlocutor, these politicians are engaging in what can only be considered a personal catharsis of sorts, not an act of political courage. A meaningful political statement would have been on the record, direct to voters, and would have substantively contributed to the national debate in which we remain engaged regarding [Trump's] this president’s fitness for office. This wasn’t that.

Few Republican officials today are willing to openly criticize [Trump] the president, even if they have deeply held reservations about Donald Trump’s ability to govern. They instead keep their lament private, their panic measured and their comments off the record. It’s a situation that needs to change. If you believe in serving your constituents, you are obliged to speak up and speak publicly.

This is Trump’s Republican Party, and his approval numbers among Republican voters sit at close to 90 percent. Cross him and you risk not only the wrath of the president himself but also the electoral base that he has cultivated to wrestle control of the party.

Knowingly or not, members of Congress choose one of two approaches to serving. Many strictly embrace their partisan identity, believing with honest conviction that they promised to uphold a party platform that voters back home both affirmed and expected their representative to enforce. A smaller minority of members of Congress embraces the notion that though elected in partisan races, they hold a greater responsibility — that upon taking the oath of office they hold a public trust and are called upon to advance the nation’s broader interests, even if that means at times going against their party. This latter approach was the very essence of James Madison’s embrace of a republican form of government. As he puts it in Federalist 10, a chosen representative may “best discern the true interest of their country” and may provide a voice “more consonant to the greater good.”

During my years in the House of Representatives, I witnessed members on the Democrats’ side of the aisle publicly vote on the House floor against Nancy Pelosi to be their leader, just as GOP members coordinated to stop the coronation of Kevin McCarthy following the resignation of Speaker John A. Boehner. These members largely lost the support of their party’s fundraising arms, suffered through immense criticism from their base and were often relegated to inconsequential committee work in the Congress.

I, for my own part, called on Trump to drop out of the presidential race from the House floor in December 2015. I was also a Republican advocate for marriage equality; I embraced the science behind climate change; I voted against the Planned Parenthood investigation; I advocated for reasonable gun control measures; I pushed radical campaign finance reform. The result? The party apparatus that spent millions on my behalf in my first run for Congress happily spent zero in my last. I lost my race, and now I’m a political commentator rather than an elected official.

But losing your office doesn’t mean you have to lose your voice. My wife and I call it the “sleep well at night test.” There’s something Margolies-Mezvinsky, McCain and these other outspoken members have that too many of today’s Republican leaders don’t: courage. These members each went on the record, stood on principle and accepted the political consequences of doing what they believed reflected the right direction for the country.

Today we have [Trump] a president who continually undermines our most basic institutions, from attacking an independent judiciary and law enforcement agents, to belittling a free press that has been a bedrock of our nation since its founding, to normalizing an invective form of politics while injecting increasing volatility into both our economic and national security, to flirting with the onset of a constitutional crisis caused by his own actions. 

[F]or the 535 men and women on Capitol Hill, there lies a greater responsibility — a responsibility envisioned when our founders drafted the Constitution and a responsibility knowingly accepted by the members of Congress, all of whom owe to us true faith and allegiance to the same.

Which is why the casual supermarket conversation between a congressman and a journalist on background isn’t funny. It’s scandalous.

The silence of these members of Congress is both a violation of the public trust and a reflection of their own lack of personal and political mettle.

Refusing to publicly acknowledge your convictions simply affirms your unwillingness to act on them. And that is an indictment of you, not [Trump] the president.

History rightfully discards those unwilling to take a stand, those who, in the face of a divided nation, shrink from controversy and seek refuge in the shadows of their own indecision. Conversely, history memorializes those who speak with courage, those who, at defining national moments, put country over party.

Sadly, I think it is too late to save the Republican Party.  The only way forward is to defeat Republicans in every election possible, from local school board elections to the race for the White House.  The GOP as it now exists needs to die.