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The GOP's False Narrative of Supporting Workers

One hears lots of bloviating by Republicans about supporting working Americans but when one looks at actual GOP actions at both the federal and state level, the real story is far different than the GOP's false narrative that the party and its elected officials.  Across GOP controlled red states one sees a growing effort to roll back labor laws on both safety matters, restrictions on child labor and eliminating rest breaks and meal breaks (Kentucky Republicans are currently guilty of the latter).  At the national level, Republicans oppose labor unions - a movement that helped create the middle class of the 1950's and 1960's - and Donald Trump is pushing for more tariffs on foreign goods should he be reelected to the White House.  In truth, tariffs increase the prices paid by American consumers, NOT foreign manufacturers or governments, yet Trump and his MAGA base are too stupid or too blinded by their hatreds to grasp this simple reality. A column in the New York Times looks at the realities of the differences between the GOP anti-worker policies and those of the Democrats, including Joe Biden,  The GOP remains skilled at playing on hate and bigotry to induce the members of the party base to vote against their own economic best interests.  Here are column highlights:

There was a lot of breathless speculation before Tuesday’s presidential primaries in Michigan, but the actual results didn’t clarify the two most important questions: How many “uncommitted” voters angry about President Biden’s approach to the war in Gaza will abstain in November, even though Donald Trump would surely be much more supportive of Benjamin Netanyahu than Biden? And how many blue-collar workers will support Trump in the false belief that he’s on their side?

But we can at least say with certainty that Trump is not now and never has been pro-worker — while Biden is.

Naturally, that’s not the way Trump tells the story. In September, during an autoworkers’ strike, Trump, addressing workers at a nonunion Michigan auto parts factory, declared that he had saved an auto industry that was “on its knees, gasping its last breaths” when he took office. The day before, by contrast, Biden joined union workers on the picket line.

This is, however, pure self-aggrandizing fantasy. When Trump took office, the auto industry had already regained most of the ground it had lost during the Great Recession. This recovery was possible because in 2009, the Obama-Biden administration stepped in to rescue the major auto companies. At the time, many Republicans vehemently opposed that bailout.

What about Trump personally? He flip-flopped, first endorsing the bailout, then years later siding with the Republican right in denouncing it, saying, “You could have let it” — the auto industry — “go bankrupt, frankly, and rebuilt itself.” . . . . If you don’t quite get the meaning there, he was in effect suggesting busting the auto unions so that workers would be forced to accept pay cuts. Populism!

Once in office, Trump, who campaigned as a different kind of Republican, mostly governed as a standard conservative. His promises to rebuild America’s infrastructure — which drew pushback from Republicans in Congress — became a running joke. His biggest legislative achievement was a tax cut that was a big giveaway to corporations and high-income Americans. His attempt at health care “reform” would have gutted Obamacare without any workable replacement, causing millions of Americans to lose health insurance coverage.

Trump did depart from G.O.P. orthodoxy by imposing substantial tariffs on imports, with the supposed goal of restoring manufacturing. But by imposing tariffs on industrial inputs like steel and aluminum, raising their price, Trump made U.S. manufacturing — auto production in particular — less competitive, and probably destroyed jobs on net.

[T]he Trump team still appears to believe that tariffs are paid by foreigners, when in fact their burden falls on U.S. workers and consumers. All indications are that a second Trump term would be marked by more tariffs, just as badly conceived as those of his first.

How does Biden’s record compare? He did preside over a burst of inflation, but so did the leaders of other advanced economies, pretty clearly indicating that pandemic-related disruptions, rather than policy, were responsible. And inflation has been subsiding, despite a few bumps along the way — without the high unemployment some economists asserted would be necessary.

In terms of policy, Biden has made a big break with Trump’s golf-course conservatism. He delivered on infrastructure. He enacted two major bills promoting manufacturing — one in semiconductors, the other focused on green energy. Manufacturing employment has fully recovered from the Covid shock; manufacturing investment has soared.

I don’t know how many Americans are even aware of these policy initiatives. Or how many realize that the Biden era has been really good for blue-collar wages. . . . most workers’ wages adjusted for inflation are higher than before the pandemic, and are actually above the prepandemic trend.

In short, there’s a reason the United Automobile Workers endorsed Biden, although many of its members will vote for Trump anyway, imagining that he’s on their side.

But Trump isn’t a populist, he’s a poseur. When making actual policy as opposed to speeches, he basically governed as Mitch McConnell with tariffs. Biden, on the other hand, really has pursued a pro-worker agenda — more so, arguably, than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt — and has presided over a significant reduction in inequality.

How many of us will vote based on this reality?

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Why America Lost Its Religion

For years now I have argued that the wrongly named "Christian Right" would be the death of the Christian brand in America. The more desperately these Christians in name only have become to inflict their Bronze Age beliefs on all of society, the faster has become the exodus of Americans from organized religion.  The unholy alliance of evangelicals and Christofascists with the Republican Party which pushes policies that are the antithesis of Christ's social gospel message has spotlighted the hypocrisy and cruelty of these self-labeled "godly Christians." The ongoing Christofascist/Republican assault on women's bodily autonomy and the outward racism and hatred of others have alienated more and more Americans, especially younger Americans.  The sex scandals of the Catholic Church and the Church's effort to protect its wealth rather than compensate victims has driven many away and put the callousness of Church leaders on open display.  Sex scandals and abuse cover ups within the Southern Baptist Convention have added to the mindset among many that hypocrisy and hatred of others are the twin pillars of Christianity in America (and other pats of the world).  The end result is that increasingly, evangelicals have fused politics with a religious war against non-believers and a host of those deemed "other" by the falsely pious.   A long piece in The Atlantic looks at this move away from religion by more and more Americans.  Here are highlights:

The idea of American exceptionalism has become so dubious that much of its modern usage is merely sarcastic. But when it comes to religion, Americans really are exceptional. No rich country prays nearly as much as the U.S, and no country that prays as much as the U.S. is nearly as rich.

America’s unique synthesis of wealth and worship has puzzled international observers and foiled their grandest theories of a global secular takeover. In the late 19th century, an array of celebrity philosophers—the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud—proclaimed the death of God, and predicted that atheism would follow scientific discovery and modernity in the West, sure as smoke follows fire.

Stubbornly pious Americans threw a wrench in the secularization thesis. Deep into the 20th century, more than nine in 10 Americans said they believed in God and belonged to an organized religion, with the great majority of them calling themselves Christian. That number held steady—through the sexual-revolution ’60s, through the rootless and anxious ’70s, and through the “greed is good” ’80s.

But in the early 1990s, the historical tether between American identity and faith snapped. Religious non-affiliation in the U.S. started to rise—and rise, and rise. By the early 2000s, the share of Americans who said they didn’t associate with any established religion (also known as “nones”) had doubled. By the 2010s, this grab bag of atheists, agnostics, and spiritual dabblers had tripled in size. . . . the rise of religious non-affiliation in America looks like one of those rare historical moments that is neither slow, nor subtle, nor cyclical. You might call it exceptional.

The obvious question for anybody who spends at least two seconds looking at the graph above is: What the hell happened around 1990?

According to Christian Smith, a sociology and religion professor at the University of Notre Dame, America’s nonreligious lurch has mostly been the result of three historical events: the association of the Republican Party with the Christian right, the end of the Cold War, and 9/11.

This story begins with the rise of the religious right in the 1970s. Alarmed by the spread of secular culture—including but not limited to the sexual revolution, the Roe v. Wade decision, the nationalization of no-fault divorce laws, and Bob Jones University losing its tax-exempt status over its ban on interracial dating—Christians became more politically active. The GOP welcomed them with open arms. The party, which was becoming more dependent on its exurban-white base, needed a grassroots strategy and a policy platform. Within the next decade, the religious right—including Ralph Reed’s Christian Coalition, James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, and Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority—had become fundraising and organizing juggernauts for the Republican Party. In 1980, the GOP social platform was a facsimile of conservative Christian views on sexuality, abortion, and school prayer.

[I]t disgusted liberal Democrats, especially those with weak connections to the Church. It also shocked the conscience of moderates, who preferred a wide berth between their faith and their politics. Smith said it’s possible that young liberals and loosely affiliated Christians first registered their aversion to the Christian right in the early 1990s, after a decade of observing its powerful role in conservative politics.

As the U.S.S.R. dissolved, so did atheism’s association with America’s nemesis. After that, “nones” could be forthright about their religious indifference, without worrying that it made them sound like Soviet apologists.

Third, America’s next geopolitical foe wasn’t a godless state. It was a God-fearing, stateless movement: radical Islamic terrorism. A series of bombings and attempted bombings in the 1990s by fundamentalist organizations such as al-Qaeda culminated in the 9/11 attacks. It would be a terrible oversimplification to suggest that the fall of the Twin Towers encouraged millions to leave their church, Smith said. But over time, al-Qaeda became a useful referent for atheists who wanted to argue that all religions were inherently destructive.

Meanwhile, during George W. Bush’s presidency, Christianity’s association with unpopular Republican policies drove more young liberals and moderates away from both the party and the Church. . . . the 2006 best seller American Theocracy argued that evangelicals in the Republican coalition were staging a quiet coup that would plunge the country into disarray and financial ruin. Throughout the Bush presidency, liberal voters—especially white liberal voters— detached from organized religion in ever-higher numbers.

Religion has lost its halo effect in the past three decades, not because science drove God from the public square, but rather because politics did. In the 21st century, “not religious” has become a specific American identity—one that distinguishes secular, liberal whites from the conservative, evangelical right.

[S]candals in the Catholic Church have accelerated its particularly rapid loss of moral stature. According to Pew research, 13 percent of Americans today self-identify as “former Catholics,” and many of them leave organized religion altogether. And as the ranks of the nones have swelled, it’s become more socially acceptable for casual or rare churchgoers to tell pollsters that they don’t particularly identify with any faith. It’s also become easier for nones to meet, marry, and raise children who grow up without any real religious attachment.

Most important has been the dramatic changes in the American family. The past half century has dealt a series of body blows to American marriage. Divorce rates spiked in the ’70s through the ’90s, following the state-by-state spread of no-fault divorce laws. Just as divorce rates stabilized, the marriage rate started to plummet in the ’80s, due to both the decline of marriage within the working class and delayed marriage among college-educated couples.

Finally, the phenomenon of “delayed adulthood” might be another subtle contributor. More Americans, especially college graduates in big metro areas, are putting off marriage and childbearing until their 30s, and are using their 20s to establish a career, date around, and enjoy being young and single in a city. By the time they settle down, they have established a routine—work, brunch, gym, date, drink, football—that leaves little room for weekly Mass. “They know who they are by 30, and they don’t feel like they need a church to tell them,” Smith said.

The rise of the nones shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, the religious identity that seems to be doing the best job at both retaining old members and attracting new ones is the newfangled American religion of Nothing Much at All.

But the liberal politics of young people brings us to the first big reason to care about rising non-affiliation. A gap has opened up between America’s two political parties. In a twist of fate, the Christian right entered politics to save religion, only to make the Christian-Republican nexus unacceptable to millions of young people—thus accelerating the country’s turn against religion.

[T]the left today has a higher share of religiously unaffiliated voters than anytime in modern history. At the same time, the average religiosity of white Christian Republicans has gone up, according to Robert P. Jones, the CEO of the polling firm PRRI and the author of The End of White Christian America. Evangelicals feel so embattled that they’ve turned to a deeply immoral and authoritarian champion to protect them . . . . American politics is at risk of becoming a war of religiosity versus secularism by proxy, where both sides see the other as a catastrophic political force that must be destroyed at all costs.

American nones may well build successful secular systems of belief, purpose, and community. But imagine what a devout believer might think: Millions of Americans have abandoned religion, only to re-create it everywhere they look.

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Trump Gave Dobbs to Evangelicals; They Want More

Having followed the misnamed "Christian Right"  for decades, in addition to demanding special rights and privileges for themselves,  there is a long list of reactionary policies evangelicals and Christofascists want to impose on all of American society. A total bans on abortion nationwide is just  one of the things these religious  extremists want regardless of the views of a majority of Americans. Other items on their lists include bans on contraception, reversing the legality of same sex marriage - indeed, they would recriminalize homosexuality - rewriting sex education in schools to abstinence only, forcing Christian prayer in schools, and in some elements of the movement a return to the Jim Crow era.  Frighteningly, more and more Republicans )including Republican judges) are willing to give evangelicals and Christofascists what they want to either secure their votes and/or avoid primary challenges.  As president Donald Trump fit this pattern and through his appointees to the Supreme Court, all of whom lied during their confirmation hearings, gave this group of extremists the overturning of Roe v. Wade.  All signs are that evangelicals and Christofascists want even more and Trump, if reelected, would pander to their demands with little or no thought for the wants of the majority of Americans.  This motivation is one reason for the Republican Party's growing hostility to democracy itself.  A column in the New York Times looks at where we find ourselves:

It is very clear that Republicans were caught off guard this month by a decision the Alabama Supreme Court issued that has jeopardized access to in vitro fertilization treatments in the state, on account of its conclusion that frozen embryos are “extrauterine children” and that I.V.F. clinics can be held liable for their destruction.

When asked for his thoughts, Senator Tommy Tuberville, one of the state’s two Republican senators, struggled to give a coherent answer. “We need to have more kids. We need to have an opportunity to do that, and I thought this was the right thing to do,” he said, seemingly unaware of how the decision might limit access to fertility treatments.

Facing the questions of I.V.F. and fetal personhood on Sunday, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas told CNN that it was a “complex” issue. “I’m not sure everybody has really thought about what all the potential problems are, and as a result no one really knows what the potential answers are,” he said.

One Republican who was not caught flat-footed was Donald Trump, who quickly declared his support for I.V.F. in a post on Truth Social. . . . . Later, during a rally in South Carolina, Trump called on the Alabama Legislature to find an “immediate solution to preserve the availability of I.V.F.” in the state.

One way to understand this move is that Trump wants to pivot to the center and distance himself from the most vocally anti-abortion Republicans. The question of in vitro fertilization gives him a chance to do so. But as he attempts to moderate his message, it is important to remember two facts. The first is that Trump is the reason that I.V.F. is now a contested issue. The second is that what Trump says is less important than what key parts of the Republican coalition want. And what key parts of the Republican coalition want is fetal personhood.

There’s no question that the Alabama decision would not have been possible without the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which revoked the constitutional right to an abortion. In doing so, the court gave states and state courts wide leeway to restrict the bodily autonomy and reproductive freedom of Americans, in the name of protecting life.

That the Dobbs decision would threaten I.V.F. was obvious from the moment the Supreme Court released its opinion in June 2022. That’s why, toward the end of 2022, Senate Democrats introduced a bill to protect the right to use in vitro fertilization.

If there is no Alabama decision without Dobbs, then there was no Dobbs with President Donald Trump. He nominated the three justices who formed the Dobbs majority along with three other Republican appointees. That is why Trump’s attempt to paint himself as a defender of I.V.F. rings hollow. He is essentially trying to position himself against his own record.

This raises a question. Why was Trump such an anti-abortion hard-liner? The answer is easy: because he was a Republican president specifically indebted to conservative evangelicals and anti-abortion activists for his victory in the 2016 presidential election. In particular, Trump’s promise to stack the federal judiciary, and the Supreme Court in particular, with anti-abortion jurists helped him consolidate conservative evangelical voters in the midst of scandal and controversy

Fifty-three percent of white evangelicals backed Trump in this year’s Iowa caucuses; 70 percent of white evangelicals backed him in the New Hampshire primary; and 71 percent backed him in the South Carolina Republican primary on Saturday.

What’s important, for thinking about a second Trump presidency, is that fetal personhood is the next battlefield in the anti-abortion movement’s war on reproductive rights, and conservative evangelicals are among those groups waving the standard. As one such activist, Jason Rapert of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, told The New York Times regarding the Alabama court decision, “It further affirms that life begins at conception.”

At least 11 states, The Washington Post notes, have “broadly defined personhood as beginning at fertilization in their state laws.”

It does not matter whether Trump rhetorically supports access to I.V.F. treatments. What matters is whether he would buck the priorities of his most steadfast supporters and veto a bill establishing fetal personhood across the United States. Given his record — he’ll sign pretty much anything his Republican allies send to the White House — we can be relatively sure that he wouldn’t.

Presidents are shaped as much by their political parties as they shape them. Trump’s enormous influence on the direction of the Republican Party should not occlude the extent to which he will act on behalf of his coalition if given another term of office. And when it comes to actually making laws, what a coalition wants is often more important than what a president says.