The Grand Old Delusion

The latest polls show that former Vice President Joe Biden is leading President Donald Trump by a five-point margin nationwide, according to CNN and the research firm SSRS, while Trump has a seven-point lead in battleground states. As we know, battleground states have historically been significant in ultimately choosing the winner in our electoral college system.

The 2020 election, which takes place Nov. 3, could be shaping up as another situation in which the Democratic Party candidate wins the popular vote but fails to garner enough electoral votes. In other words, we could be gearing up for another tight race.

MOBILE, AL- AUGUST 21: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets supporters after his rally at Ladd-Peebles Stadium on August 21, 2015 in Mobile, Alabama. The Trump campaign moved tonight’s rally to a larger stadium to accommodate demand. (Photo by Mark Wallheiser/Getty Images)

This is stunning to me because Trump has spent four straight years brazenly lying to the public, issuing embellishments and half-truths and just generally talking out of his ass — almost all of it documented and written about repeatedly in the press — as well as insulting nearly every voting demographic in the country and being openly hostile to our democratic institutions. Yet, he seems to have carte blanche free reign to do as he pleases inside the Republican Party, which is full of cowards who refuse to stand up to him, and his supporters in the public sphere either don’t care about his unethical behavior or give him a pass because they like his politics.

Trump bullies and insults anyone who dares disagree or question him. He has shown many instances of narcissistic tendencies and crude behavior toward women. He’s flirted with open racists. He and/or his inner cycle most certainly colluded with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. He has shown little to no empathy during the coronavirus pandemic. He unabashedly refuses to wear a mask and set an example for the rest of the country. In one of the many talking-out-of-his-ass episodes, he raised the question about whether people could potentially inject disinfectant as a potential cure for the virus. And lo and behold, some small percentage of the population took him seriously. Of course, as he has done in the past, Trump covers his tracks on this idiotic idea by claiming that he was being “sarcastic.” I watched the press conference, and it sounded as if it was a fairly serious suggestion.

In any case, one can only imagine why millions still support him, but something close to half of the people who have been polled are still on the Trump train despite everything that I have mentioned.

Do they support him because he has made good on his campaign promises? A quick check at politifact.com will reveal that, of Trump’s five major campaign promises, two were broken promises — repeal Obamacare and build a wall and force Mexico to fund it — two were compromises and only partly completed and one promise — the travel ban — was actually kept. The following is a breakdown of all of his promises from Trump-O-Meter:

Remember that the election is six months away, so the likelihood that many, or any, of these will get done in that short timeframe, especially given the national pandemic crisis and Trump’s ceaseless obsession with “fake news” and how he’s being portrayed in the media, instead of, you know, being a leader and actually governing.

So, what is behind the continued support Trump receives, and no doubt, will continue to receive from conservatives heading into the election? In part, blue collar America sees the president as standing up for policies that will help them, although the Republican Party’s platforms the last several decades have been anything but concerned with the working class. And since at least 2008, the rise of the Tea Party and continued influence of Fox News, members of the populist right have lived in a vacuum, an echo chamber of whatever they want to hear. Obama was the reincarnation of the “antichrist.” The Democrats, liberals, progressives, homosexuals, feminists and atheists are all immoral, ill-begotten people who want to ruin the country, or worse and even more ridiculous, are themselves tools of the “antichrist.” Were these folks to read a book, they might learn that, historically, it has been the liberals, progressives and freethinkers who have largely moved society forward and generally cared for the interests of everyday, working Americans.

Trump’s other main voting bloc out in the public, besides wealthy Wall Street banker types who are willing to support any policy that puts the health of our financial institutions and corporations above the health and well-being of people, are white evangelicals, many of whom, according to Pew, still believe that Trump is fighting for their beliefs, even if some of them question his personal behavior. One of the more telling polls by Pew is the percentage of evangelicals who think Trump is either very religious or somewhat religious (12 percent and 52 percent, respectively) compared with the general public (7 percent and 28 percent, respectively). Sixty-three percent of the general public believes that Trump is not religious. But make no mistake about it, white, born-again Christian evangelicals in 2016, despite already having plenty of documented cases of Trump’s racism, sexism and dishonesty, overwhelmingly voted for him by an 80 percent margin, according to Pew. He was their consecrated leader. Remember this photo?

That Republicans have claimed their party holds the moral high ground in America the last half century, couching it in Christian language when their policies have little, if anything, to do with the teachings of Jesus — care for the sick, the downtrodden and the least among us and meet the needs of the poor — is contemptible. The Republican calling card, since the rise of the Moral Majority in the late 70s and even before, has, in fact, been to address the interests of corporations, financial institutions and, of course, privileged white people. The platform goes like this: leverage power from the pulpit and through The Family, leverage power from Wall Street, leverage power and influence from the halls of Congress and demonize those who actually do care about the underdogs of our society: the sick, the disabled, the blue collar workers, the immigrants and inner city families. “Somewhere I read,” as Martin Luther King Jr. would say, that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Yet, while the Democratic Party certainly contains many Christians, it is the Republican Party that has draped itself in the flag and the cross all the while eschewing the very teachings espoused in the Bible.

The populist right, then, has been duped into believing that Trump and the Republican Party has their best interests at heart. They do not. But despite the reality, and decades of evidence as support and four years of outright lies and unethical behavior from the Child-In-Chief, one of the pettiest human beings I have ever encountered, and certainly one of the most ill-fit to ever hold office, conservatives will, once again, lacking a basic understanding of context or history, foolishly vote against their own vested interests and make this a close race.

Evangelicals and white workers in small-town America believe that the Republican Party cares about them. They believe Trump, or whoever the Republican nominee is in any given year, cares about them. All are demonstrably false. This is the great delusion of the last 30 years.

Bobby Jindal’s abortive first ‘election’ appearance

At the same time that a slew of potential Republican presidential candidates, none of whom will likely be in contention for the presidency, were courting far-right voters this past week at the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines, Gov. Bobby Jindal was off crusading in Baton Rouge, La., at The Response prayer meeting held by the American Family Association, as he joined about 3,000 fellow evangelicals — and I don’t think this language is an exaggeration — “to save America, through prayer and fasting, from the threats of Sharia, homosexuality, pornography, and abortion.” Indeed, according to Slate’s report:

Materials promoting the event described natural disasters including Hurricane Katrina, as well as the national debt, as the just result of America’s sins, punishments akin to the biblical wave of locusts.

Despite claims to the contrary, and despite federal tax law stipulating that preachers and religious organizations can’t take political positions or endorse candidates lest they run the risk of losing their tax-exempt status (Section 501(c)(3) of the IRS tax code), The Response gathering contained numerous political elements:

Jindal and other speakers prayed for the different branches of government and for President Obama. Louisiana state Sen. Jonathan Perry called for more “born-again Christians” to be elected to political office. Another speaker said, “When our government sanctions [abortion], it brings reproach upon our land.” She insisted that “the right to abort will be overturned,” but in the meantime, the “payment for bloodshed is blood.” Pastor Bob Phillips announced that a group of pastors was “rising up” against “America’s pestilence” and fighting against people who wanted to “silence the voice of those who would make biblical application” to politics. He said that pastors were ignoring requirements of their churches’ tax-exempt status that they not make political speeches from the pulpit, and they were sending the IRS videos of themselves endorsing political candidates in their sermons.

The event was so political that the Louisiana Conference of Catholic Bishops, despite participating in a pro-life march nearby, declined to take part. Rob Tasman, the LCCB director, said, “The event was viewed more as an evangelical event with a political tone to it, and the bishops don’t participate in such events.”

Kudos to the bishops. Needless to say, the nation apparently didn’t miss much, as a significant amount of attendees had already cleared out by the time Jindal got up to talk about his religious conversion:

The Response kept reminding me of high school. Jindal’s story of his conversion was couched entirely in his high school experience, including a pivotal moment in which he talks with a “pretty girl,” whom he had a crush on, about her dream of becoming a Supreme Court justice and overturning Roe v. Wade. Everything was superficial and black and white, in the way adolescents see the world. Jindal didn’t want to look deeper than this: “In the end, our God wins.”

Jindal might have been better served, politically, by casting lots with the sea of crazies up the road in Des Moines. At least then he couldn’t be accused of trying to conflate politics and religion. As a Slate commentator named Stafford opined:

Wasn’t Jindal the one who, only a few years back, called on the GOP to stop being so stupid? He should have stuck with that.

Evangelicals speak out on immigration

When Evangelicals, who stake their lives on a cobbled together, archaic book that is obsessed with violence, war, slavery and blood sacrifice, are calling you out of touch, you know you’ve got a political crisis on your hands:

Some of the nation’s most influential evangelical groups urged a solution to illegal immigration on Tuesday that defies the harsh rhetoric of the Republican primary race, which continues to undermine Mitt Romney’s appeal to Hispanic voters.

The call by the groups represents a recognition that in one bedrock element of the conservative movement — evangelical Christians — the demography of their followers is changing, becoming more Hispanic, and that Republican leaders risk being out of step with their hawkish talk of border fences and immigration crackdowns like those in Arizona.

Tom Minnery, the senior vice president of policy for one evangelical group, Focus on the Family, said many of the 11 million to 12 million illegal immigrants should be free to “come out of the shadows” and “begin the process of restitution” leading to attaining legal residency.

The Tea Party and evangelicals

A few days ago, I wrote about the possible decline or death of the Tea Party movement, in light of Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney’s rise in the polls and the sinking of Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and others. While I realize that the Tea Party is probably as much about small government and what it deems as “fiscal responsibility” with public money as it is about social issues, it still represents the strongest bloc of evangelical support within the ranks of the GOP. Thus, the New York Times today appropriately asked the question today: “Have Evangelicals Lost Their Sway?

In response, David P. Gushee, the Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University, wrote:

This year, after Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin decided to sit the election out, two organic evangelical candidates emerged: Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry. (Herman Cain might qualify as a third.) Both Bachmann and Perry are clearly practicing conservative evangelicals. Perry, at least, had a serious chance to become the Republican nominee. But neither he nor Bachmann proved successful in sealing the deal with their own evangelical constituency, and both failed to extend their reach much beyond that constituency.

The emergence of Newt Gingrich, a thrice-married Catholic convert, and Mitt Romney, a committed Mormon, as leaders of the Republican pack does not symbolize a decline in evangelical influence. It more clearly symbolizes the failure of the two organic evangelical candidates. In the case of Gingrich, it also symbolizes the readiness of many conservative evangelicals to trade off their supposedly cherished family values for a candidate they think can win.

And Lara M. Brown, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, had this to say:

Stalwart support among white evangelical Protestants constitutes the Republican long game. Not only do these voters provide the critical momentum lifts during the nomination contest, but their enthusiastic backing could well be the key to winning the general election.

Republican presidential aspirants have gleaned this lesson over the past decade. That’s why there are three serious candidates – Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum – vying for evangelical support and two imperfect social conservatives – Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich – trying to play the part. Earlier in the race, there were two others – Tim Pawlenty and Herman Cain – claiming to represent these voters.

This many candidates in the Republican field suggests that evangelicals possess formidable power, not waning influence. Their only problem is their lack of consensus.

But is that really what’s going on? Does the sheer number of evangelical candidates say something about vitality of that wing of the GOP. Quantity, after all, doesn’t at all mean quality.

The striking element in this primary – Huckabee and Palin certainly got this slow roll going back in 2008 – is the unequivocal anti-intellectualism that candidates like Perry and Bachmann represent (and Cain before he dropped out). Earlier in the primary election season, one of my first thoughts was that the Republican Party had set the bar so low that, again in the wake of Huckabee and Palin, that anyone who said mentioned “God,” “Christianity” or “wholesome American values” enough times had a legitimate chance of gaining clout in the Republican Party. Perry and Bachmann, then, were in my mind, current manifestations of Huckabee and Palin from 2008, with two noted difference: that Perry isn’t an ordained minister and that Huckabee would have actually made a more competent leader. Not that I have a dog in the hunt, but my hope in all this, given the recent successes of Romney and Gingrich, is that GOP’s ideologies are in the process of sliding more toward the center after Palin and the gang helped to nearly tip it over the edge.

That said, I don’t think the evangelical bloc of the GOP is going away any time soon since abortion, gay rights and stem cell research concerns are still very much a part of the public conversation. I would be very surprised, however, if Romney wins the nomination. His is Mormon, after all, so unless some new candidate(s) surface, Gingrich will most likely win by default as what I have been calling the “establishment” candidate.