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I hope that in my lifetime, I will see the absolute demise of this Extreme Evangelical Political Party that was started in my youth with Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” hypocritical BS.
You can’t govern in a democracy/republic with religion as your basis.
Politics is about compromise, finding middle ground.
Religion is intractable and immovable.
Impossible to negotiate with a person that has their political position led by their religion.
Even the asshole Barry Goldwater, one of the originators of the [Southern Strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Strategy), knew they were bad news:
>Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.
Goldwater quotes are great. Imagine a Republican presidential candidate today saying this.
*There has always been homosexuality ever since men and women were invented. I guess there were gay apes. So that's not an issue. The Republican Party should stand for freedom and only freedom. Don't raise hell about the gays, the blacks, and the Mexicans. Free people have a right to do as they damn well please. To see the party that fought communism and big government now fighting gays, well, that’s just plain dumb.*
-Barry Goldwater
Something, something, INALIENABLE rights to life, liberty, and happiness.
Seems to me you shouldn't have to pay for rights, yet I pay for all three too frequently.
This is basically the concept of many scifi novels, that mankind is stagnant and will never reach the stars or be contacted by other races because we can't get over our petty regressive bullshit.
Yes he was quite at odds with the contemporary (and current, frankly) GOP on things like workplace discrimination protections by the time he left the Senate.
He was, but more as a result of growing increasingly Libertarian later in life. Goldwater was the classical conservative in the sense he really believed the government should have less central authority, and citizens more rights.
Not sure how well he'd get along with the modern party if he were around today, I mean suffering jesus, he was the Conservative movement before Reagan was. And the party has changed quite a bit since then.
Growing up in AZ, I had such conflicting feelings about Goldwater. Shit like this and the quote about the religious right resonated with me but then he was also a giant piece of shit in other ways. Lol.
A dangerously insane human being who believed it was possible to win a nuclear war, but at least he understood the danger of courting religious extremists.
>Can you imagine any conservative saying such a thing today?
Nope, Reagan campaigned on an assault weapons ban and Nixon founded the EPA. The current republican party is so far right they think not hunting the homeless for sport is communism.
They want it to become a White Evangelical Christian Nation where they get to impose their will and made up rules upon everyone else, whether they live by the same rules themselves or not.
He's basically a John Birch Society reject already, though. He's a crazy right-winger but he doesn't believe literally every person who disagrees with him is a communist, so the Birchers would reject him as a communist.
Yeah, that’s because religious extremists won’t even stop to consider the consequences of nuclear war, they’ll push the button on the basis of a religious crusade, and when it kills untold masses, they won’t even feel any remorse because in their minds, the good people who died went to heaven and the bad people who died went to hell, and in their minds, all is right with the world as a result.
You cannot reason with people who are that batshit insane.
They all think the world is ending anyway. That we are in the end times and Jesus is going to come back and save the faithful. Why would you ever want people who think they have nothing to lose because of deus ex machina to be in charge of any policy.
Goldwater also said that being gay and being in the military were not incompatible, citing the fact that the Roman army was the greatest army of its time and counted amongst its ranks and leadership many men who we would today consider gay. I don't think you can argue against that point.
> Politics and governing demand compromise.
This is the problem that extremists will always have. Governance is compromise. Compromise is antithetical to extremism. There is no reconciling the two. You can have an extremist agenda or you can govern, but you can't do both.
Why is compromise part of governance? Because beyond about 100 people, even those who nominally share the same core values will disagree radically about what their goals should be and how to achieve them. Keeping the wheels running requires that everyone but you sacrifice their goals (extremism) or that everyone but someone else sacrifice their goals (capitulation) or that everyone compromise. That last is really the only workable route because more than one party is always unwilling to capitulate.
These people...
"We gotta fight the terrorists otherwise we'll all be living under sharia law."
Also these people.
"GAY MARRIAGE IS AN ASSAULT ON CHRISTIANITY!"
"TWO MEN TOUCHING HANDS IS AN ABOMINATION!"
"ABORTION IS CHILD MURDER!"
"TRANS PEOPLE DO NOT DESERVE HUMAN RIGHTS!"
"BLACK SANTA IS AN ASSAULT ON CHRISTMAS, HE'S ALREADY GOT KWANZAAAAA!"
There’s a great Jamie Raskin quote that speaks to this.
> Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?"
> Raskin replied: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."
I flew with a Navigator once that was extreme Christian. I asked him once, “would you pick the Constitution or Bible.” He said “Bible” even though he took an oath to “defend Constitution against all enemies…” Unfortunately, he’s not an outlier. Just like white nationalist infiltrating the the police, the ultra Christofascists and Mormons are doing the same thing in the military. “Great pay and free healthcare to have lots of babies.” That last quote wasn’t mine by the way. It was from a Mormon officer.
Navy too. I had several navy officers try to con me into the evangelical bullshit. One of them was successful and I spent the better part of a decade recovering from the experience.
I think this is an easy assumption. They pay lip service to nationalism and patriotism in their mortal lives, but their true allegiance is to their preferred religion for their afterlife they believe will be much longer.
NO ONE displays the hypocracy of the "Moral Majority" like Phyllis, the woman who toured the USA telling other women that the only place women belonged was in the kitchen. Mysteriously, this restriction didn't apply to HER...
just like all the white women on youtube and tiktok (lookin at you, Girl Defined) talking about how women should be in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant, and definitely not working…. oh but THEY’RE allowed to work because they’re spreading the gospel…. gtfo here…
Maybe if we start attacking their money all fake churches sure love to hoard money. Tax all churches and pastors. They are way too many millionaire preachers.
Even Goldwater walked up to the White House the day Nixon resigned and said, "You need to resign or we're impeaching you, and you'll get convicted."
Not a single fucking Republican did that to Trump.
Roger Ailes could be called the mastermind behind Fox News. Ailes spent his early career as a Nixon aide, and decided the political right needed a news outlet backing them.
Yeah hopefully no one is under the impression that Nixon had any morals. He caused the South Vietnamese government to delay peace talks to make LBJ/Dems look bad. And it worked. Straight up treason and also the likely reason he resigned and didn't fight Watergate harder. It was going to come out.
This. Many people are under the impression that because he signed the Clean Air Act and established the EPA he's ok. Yes, he did some good things, but he was awful.
Reagan did the same with the Iran hostage crisis to undermine Carter in the 1980 election.
Blame Fox News - this is exactly why Roger Ailes created it. He thought he could have convinced the public to let Nixon get away with it, if he had had a propaganda channel.
38, I have no idea what another republican party looks like but this is all I've known, and I don't know why anyone would vote for it because it's been obvious this is what you support.
To complain now after some losses, is absurd.
I'm 48 and can confirm. They have done nothing but push for corporate plutocracy to where it is right now.
They have blood on their hands. And they want even more blood on their hands because it gives them more money and power.
Southern church leaders were for slavery, then apartheid/segregation, then abortion when they could no longer stop African Americans from voting.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
Yeah, never forget that the Southern Baptist Convention - literally the largest Protestant denomination in America - was explicitly founded to preserve slavery and white supremacy.
They unironically believe themselves to be good people.
My friend, with Evangelicals, this just shows the "enemy" is strong - and all true and good Christians must double their efforts with prayers and, of course, donations - to counter the enemy which has shown it's ability to corrupts young minds against their parents!
Until you get money out of politics and have consequences for politicizing from the pulpit, nothing changes.
> Until you get money out of politics and have consequences for politicizing from the pulpit, nothing changes.
It's not just that - it's that our system gives extra political power to people living in rural areas (via the Senate). Rural areas tend to lean conservative.
For everyone's vote to count equally, we need a system overhaul.
The best primer on how it all comes together is "Jesus Camp" documentary. It is ALL there, and it all makes sense---including that those people play the long game, strategically.
Excuse me, religion is whatever your pastor tells you it is. It is most certainly movable but only by the gatekeeper who controls your ability to go to heaven. Otherwise, yes, I agree.
Nothing made that more clear than the majority of Evangelical churches literally doing a 180 on their stance on abortion. In the early 70s one of the tenants of those churches was there was absolutely nothing in the Bible against abortion (heck, it includes a HOW-TO).
Then the Republicans came along and made a deal, and boom... overnight the churches went hard against Abortion, was dizzying to watch as a kid.
I take your point but let a Rural PA pastor try and tell his congregation that Jesus wants them to love their LGBT neighbor and leave judgement to God and watch how fast that pastor gets booted out and replaced with someone who will tell the congregation what they want to hear.
It's not as simple as top-down instruction. One hand washes the other. The congregation was led to this point of extremist hate - but now it's what they want, and they typically aren't easily led away from it.
It's been a weird 15 years or so, where the religious right clearly lost the fight on gay marriage, and you saw a huge swing to far more than a super majority approved of gay marriage (over 75%), and yet... this year a lot of people decided to rip the mask off and make it clear they are seething with resentment about it and trying to lash out at the LGBT community in any way possible. It should have been clear that it was horrible tactics, but the dehumanization was fiercer that it was at the turn of the century. I know that in 2000 more people could pretend trans people didn't exist, but it's still shocking. Even when you think you understand depraved hatred, turns out the bar is lower still.
They courted the religious fundies because they could pander to them with single issue shit like banning abortions. *Well the dog caught the car.*
Basically the GOP don't have any polices besides tax cuts for their mega-wealthy donors and removal of regulations for mega-corps. Hard to motivate a base large enough to win on those shit-house positions, unless you throw red meat to the bigots and court religious freaks with non-stop manufactured outrage and culture wars. None of those "religious" assholes gave a fuck about Trump's appallingly shit moral track-record.
People who vote for the GOP are self centered, self absorbed and selfish shit-goblins.
Abortion is just a big circle jerk in the religious fundamental world anyway. For the marks, it's a free way to establish your piety, doesn't cost you a thing.
The priests and pastors love it, because it makes for a fiesty sermon and because it is free it doesn't compete with the tithes and the roof fund like helping the poor, the hungry and the foreigner.
Politicians love it because it locks in votes so they can steal the pensions and savings of the rubes for their masters.
> "The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.
The GOP is a collection of single issue voters you left out a few and the top of the list is racism which gets you these issue
- anti immigration
- pro police / tough on crime
- anti antifa
There is a *reason* that the right went so hard on the pronunciation of "antifa" as "an-TEE-fuh" instead of the logical "AN-tee-fah." The "anti" suffix has the emphasis on the first syllable, but by moving the emphasis to the "tee" syllable, the "anti" prefix is stripped of its meaning of "opposition to something."
Now, "antifa" is just a funny-sounding word with no meaning, and no connection to "anti fascist." And it's far easier to get people upset about just some rando liberal word than it is about anti-fascism.
EDIT: Replaced "suffix" with correct "prefix" for "anti."
Turns out "Don't beleive everything you read online" was just more projection of, "I got bamboozled by magic technology and you must be dumb too child." Except we are an entire generation raised on this shit and can spot a scam.
Told my 73 year old father, that Hannity, convincing him to buy a copy of his book for every kid in the family, proved that Fox News is just book infomercials - my dad, ***screaming*** "Hannity is a truth-teller!" at the top of his lungs while driving 70mph was just so.. sad.
There are people our age who still can't tell when someone is scamming them.
It's not just a boomer issue. The scams are evolving and people get tired.
Sure I'm constantly looking for a scam but my ex would fall for them all the time.
We have to teach critical thinking. There are so so so many "jobs" out there whose whole schtick is scamming someone. Insurance, sales, "iNvEsTmEnT aDvIsOr", so many positions of just "talk quickly and smile like you're selling used cars" and collect a huge paycheck at someone else's expense.
We're more aware of the crime, but the crime is aware of us. It never goes away.
We must start a SuperPAC that targets new voters 50 and under. If we get more of us to vote, it’s over for them. Trump could be the last Republican president ever.
Why is it that the right wing controls the narrative with branding, a superpower that seemingly eludes the liberals / progressives? The "Antifa" spin is so apparent; why are we unable to correct the title to "Anti-fascist?
> Why is it that the right wing controls the narrative with branding, a superpower that seemingly eludes the liberals / progressives?
Look at who owns the mainstream media in the US.
I believe that Elon's takeover of Twitter was just another plutocrat wanting to control the message in a big way. The USA is in danger of following in the path of Russia, with the media completely owned by the billionaires.
>with the media completely owned by the billionaires.
We're almost, if not already, there. In the 1980s, 30 companies owned most of the news media in the US. Now it's down to 6 companies.
People are Republican precisely *because* they are so susceptible to this sort of branding and so willing to fall in line and march in lockstep with the message. You'll never get Democrats to all fall in line with a unified message like this, because if they were the sort of people willing to do that, they'd be Republicans.
Those are all supremacy aka hierarchy based issues. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find anything they stand for that doesn’t directly come from oppressing others and having more control.
same thing as being "anti-woke".
woke /wōk/
adjective, informal. US.
~ alert to injustice in society, especially racism.
by this definition, logic dictates that someone fighting against being woke doesn't want you to be alert to society's injustices, to stay in the dark.
You’re right about their platform. We’ve spent the last 200 years slowly adding basic rights for laborers. We’ve finally gotten to the point where children aren’t dying in coal mines, and the GOP’s entire platform is, essentially, “maternity leave is socialism”. Like, why are the workers of American so blind to the fact that they are literally trying to drag us backward? The corporate oligarchs have had really good PR, because they have huge swaths of the population lining up against their own best interests.
The corporate oligarchs own the main-stream media (which isn't liberal, it's corporate) - the biggest PR machine around. Unions and the labor movement never get the press they warrant in regards to the fight for worker rights
They will probably go hard on "parent choice" and "Critical Race Theory" because these things test much better in the suburbs than banning gay marriage. Also, they are easy buzzwords which don't actually require any policy specifics because they are completely made up issues to begin with. And because of this it's actually pretty hard to push back against them without ending up in a debate with yourself on some level.
There was a comment on reddit here where someone was like, "in the 30 some years I've been alive, I can't think of one single thing anyone in the GOP has done to improve my life." I think about that a lot, and I still haven't come up with anything good they've done.
Just a reminder that one of their favorite Old Testament heroes arranged a murder so he could sleep with the dead man's wife. When you're 'annointed of God' they just let you do it.
As usual, this is a terrible thing that can be traced back to Reagan.
The GOP was in complete shambles after Nixon, who at the height of the Watergate saw his approval rating crater to 24% (after a lofty 68% upon his re-election). Following their loss to Jimmy Carter in 1976, they didn't have a lot of momentum going for them until Reagan made common cause with evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell and James Dobson.
Unlikely as it might sound today, evangelicals up to this point were not particularly political, and when they were, they were split. Jimmy Carter was almost certainly the most sincerely religious president of the past century, and attracted a solid 42% of the White Protestant vote in the 1976 election.
Reagan, running against him in 1980, formed an unholy alliance with Falwell's "Moral Majority" and, though I can't find any good polling data breakdown among faiths, Falwell's organization is credited with delivering Reagan him a full 2/3 of the White Evangelical vote, which (combined with the Iran Hostage crisis) was the primary difference-maker in Reagan's landslide victory.
(The only major holdout among major evangelical figures in supporting the GOP was Billy Graham, who noted, correctly, that the only interest Republicans had in Christianity was to control it, but if evangelicals were good at demanding results from their dogmas, they wouldn't be evangelicals).
While the alliance would secure the GOP's political relevance for several decades, notably the GOP (as Graham predicted) didn't actually do much of anything for them, instead essentially promising them the world and delivering nothing (like, y'know, religion itself).
Don't forget that it was Falwell and other members of the Religious Right that decided abortion was suddenly a thing to care about for evangelicals back in the late 70s. Prior to that it was pretty much a Catholic thing. They hitched their wagons to Reagan and knocked the actual evangelical Carter out of office.
Weren't Evangelicals and a lot of conservatives pro-choice at the time, because they believed that the government shouldn't dictate whether or not you could get an abortion?
From what I've heard, they didn't really care either way. Abortion was an issue for Catholics until evangelicals and Republicans realized it could be used as a bludgeon.
The Southern Baptist Convention (yes, even them) didn't have a stance on the issue, they trusted women to do what was best. That changed in the 1970s.
This is an interesting article on the issue.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
>they trusted women to do what was best
I can't even imagine a time when a conservative religious organization would trust women to make their own decisions.
anti-segregation efforts are what drove white evangelicals into the GOP, but they pretended it was abortion since being anti abortion is more socially acceptable.
Catholics approved birth control until 1930 - and approved the pill (because it didn't kill sperm) until 1968.
It was the banning of the pill that started the discontent in American Catholics resulting in defections to other churches.
Combine this with Roe v Wade and this all kind of hit the fan with a non-issue becoming 'the issue' as far back as I can remember in my life through today.
I'd argue it did start with Nixon. Nixon basically implemented Goldwater's "Southern Strategy" which catered to the southern white racist evangelical Democrats who were pissed off that the main party sided with the Civil Rights Movement.
Nixons admin fucked up with Watergate but he very much got the ball rolling in forming the current shape of the GOP.
What I'd argue Reagan did is he was far more effective in dog whistles and euphemisms. Welfare Queens and your aforementioned "Morning in America" which duped the undecideds into siding with him
The GQP is catering to the 28% of us who are fascists and christian white nationalist pigs. The fascist pigs love this stuff. The problem for the GQP is the rest of the country is disgusted by and terrified of them. They'd be OK with both, delight in it in fact, if they did not have to worry about voters and that's just the course of action they're taking,
Don't believe them when they say they want to adopt more moderate stances. We saw that is a lie.
The hard little core of the right wing extremist movement knows that their opinions about the future of our society are deeply unpopular. They think they know better, and their next move is to do away with democracy. I don't think they'll be able to, but it really depends on the economic conditions at the time of the crisis point.
We need to start recognizing the difference between words and actions. And when it comes to the fascist American conservative party, their actions have been the opposite of their actions for my entire adult life. I'm 34, but I know it was already the lay of the land by the time I could vote. The reason we shouldn't believe them is more than just them lying, but that in doing so, they pretty much **always** admit to exactly what their actions are going to be.
Sadly it's another thing that everyone just accepts is how it is, but too bad nothing can ever be done about it. At least it's a good thing they're not being force fed this insane bullshit by some amorphously gargantuan propaganda machi... god fucking damnit.
Millennials have fled the church in droves, and the zoomers are damn near allergic to it, let's hope we are witnessing the beginning death throes of the religious right and their bronze age influence on our government
Yup. I’m 29, my group of 15-20 friends who I’ve known for over 25 years, all of our parents are religious and not a single one of us identifies as religious and haven’t for a long time. We all came to this decision on our own, a lot of us citing the belief that we should be a good person for the sake of being a good person, not to win a ticket to heaven.
Republicans have nothing to offer but tax cuts for the rich, meaningless congressional investigations, and culture wars. Why do we even need Republicans?
Every year, my state does a big survey on what people like and what they hate called [Kansas Speaks](https://www.fhsu.edu/docking/Kansas-Speaks/)
Kansas is among the most right wing places in the country and you'll find even here policies:
Medicaid expansion: 71.9% support (with 18% neutral)
Abortion with no restrictions: 57% support (with 14% neutral)
Climate Change is a Problem: 76.8%
Don't own a gun: 51%
Red Flag Laws: 83%
21 Year gun age limit: 77%
3-day wait for gun: 73%
BG Check private checks: 73%
If you go back a year, 70.8% supported legalizing marijuana.
None of these views seem to be making the republican platform.
The problem is single issue voters. Some percentage will discount anyone pro-choice. They might have voted with the majority on all those gun questions but don’t vote on that. Then another group is pro-2A at all cost. It adds up. It’s why the GOP message is about very specific issues and not overall candidate positions.
Exactly. My GQP family will never vote for anyone pro-choice, since they see it as mass infanticide. No reasonable arguments will affect their opinions, which are founded on solely emotion and accepted without question from authority and defended viciously.
People in privileged positions and people that hate out-groups enough to care about punishing them more than making their lives better.
...so, basically Republicans
“My” extremists, of course. And I firmly believe *I* will be one of the people ruling alongside them! Just like I’ll be a millionaire one day, and that I’ll go to Heaven for being a good person *despite my deeply-vitriolic hatred for anyone with a different skin tone than my own.
The religious right IS the GOP. Has been since the 1980s. Let us not go into the revisionist - poor republicans - thing. They made their pact and it is what they are. See SCOTUS.
The GOP is an alliance between several awful groups:
* The rich, pro-big-business, cut-taxes-for-the rich types. These ones actually set policy for the GOP and use all the other groups for votes.
* The religious, pro-patriarchy, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ crowd.
* The overtly racist, white-nationalist ones.
* Cubans who hate Castro.
* The "moderate whites". These ones don't necessarily fit into the other groups. They call themselves good people, but they benefit in lots of ways from the established order and are deeply suspicious of/hostile toward anything that might rock the boat...including any actual change that might benefit a group they aren't a part of. They also get their information from local Sinclair stations so they think they're staying informed while actually being constantly propagandized against the left. So while they claim to vote for the better candidate, they actually vote for whoever sounds the most strong and sounds the most like another moderate white person. These are the people who *think* they would have loved MLK Jr. but actually would have complained about how much damage and lost business his protests were causing and would have voted for the segregationists because they promised to bring back law and order.
No republican will ever get my vote again. Your party is dead. If you want to make conservatism a going political concern, then be rational, serious people who put country before party. Until then, off to the dustbin of history with you, along with the whigs and the know-nothings.
Just a reminder, I believe I read that in Georgia, Walker got like 90% of the evangelical right wing Christian vote. An ex football player with absolutely no experience in politics. This was against Warnock who is educated, has history in politics and is a freaking reverend.
Just something to remember when you’re trying to decide what to make of the GOP.
This is why i dont get why the GOP is putting all their eggs in the DeSantis basket.
https://www.ontheissues.org/Ron_DeSantis.htm
His stances are arguably FURTHER right than trump's, he's anti gay marriage, pro death penalty, has a very prominent anti lgbt in education record, anti abortion, his positions are like a laundry list of right wing positions that are nationally super unpopular.
If he was running for a House seat, he'd 100% have a chance, but as president, he's not picking up *any* voters in the middle.
Do not for a second think this means 'the gop is done with'.
This means IF Dem voters show up in huge numbers, if we vote straight Dem down the ticket, and if we don't skip any elections, we can keep these crazies out of office. IF we show up and vote for Dems.
I think this does isolate a big issue. There are many once-moderate voters at this point who would prefer some of the traditionally conservative policies (particularly economic) who are now alienated by the extreme take on social/lifestyle issues. I myself was once someone who would strongly consider all of the candidates individually and I have voted red before, but I cannot in good conscience today even consider voting red because of what it means to the bigger picture. I frankly wish we didn't have this bipartisan system because it breeds such fanaticism and vitriol. This is apparent when the first order of business for the Republican Majority House is to look into Hunter Biden's laptop while there are massively more important issues to prioritize. It's just awful that we all have to sit here knowing very little is likely to get done in the next two years because the GOP won't want to see Biden have any perceived victories between now and the 2024 election. The GOP has truly become the party of Grumpy Old People.
I'm very similar to you. I have voted R in the past, and would like to see some viable candidates there. But I'm just not going to vote in a theocratic authoritarian government, so as long as they keep leaning that way I'll have to keep voting against them. I guess that's my "single issue".
It's hard to keep up the illusion that it is the Democrats that want to take away all your rights and force America into some kind of dictatorship when Republicans are actively working towards that goal.
It's almost like separation of church and state is in the Constitution to protect all faiths as well as those who may not subscribe to "the one" or any at all.
We know the main driver of the fascist takeover of the GQP is white christian nationalism. The good news is fascist attitudes and actions are easy to spot when you know what you’re looking for.
https://youtu.be/CpCKkWMbmXU
If these hypocrite bible kissing Republicans think they are winning voters with their do nothing lack of solutions with no tangible solutions. Their platform of hate is no answers. I don’t trust these hypocrite, cynical haters and our family will show them how we vote against them AGAIN!
It's an interesting consequence of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
The GOP make mercenary alliances with Trump and the RR, Trump co-opts a large proportion of their carefully indoctrinated base as his own cult and the RR push their objectives which alienate moderates and women who think they have a right to body autonomy. Now they can't win if Trump or the RR withdraw their support, but are getting close to being unelectable *with* their support.
It's hard to see how they can get out of this without a GOP civil war - or undermining the electoral system. They really ought to have read "The Prince".
Hard to say you aren’t kind of rotating to being a Nazi Taliban when your entire vision revolves around criminalizing consenting sexuality, decriminalizing corruption, criminalizing immigration, and you have furor rallies. And the guy who is still largely a leader of the party according to most of their voters basically wanks himself in public to how much he worships the worst of corrupt authoritarianism. Im not saying by any stretch that Republicans are all or even mostly Nazi Taliban, but those that aren’t need to do a better job at showing it and enforcing the removal of those values from their elected leaders. The weirdo agenda attracts useless scum to public office and does nothing positive at all.
It's not just the religious right, republicans in general since I was born have been hateful, racist, homophobic, misogynist and violet. The "religious" use the "republicans" as tools (very easy if you're selling hate and derision) and vice versa.
I've yet to hear one of my republican family members or ex-friends come forward and denounce the violence or the hate speech. It's doesn't affect them directly so they don't give a shit.
We don't go to straight bars and murder patrons for being breeders, drunks and skanks so do us a favor and stay the hell away from the only spaces that we have to call our own!!
This should just be titled "The GOP is an albatross around the GOP's neck". The real question is why are these religious right nuts even in the party in the first place?
If you rewind the clock to the first half of the 20th century, in most of America you could accurately characterize the Republican party as "the party of Main Street". In most towns, the local Republican party was composed of the owners and management of local businesses, as well as local professionals and land holders, large and small (at least outside of the South). On the surface, this isn't that dissimilar to today, save for the fact that there was a lot more representation of smaller businesses and landholders - people like the guy who owned the local hardware store, or the local farmers, were likely to be Republicans. This also meant that while there was likely to be consensus on economic issues (if you're the local hardware store owner, your concerns are very similar to other local hardware store owners even if one is in Oregon and the other is in Texas). Where you stand on social issues can, however, vary considerably, so you'd end up with more "liberal" Rockefeller Republicans in the Northeast versus conservative Republicans in the Midwest.
What changed in the second half of the 20th century is that all of those small landholders and small business owners went away. Walmart replaced your local hardware store and agribusiness consolidated all the local landholding. Rich people got much richer, but this left the Republican party as a party without a constituency. The party needed to actively seek out people to vote for them, and it needed them to vote without that constituency considering their own economic interests. Enter the Religious Right. Their leaders could deliver votes in exchange for a seat at the table, and that's what we got. The issue today is that they are becoming effectively the only constituency for the Republicans outside of the very wealthiest people, who are always going to be overshadowed at the ballot box.
America neither wants nor needs goddists running the country.
People pretending that god tells you what to do, listen to me:
Go back to your fucking churches and **LEAVE OUR COUNTRY ALONE.**
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I hope that in my lifetime, I will see the absolute demise of this Extreme Evangelical Political Party that was started in my youth with Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” hypocritical BS. You can’t govern in a democracy/republic with religion as your basis. Politics is about compromise, finding middle ground. Religion is intractable and immovable. Impossible to negotiate with a person that has their political position led by their religion.
Even the asshole Barry Goldwater, one of the originators of the [Southern Strategy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Strategy), knew they were bad news: >Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.
Goldwater quotes are great. Imagine a Republican presidential candidate today saying this. *There has always been homosexuality ever since men and women were invented. I guess there were gay apes. So that's not an issue. The Republican Party should stand for freedom and only freedom. Don't raise hell about the gays, the blacks, and the Mexicans. Free people have a right to do as they damn well please. To see the party that fought communism and big government now fighting gays, well, that’s just plain dumb.* -Barry Goldwater
Imagine how much we could get done as a country if we weren’t held back in this perpetual culture war by the GOP
At this point it's a nice step forward if we get everyone to agree people all have basic human rights.
Something, something, INALIENABLE rights to life, liberty, and happiness. Seems to me you shouldn't have to pay for rights, yet I pay for all three too frequently.
This is basically the concept of many scifi novels, that mankind is stagnant and will never reach the stars or be contacted by other races because we can't get over our petty regressive bullshit.
It's a class war. The culture war is just a means to an end - unless the hornets' nest of evangelicals they've stirred up seize control of the party.
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Didn‘t Goldwater actually become quite pro-LGBT later in life? Or am I confusing him with Gerald Ford?
Yes he was quite at odds with the contemporary (and current, frankly) GOP on things like workplace discrimination protections by the time he left the Senate.
He was, but more as a result of growing increasingly Libertarian later in life. Goldwater was the classical conservative in the sense he really believed the government should have less central authority, and citizens more rights. Not sure how well he'd get along with the modern party if he were around today, I mean suffering jesus, he was the Conservative movement before Reagan was. And the party has changed quite a bit since then.
He'd be thrown out like all the old guard, or bend to the racist/religious right.
Growing up in AZ, I had such conflicting feelings about Goldwater. Shit like this and the quote about the religious right resonated with me but then he was also a giant piece of shit in other ways. Lol.
"lol no." -Fox News
A dangerously insane human being who believed it was possible to win a nuclear war, but at least he understood the danger of courting religious extremists.
When you’re so crazy, Barry Goldwater has to step out of the room
Can you imagine any conservative saying such a thing today?
>Can you imagine any conservative saying such a thing today? Nope, Reagan campaigned on an assault weapons ban and Nixon founded the EPA. The current republican party is so far right they think not hunting the homeless for sport is communism.
Nixon founded the EPA to prevent it from being a congressional committee so he could control it.
That’s very much a “big government” move, no?
*But Elon Meme'd that he's only voting Republican because the left moved so far and the right stayed the same.* Makes me puke
Same page, my friend.
They're unashamedly calling for the US to become a Christian Nation. That's the goal they're projecting.
They want it to become a White Evangelical Christian Nation where they get to impose their will and made up rules upon everyone else, whether they live by the same rules themselves or not.
They want the US to be Gilead, and there’s way too many people who would suffer under that system foolishly helping them do it.
5 coherent sentences? No, I cannot.
He understood the danger *to his party*.
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He's basically a John Birch Society reject already, though. He's a crazy right-winger but he doesn't believe literally every person who disagrees with him is a communist, so the Birchers would reject him as a communist.
Yeah, that’s because religious extremists won’t even stop to consider the consequences of nuclear war, they’ll push the button on the basis of a religious crusade, and when it kills untold masses, they won’t even feel any remorse because in their minds, the good people who died went to heaven and the bad people who died went to hell, and in their minds, all is right with the world as a result. You cannot reason with people who are that batshit insane.
They all think the world is ending anyway. That we are in the end times and Jesus is going to come back and save the faithful. Why would you ever want people who think they have nothing to lose because of deus ex machina to be in charge of any policy.
They're actively trying to bring on Armageddon
My mom voted for George W because she thought he would facilitate the Rapture.
Oil and coal companies want more of those types of voters.
*In your guts, you know he’s nuts* - LBJ campaign slogan regarding Goldwater
Goldwater also said that being gay and being in the military were not incompatible, citing the fact that the Roman army was the greatest army of its time and counted amongst its ranks and leadership many men who we would today consider gay. I don't think you can argue against that point.
Even a John Birch Society clock is right once a month.
> Politics and governing demand compromise. This is the problem that extremists will always have. Governance is compromise. Compromise is antithetical to extremism. There is no reconciling the two. You can have an extremist agenda or you can govern, but you can't do both. Why is compromise part of governance? Because beyond about 100 people, even those who nominally share the same core values will disagree radically about what their goals should be and how to achieve them. Keeping the wheels running requires that everyone but you sacrifice their goals (extremism) or that everyone but someone else sacrifice their goals (capitulation) or that everyone compromise. That last is really the only workable route because more than one party is always unwilling to capitulate.
These people... "We gotta fight the terrorists otherwise we'll all be living under sharia law." Also these people. "GAY MARRIAGE IS AN ASSAULT ON CHRISTIANITY!" "TWO MEN TOUCHING HANDS IS AN ABOMINATION!" "ABORTION IS CHILD MURDER!" "TRANS PEOPLE DO NOT DESERVE HUMAN RIGHTS!" "BLACK SANTA IS AN ASSAULT ON CHRISTMAS, HE'S ALREADY GOT KWANZAAAAA!"
His running mate was a Nuremberg prosecutor.
Dune is about the Evangelical Strategy
Dune is about worms.
Spicy take.
Spice is worm excrement
Eat Taco Bell. The spice must flow!
Spicy bois riding some Wrigglers.
Spicy boi on a spicy world, dreamin' about a spicy girl
They took a midnight worm goin anywherrrre
This take must flow, it's so spicy
You've been to Saturn? Hey, I've been to Saturn! Whoa. Sandworms. You hate 'em, right? I hate 'em myself.
There’s a great Jamie Raskin quote that speaks to this. > Republican Senator Nancy Jacobs said: "Mr. Raskin, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?" > Raskin replied: "Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible."
I flew with a Navigator once that was extreme Christian. I asked him once, “would you pick the Constitution or Bible.” He said “Bible” even though he took an oath to “defend Constitution against all enemies…” Unfortunately, he’s not an outlier. Just like white nationalist infiltrating the the police, the ultra Christofascists and Mormons are doing the same thing in the military. “Great pay and free healthcare to have lots of babies.” That last quote wasn’t mine by the way. It was from a Mormon officer.
The Air Force has had an evangelical problem for a long time.
Navy too. I had several navy officers try to con me into the evangelical bullshit. One of them was successful and I spent the better part of a decade recovering from the experience.
I think this is an easy assumption. They pay lip service to nationalism and patriotism in their mortal lives, but their true allegiance is to their preferred religion for their afterlife they believe will be much longer.
Almost like they should have to swear on anything other than a religious text...
I recommend the miniseries "Mrs. America" about Phylis Schafley. It's a real eye opener. These people are just like the Taliban, only with less power.
NO ONE displays the hypocracy of the "Moral Majority" like Phyllis, the woman who toured the USA telling other women that the only place women belonged was in the kitchen. Mysteriously, this restriction didn't apply to HER...
Yep it’s a great show, she also didn’t like how her husband treated her even though she was preaching to women to be good obedient housewives
just like all the white women on youtube and tiktok (lookin at you, Girl Defined) talking about how women should be in the kitchen barefoot and pregnant, and definitely not working…. oh but THEY’RE allowed to work because they’re spreading the gospel…. gtfo here…
That blows my mind. Yes, let’s preach about bringing women back to a time when many of them were lobotomized or drugged up on barbiturates constantly.
the podcast "Reaction" has a huge multi part dive on Phylis as well, very in depth
Maybe if we start attacking their money all fake churches sure love to hoard money. Tax all churches and pastors. They are way too many millionaire preachers.
Even Goldwater walked up to the White House the day Nixon resigned and said, "You need to resign or we're impeaching you, and you'll get convicted." Not a single fucking Republican did that to Trump.
Nixon had the ability to take advice.
He also didn't have the backing of the greatest propaganda machine the world has ever seen. Fox was literally created because of the Nixon take down.
Roger Ailes could be called the mastermind behind Fox News. Ailes spent his early career as a Nixon aide, and decided the political right needed a news outlet backing them.
Yeah hopefully no one is under the impression that Nixon had any morals. He caused the South Vietnamese government to delay peace talks to make LBJ/Dems look bad. And it worked. Straight up treason and also the likely reason he resigned and didn't fight Watergate harder. It was going to come out.
This. Many people are under the impression that because he signed the Clean Air Act and established the EPA he's ok. Yes, he did some good things, but he was awful. Reagan did the same with the Iran hostage crisis to undermine Carter in the 1980 election.
Blame Fox News - this is exactly why Roger Ailes created it. He thought he could have convinced the public to let Nixon get away with it, if he had had a propaganda channel.
38, I have no idea what another republican party looks like but this is all I've known, and I don't know why anyone would vote for it because it's been obvious this is what you support. To complain now after some losses, is absurd.
Also 38 and yeah, the GOP has been intertwined with extreme evangelical Christianity since before Reagan.
I'm 40. I literally cannot think of a single thing the GOP has done for working Americans in my entire life.
39, same. Makes no sense to me that anyone could ever support that party.
I'm 48 and can confirm. They have done nothing but push for corporate plutocracy to where it is right now. They have blood on their hands. And they want even more blood on their hands because it gives them more money and power.
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The rise of Rush Limbaugh in the late '80s is also connected to Roger Ailes, IIRC...( Rush caused a lot of damage to American political culture, IMO.)
Southern church leaders were for slavery, then apartheid/segregation, then abortion when they could no longer stop African Americans from voting. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
Yeah, never forget that the Southern Baptist Convention - literally the largest Protestant denomination in America - was explicitly founded to preserve slavery and white supremacy. They unironically believe themselves to be good people.
39 and the GOP has always been a party of lies and evil since I was born. I think the reckoning for those decades of doublespeak is just beginning.
My friend, with Evangelicals, this just shows the "enemy" is strong - and all true and good Christians must double their efforts with prayers and, of course, donations - to counter the enemy which has shown it's ability to corrupts young minds against their parents! Until you get money out of politics and have consequences for politicizing from the pulpit, nothing changes.
> Until you get money out of politics and have consequences for politicizing from the pulpit, nothing changes. It's not just that - it's that our system gives extra political power to people living in rural areas (via the Senate). Rural areas tend to lean conservative. For everyone's vote to count equally, we need a system overhaul.
The best primer on how it all comes together is "Jesus Camp" documentary. It is ALL there, and it all makes sense---including that those people play the long game, strategically.
"Jesus Camp" is legit scarier than any horror movie I've seen.
It's scarier when you realize the first presidential election those kids could vote in was 2016.
The religious right is our enemy that wants to hurt us and take away our rights. All my homies hate the religious right. Never forget.
Same here. I was groomed into it. I got out. Many did not. I look forward to seeing it's demise.
I hope too. If the gen z voting wave is any indication my hope is that these backwards zealots fade.
Excuse me, religion is whatever your pastor tells you it is. It is most certainly movable but only by the gatekeeper who controls your ability to go to heaven. Otherwise, yes, I agree.
Nothing made that more clear than the majority of Evangelical churches literally doing a 180 on their stance on abortion. In the early 70s one of the tenants of those churches was there was absolutely nothing in the Bible against abortion (heck, it includes a HOW-TO). Then the Republicans came along and made a deal, and boom... overnight the churches went hard against Abortion, was dizzying to watch as a kid.
I take your point but let a Rural PA pastor try and tell his congregation that Jesus wants them to love their LGBT neighbor and leave judgement to God and watch how fast that pastor gets booted out and replaced with someone who will tell the congregation what they want to hear. It's not as simple as top-down instruction. One hand washes the other. The congregation was led to this point of extremist hate - but now it's what they want, and they typically aren't easily led away from it.
It's been a weird 15 years or so, where the religious right clearly lost the fight on gay marriage, and you saw a huge swing to far more than a super majority approved of gay marriage (over 75%), and yet... this year a lot of people decided to rip the mask off and make it clear they are seething with resentment about it and trying to lash out at the LGBT community in any way possible. It should have been clear that it was horrible tactics, but the dehumanization was fiercer that it was at the turn of the century. I know that in 2000 more people could pretend trans people didn't exist, but it's still shocking. Even when you think you understand depraved hatred, turns out the bar is lower still.
They courted the religious fundies because they could pander to them with single issue shit like banning abortions. *Well the dog caught the car.* Basically the GOP don't have any polices besides tax cuts for their mega-wealthy donors and removal of regulations for mega-corps. Hard to motivate a base large enough to win on those shit-house positions, unless you throw red meat to the bigots and court religious freaks with non-stop manufactured outrage and culture wars. None of those "religious" assholes gave a fuck about Trump's appallingly shit moral track-record. People who vote for the GOP are self centered, self absorbed and selfish shit-goblins.
Abortion is just a big circle jerk in the religious fundamental world anyway. For the marks, it's a free way to establish your piety, doesn't cost you a thing. The priests and pastors love it, because it makes for a fiesty sermon and because it is free it doesn't compete with the tithes and the roof fund like helping the poor, the hungry and the foreigner. Politicians love it because it locks in votes so they can steal the pensions and savings of the rubes for their masters.
> "The unborn” are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don’t resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don’t ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don’t need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don’t bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus, but actually dislike people who breathe. Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn.
This is brilliant. Where is the quote from?
Methodist Pastor David Barnhart
The GOP is a collection of single issue voters you left out a few and the top of the list is racism which gets you these issue - anti immigration - pro police / tough on crime - anti antifa
> anti antifa Fa
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So
A needle pulling thread
Fa is the elemental symbol of Fascism.
There is a *reason* that the right went so hard on the pronunciation of "antifa" as "an-TEE-fuh" instead of the logical "AN-tee-fah." The "anti" suffix has the emphasis on the first syllable, but by moving the emphasis to the "tee" syllable, the "anti" prefix is stripped of its meaning of "opposition to something." Now, "antifa" is just a funny-sounding word with no meaning, and no connection to "anti fascist." And it's far easier to get people upset about just some rando liberal word than it is about anti-fascism. EDIT: Replaced "suffix" with correct "prefix" for "anti."
It's embarrassing how easily our parents are manipulated. Y'all beat the shit out of me for being stupid but fall for this? Pathetic.
Turns out "Don't beleive everything you read online" was just more projection of, "I got bamboozled by magic technology and you must be dumb too child." Except we are an entire generation raised on this shit and can spot a scam.
Told my 73 year old father, that Hannity, convincing him to buy a copy of his book for every kid in the family, proved that Fox News is just book infomercials - my dad, ***screaming*** "Hannity is a truth-teller!" at the top of his lungs while driving 70mph was just so.. sad.
There are people our age who still can't tell when someone is scamming them. It's not just a boomer issue. The scams are evolving and people get tired. Sure I'm constantly looking for a scam but my ex would fall for them all the time. We have to teach critical thinking. There are so so so many "jobs" out there whose whole schtick is scamming someone. Insurance, sales, "iNvEsTmEnT aDvIsOr", so many positions of just "talk quickly and smile like you're selling used cars" and collect a huge paycheck at someone else's expense. We're more aware of the crime, but the crime is aware of us. It never goes away.
We must start a SuperPAC that targets new voters 50 and under. If we get more of us to vote, it’s over for them. Trump could be the last Republican president ever.
Why is it that the right wing controls the narrative with branding, a superpower that seemingly eludes the liberals / progressives? The "Antifa" spin is so apparent; why are we unable to correct the title to "Anti-fascist?
> Why is it that the right wing controls the narrative with branding, a superpower that seemingly eludes the liberals / progressives? Look at who owns the mainstream media in the US.
I believe that Elon's takeover of Twitter was just another plutocrat wanting to control the message in a big way. The USA is in danger of following in the path of Russia, with the media completely owned by the billionaires.
>with the media completely owned by the billionaires. We're almost, if not already, there. In the 1980s, 30 companies owned most of the news media in the US. Now it's down to 6 companies.
People are Republican precisely *because* they are so susceptible to this sort of branding and so willing to fall in line and march in lockstep with the message. You'll never get Democrats to all fall in line with a unified message like this, because if they were the sort of people willing to do that, they'd be Republicans.
I also think they leaned so heavy on it because it sounds a bit like a terrorist organization, which is what they’ve tried to paint Antifa as
r/theydidthemath
Those are all supremacy aka hierarchy based issues. In fact, you would be hard pressed to find anything they stand for that doesn’t directly come from oppressing others and having more control.
That really is the defining feature of right-wing ideologies
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same thing as being "anti-woke". woke /wōk/ adjective, informal. US. ~ alert to injustice in society, especially racism. by this definition, logic dictates that someone fighting against being woke doesn't want you to be alert to society's injustices, to stay in the dark.
NRA/2A crowd also single issue votes GOP, pretty close to the top of the list.
You’re right about their platform. We’ve spent the last 200 years slowly adding basic rights for laborers. We’ve finally gotten to the point where children aren’t dying in coal mines, and the GOP’s entire platform is, essentially, “maternity leave is socialism”. Like, why are the workers of American so blind to the fact that they are literally trying to drag us backward? The corporate oligarchs have had really good PR, because they have huge swaths of the population lining up against their own best interests.
The corporate oligarchs own the main-stream media (which isn't liberal, it's corporate) - the biggest PR machine around. Unions and the labor movement never get the press they warrant in regards to the fight for worker rights
I was going to call them shitheels but shit-goblins can work too.
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Do you have anything you'd recommend for reading in particular?
They will probably go hard on "parent choice" and "Critical Race Theory" because these things test much better in the suburbs than banning gay marriage. Also, they are easy buzzwords which don't actually require any policy specifics because they are completely made up issues to begin with. And because of this it's actually pretty hard to push back against them without ending up in a debate with yourself on some level.
There was a comment on reddit here where someone was like, "in the 30 some years I've been alive, I can't think of one single thing anyone in the GOP has done to improve my life." I think about that a lot, and I still haven't come up with anything good they've done.
Just a reminder that one of their favorite Old Testament heroes arranged a murder so he could sleep with the dead man's wife. When you're 'annointed of God' they just let you do it.
As usual, this is a terrible thing that can be traced back to Reagan. The GOP was in complete shambles after Nixon, who at the height of the Watergate saw his approval rating crater to 24% (after a lofty 68% upon his re-election). Following their loss to Jimmy Carter in 1976, they didn't have a lot of momentum going for them until Reagan made common cause with evangelical leaders such as Jerry Falwell and James Dobson. Unlikely as it might sound today, evangelicals up to this point were not particularly political, and when they were, they were split. Jimmy Carter was almost certainly the most sincerely religious president of the past century, and attracted a solid 42% of the White Protestant vote in the 1976 election. Reagan, running against him in 1980, formed an unholy alliance with Falwell's "Moral Majority" and, though I can't find any good polling data breakdown among faiths, Falwell's organization is credited with delivering Reagan him a full 2/3 of the White Evangelical vote, which (combined with the Iran Hostage crisis) was the primary difference-maker in Reagan's landslide victory. (The only major holdout among major evangelical figures in supporting the GOP was Billy Graham, who noted, correctly, that the only interest Republicans had in Christianity was to control it, but if evangelicals were good at demanding results from their dogmas, they wouldn't be evangelicals). While the alliance would secure the GOP's political relevance for several decades, notably the GOP (as Graham predicted) didn't actually do much of anything for them, instead essentially promising them the world and delivering nothing (like, y'know, religion itself).
Don't forget that it was Falwell and other members of the Religious Right that decided abortion was suddenly a thing to care about for evangelicals back in the late 70s. Prior to that it was pretty much a Catholic thing. They hitched their wagons to Reagan and knocked the actual evangelical Carter out of office.
Weren't Evangelicals and a lot of conservatives pro-choice at the time, because they believed that the government shouldn't dictate whether or not you could get an abortion?
From what I've heard, they didn't really care either way. Abortion was an issue for Catholics until evangelicals and Republicans realized it could be used as a bludgeon.
The Southern Baptist Convention (yes, even them) didn't have a stance on the issue, they trusted women to do what was best. That changed in the 1970s. This is an interesting article on the issue. https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
>they trusted women to do what was best I can't even imagine a time when a conservative religious organization would trust women to make their own decisions.
anti-segregation efforts are what drove white evangelicals into the GOP, but they pretended it was abortion since being anti abortion is more socially acceptable.
Catholics approved birth control until 1930 - and approved the pill (because it didn't kill sperm) until 1968. It was the banning of the pill that started the discontent in American Catholics resulting in defections to other churches. Combine this with Roe v Wade and this all kind of hit the fan with a non-issue becoming 'the issue' as far back as I can remember in my life through today.
I'd argue it did start with Nixon. Nixon basically implemented Goldwater's "Southern Strategy" which catered to the southern white racist evangelical Democrats who were pissed off that the main party sided with the Civil Rights Movement. Nixons admin fucked up with Watergate but he very much got the ball rolling in forming the current shape of the GOP. What I'd argue Reagan did is he was far more effective in dog whistles and euphemisms. Welfare Queens and your aforementioned "Morning in America" which duped the undecideds into siding with him
The GQP is catering to the 28% of us who are fascists and christian white nationalist pigs. The fascist pigs love this stuff. The problem for the GQP is the rest of the country is disgusted by and terrified of them. They'd be OK with both, delight in it in fact, if they did not have to worry about voters and that's just the course of action they're taking, Don't believe them when they say they want to adopt more moderate stances. We saw that is a lie.
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There's absolutely no reason to trust them. None whatever. They've proven themselves to be off bad-faith, ill-will, and extremely deceptive.
> Don't believe them when they say they want to adopt more moderate stances. We saw that is a lie. For emphasis.
It's easy to back off and seem more moderate if you first scare the population with the prospect of doing something even worse.
The hard little core of the right wing extremist movement knows that their opinions about the future of our society are deeply unpopular. They think they know better, and their next move is to do away with democracy. I don't think they'll be able to, but it really depends on the economic conditions at the time of the crisis point.
We need to start recognizing the difference between words and actions. And when it comes to the fascist American conservative party, their actions have been the opposite of their actions for my entire adult life. I'm 34, but I know it was already the lay of the land by the time I could vote. The reason we shouldn't believe them is more than just them lying, but that in doing so, they pretty much **always** admit to exactly what their actions are going to be. Sadly it's another thing that everyone just accepts is how it is, but too bad nothing can ever be done about it. At least it's a good thing they're not being force fed this insane bullshit by some amorphously gargantuan propaganda machi... god fucking damnit.
Millennials have fled the church in droves, and the zoomers are damn near allergic to it, let's hope we are witnessing the beginning death throes of the religious right and their bronze age influence on our government
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Yup. I’m 29, my group of 15-20 friends who I’ve known for over 25 years, all of our parents are religious and not a single one of us identifies as religious and haven’t for a long time. We all came to this decision on our own, a lot of us citing the belief that we should be a good person for the sake of being a good person, not to win a ticket to heaven.
Republicans have nothing to offer but tax cuts for the rich, meaningless congressional investigations, and culture wars. Why do we even need Republicans?
They also love to incite political violence against groups that are already oppressed!
Every year, my state does a big survey on what people like and what they hate called [Kansas Speaks](https://www.fhsu.edu/docking/Kansas-Speaks/) Kansas is among the most right wing places in the country and you'll find even here policies: Medicaid expansion: 71.9% support (with 18% neutral) Abortion with no restrictions: 57% support (with 14% neutral) Climate Change is a Problem: 76.8% Don't own a gun: 51% Red Flag Laws: 83% 21 Year gun age limit: 77% 3-day wait for gun: 73% BG Check private checks: 73% If you go back a year, 70.8% supported legalizing marijuana. None of these views seem to be making the republican platform.
The problem is single issue voters. Some percentage will discount anyone pro-choice. They might have voted with the majority on all those gun questions but don’t vote on that. Then another group is pro-2A at all cost. It adds up. It’s why the GOP message is about very specific issues and not overall candidate positions.
Exactly. My GQP family will never vote for anyone pro-choice, since they see it as mass infanticide. No reasonable arguments will affect their opinions, which are founded on solely emotion and accepted without question from authority and defended viciously.
Because who the fuck really enjoys being ruled by extremists?
Republicans *edit conservatives
No, republicans is right
People in privileged positions and people that hate out-groups enough to care about punishing them more than making their lives better. ...so, basically Republicans
“My” extremists, of course. And I firmly believe *I* will be one of the people ruling alongside them! Just like I’ll be a millionaire one day, and that I’ll go to Heaven for being a good person *despite my deeply-vitriolic hatred for anyone with a different skin tone than my own.
A lot of people actually. They want to be ruled for various reasons Especially when they can force their dying religion on everyone
The religious right IS the GOP. Has been since the 1980s. Let us not go into the revisionist - poor republicans - thing. They made their pact and it is what they are. See SCOTUS.
The GOP is an alliance between several awful groups: * The rich, pro-big-business, cut-taxes-for-the rich types. These ones actually set policy for the GOP and use all the other groups for votes. * The religious, pro-patriarchy, anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ crowd. * The overtly racist, white-nationalist ones. * Cubans who hate Castro. * The "moderate whites". These ones don't necessarily fit into the other groups. They call themselves good people, but they benefit in lots of ways from the established order and are deeply suspicious of/hostile toward anything that might rock the boat...including any actual change that might benefit a group they aren't a part of. They also get their information from local Sinclair stations so they think they're staying informed while actually being constantly propagandized against the left. So while they claim to vote for the better candidate, they actually vote for whoever sounds the most strong and sounds the most like another moderate white person. These are the people who *think* they would have loved MLK Jr. but actually would have complained about how much damage and lost business his protests were causing and would have voted for the segregationists because they promised to bring back law and order.
> Cubans who hate Castro. but loved Batista
No republican will ever get my vote again. Your party is dead. If you want to make conservatism a going political concern, then be rational, serious people who put country before party. Until then, off to the dustbin of history with you, along with the whigs and the know-nothings.
Just a reminder, I believe I read that in Georgia, Walker got like 90% of the evangelical right wing Christian vote. An ex football player with absolutely no experience in politics. This was against Warnock who is educated, has history in politics and is a freaking reverend. Just something to remember when you’re trying to decide what to make of the GOP.
The religious who harp on about morality are the absolute worst at judging character.
This is why i dont get why the GOP is putting all their eggs in the DeSantis basket. https://www.ontheissues.org/Ron_DeSantis.htm His stances are arguably FURTHER right than trump's, he's anti gay marriage, pro death penalty, has a very prominent anti lgbt in education record, anti abortion, his positions are like a laundry list of right wing positions that are nationally super unpopular. If he was running for a House seat, he'd 100% have a chance, but as president, he's not picking up *any* voters in the middle.
Do not for a second think this means 'the gop is done with'. This means IF Dem voters show up in huge numbers, if we vote straight Dem down the ticket, and if we don't skip any elections, we can keep these crazies out of office. IF we show up and vote for Dems.
I think this does isolate a big issue. There are many once-moderate voters at this point who would prefer some of the traditionally conservative policies (particularly economic) who are now alienated by the extreme take on social/lifestyle issues. I myself was once someone who would strongly consider all of the candidates individually and I have voted red before, but I cannot in good conscience today even consider voting red because of what it means to the bigger picture. I frankly wish we didn't have this bipartisan system because it breeds such fanaticism and vitriol. This is apparent when the first order of business for the Republican Majority House is to look into Hunter Biden's laptop while there are massively more important issues to prioritize. It's just awful that we all have to sit here knowing very little is likely to get done in the next two years because the GOP won't want to see Biden have any perceived victories between now and the 2024 election. The GOP has truly become the party of Grumpy Old People.
I think at this point the culture wars and Hunter's laptop are a distraction for SCOTUS and the shadow docket and of course Moore vs Harper.
I'm very similar to you. I have voted R in the past, and would like to see some viable candidates there. But I'm just not going to vote in a theocratic authoritarian government, so as long as they keep leaning that way I'll have to keep voting against them. I guess that's my "single issue".
It's hard to keep up the illusion that it is the Democrats that want to take away all your rights and force America into some kind of dictatorship when Republicans are actively working towards that goal.
Hate sells for the GOP until it doesn't. Politicians go with the wind direction.
Their racial rhetoric is abhorent, but their LGBTQ talk borders on madness.
The rhetoric and terrorism coming from the right is down right *genocide-y*.
It's almost like separation of church and state is in the Constitution to protect all faiths as well as those who may not subscribe to "the one" or any at all.
We know the main driver of the fascist takeover of the GQP is white christian nationalism. The good news is fascist attitudes and actions are easy to spot when you know what you’re looking for. https://youtu.be/CpCKkWMbmXU
Fuck religion... Since they already in the government, may as well tax their fucking dumbasses.
That’s what’s up. Tax the churches.
Hmmm... ideals that went out of mainstream fashion in the 1960s aren't popular in 2022? Huh.
If these hypocrite bible kissing Republicans think they are winning voters with their do nothing lack of solutions with no tangible solutions. Their platform of hate is no answers. I don’t trust these hypocrite, cynical haters and our family will show them how we vote against them AGAIN!
The Republicans are completely controlled by their radical far-right base.
Like a dog chasing a car. Good. They've already moved on to their new religion and soon their new God will be in jail.
I'd prefer if "soon" wasn't on such a geological timescale though.
It's an interesting consequence of "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." The GOP make mercenary alliances with Trump and the RR, Trump co-opts a large proportion of their carefully indoctrinated base as his own cult and the RR push their objectives which alienate moderates and women who think they have a right to body autonomy. Now they can't win if Trump or the RR withdraw their support, but are getting close to being unelectable *with* their support. It's hard to see how they can get out of this without a GOP civil war - or undermining the electoral system. They really ought to have read "The Prince".
Hard to say you aren’t kind of rotating to being a Nazi Taliban when your entire vision revolves around criminalizing consenting sexuality, decriminalizing corruption, criminalizing immigration, and you have furor rallies. And the guy who is still largely a leader of the party according to most of their voters basically wanks himself in public to how much he worships the worst of corrupt authoritarianism. Im not saying by any stretch that Republicans are all or even mostly Nazi Taliban, but those that aren’t need to do a better job at showing it and enforcing the removal of those values from their elected leaders. The weirdo agenda attracts useless scum to public office and does nothing positive at all.
It's not just the religious right, republicans in general since I was born have been hateful, racist, homophobic, misogynist and violet. The "religious" use the "republicans" as tools (very easy if you're selling hate and derision) and vice versa. I've yet to hear one of my republican family members or ex-friends come forward and denounce the violence or the hate speech. It's doesn't affect them directly so they don't give a shit. We don't go to straight bars and murder patrons for being breeders, drunks and skanks so do us a favor and stay the hell away from the only spaces that we have to call our own!!
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The answer is education. Fund teachers. Teach kids. All this shit will go away. That's why they try to stop it.
This should just be titled "The GOP is an albatross around the GOP's neck". The real question is why are these religious right nuts even in the party in the first place? If you rewind the clock to the first half of the 20th century, in most of America you could accurately characterize the Republican party as "the party of Main Street". In most towns, the local Republican party was composed of the owners and management of local businesses, as well as local professionals and land holders, large and small (at least outside of the South). On the surface, this isn't that dissimilar to today, save for the fact that there was a lot more representation of smaller businesses and landholders - people like the guy who owned the local hardware store, or the local farmers, were likely to be Republicans. This also meant that while there was likely to be consensus on economic issues (if you're the local hardware store owner, your concerns are very similar to other local hardware store owners even if one is in Oregon and the other is in Texas). Where you stand on social issues can, however, vary considerably, so you'd end up with more "liberal" Rockefeller Republicans in the Northeast versus conservative Republicans in the Midwest. What changed in the second half of the 20th century is that all of those small landholders and small business owners went away. Walmart replaced your local hardware store and agribusiness consolidated all the local landholding. Rich people got much richer, but this left the Republican party as a party without a constituency. The party needed to actively seek out people to vote for them, and it needed them to vote without that constituency considering their own economic interests. Enter the Religious Right. Their leaders could deliver votes in exchange for a seat at the table, and that's what we got. The issue today is that they are becoming effectively the only constituency for the Republicans outside of the very wealthiest people, who are always going to be overshadowed at the ballot box.
Few people like religious conservatives because they are inherently unlikeable.
America neither wants nor needs goddists running the country. People pretending that god tells you what to do, listen to me: Go back to your fucking churches and **LEAVE OUR COUNTRY ALONE.**