With the ascension of Donald Trump, conservative think tankers realized (if few would admit) that the Republican rank-and-file never believed all that limited government, low taxes, and family values hokum they churned out. With “supply-siders and national security hawks,” writes Jennifer Rubin, evangelicals made up movement conservatism’s strategic triad in its never-ending fight against godless communism, gays and abortion.
With help from conservative commentator and evangelical Christian David A. French, Rubin finds that gays and abortion now join family values as issues no longer animating evangelicals as once supposed. Surveys show that gay rights and abortion no longer have the bite they once did:
So what, then, do these voters want? Many essentially see politics as a great battle between White, Christian America and the multiracial, religiously diverse reality of 21st century America. They want someone to help them win that existential fight. Government is there not to produce legislative fixes to real-world problems but to engage their enemies on behalf of White Christianity.
“Ethnoreligious identity has become the primary battle line in the culture war,” finds PRRI’s Robert P. Jones:
Among voters who hold an unfavorable view of the Black Lives Matter movement, believe the U.S. criminal justice system treats all people fairly, or believe that racism is a minor problem or not a problem at all, more than eight in ten voted for Donald Trump. At the national level, the divides produced by these attitudes are stronger than the divides over abortion. Among those who believe abortion should be illegal in all or most cases, 76% voted for Trump.
Jones echoes my long-held thoughts on how the left approaches these facts:
I’ve always thought the “What’s the matter with Kansas?” thesis—or at least the cocktail party version of the book’s thesis that was so seductive to so many progressives—was condescending and wrong-headed. The assertion that people vote “against their interests” is offensively paternalistic. It betrays a lack of intellectual curiosity that fails to imagine that “interests” can be racial and religious and cultural and not just material.
As someone who grew up as a Southern Baptist on the white working-class side of town in Jackson, Mississippi, it was always implicitly clear that status, the sense of one’s place in the community and in the country, was not primarily about money.
Crudely put, it is about pecking order, about who is above whom on the social ladder. And about power: who has it and who is unwilling to share it.
Rubin writes about how hyphenated Americans give the right the heebie-jeebies:
In this context, White evangelical Christians’ attraction to the thrice-married philanderer Trump is understandable, as is their support for the cruelest immigration policies (e.g., child separation) and the anti-Muslim travel ban. It’s all about race and religious identity, not policies founded in Christian values and certainly not about finding a role model for civic virtues. Trump was determined to protect White evangelicals against people of color and the decline in Christian identification; that was all they could hope for in a politician.
For these voters, government is a means of enforcing (they would say “preserving”) domination of Whites and Christianity as essential to America’s identity. That’s why they support politicians who demonize Black Lives Matter, demand that corporations meekly accept voter suppression, express outrage over a publisher’s decision about Dr. Seuss titles or fixate on saying “Merry Christmas.” It’s also why insurrectionists marauded through the Capitol on Jan. 6 bearing Confederate flags and wearing T-shirts mocking the Holocaust. They keep telling us who they are and what they want, but well-meaning Americans and the media often refuse to accept that their fellow Americans’ motives are so antithetical to American values.
“Well-meaning” Americans’ aversion to seeing what’s in front of them has allowed Christian Reconstructionists to move into positions of power unnoticed. “Christian patriots will own and rule this nation,” North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson declared recently. He’s serious, and so are the thousands who came to hear his speech.
Like people who assumed the Earth was flat when it went unchallenged, Christian nationalists assumed this country was their God-given dominion until they saw their cultural grip slipping. Donald Trump’s fixation on being treated unfairly when he does not get his way resonates with the feeling among White evangelicals that having to share power with Others is deeply unfair.
Rubin continues (emphasis mine):
Jones underscores that this MAGA resentment translates into “fears about the rising number of Latino Americans, fears about Islam, and anti-Black attitudes tied to a ‘law and order’ mentality where African Americans are associated with criminal activity and lawlessness in major cities. You won’t need to search far to find each of these interpretations made painfully explicit in former President Trump’s speeches and in the content of the 2016 and 2020 Republican National Conventions.”
The fixation on race and Christian nationalism has serious ramifications for American political life. First, White evangelical Christians are fighting an impossible crusade against demographic inevitability (their minority status is what has fueled the MAGA movement). Because they can never win (at least in a democracy with free and accurate elections), their political venom will not abate.
Second, the aims of White evangelicals run smack into the American ideal that “all men are created equal” and constitutional protections that allow no bias against any particular religion or racial group. In that regard, they have become deeply antidemocratic.
Finally, a Democratic Party committed to social justice and racial tolerance is never going to win over the hardcore White evangelical base of the GOP. There is nothing Democrats can “give” them (e.g., jobs, cheaper health care) to satisfy their need for White Christian ascendency. That puts a premium on Democrats’ ability to organize a broad ideological coalition that is firmly grounded in democratic ideals and racial/religious inclusion.
This is not to say that Democrats should not be marketing their real accomplishments as hard as Trump does his phony ones. Democrats may not be able to win over the GOP’s hardcore White evangelical base, but in many rural places shaving GOP voting margins may be enough for Democrats to gain control of state legislatures that have become incubators for the right’s worst, most un-American impulses.