The heart of the matter

[Stephen Fox]

From a piece up now at nybooks.com by Joseph Oneill

Quoting Joe

Recall, for example, the 2016 nomination of Merrick Garland to fill the Supreme Court seat that had been held by Justice Scalia. A sixty-three-year-old centrist, Garland was the most elderly and GOP-friendly candidate that President Obama could have chosen. When the Republican Senate, led by Mitch McConnell, announced that it would block any nominee, Obama lamented that it “defies the Constitution, defies logic.” He added, “I understand the posture they’re taking right now. I get the politics of it, I’m sure they’re under enormous pressure from their base and their constituencies around this issue. I’ve talked to many of them, and I’ve told them I’m sympathetic.” As late as July 2018, Schumer, the Senate minority leader, advised President Trump to renominate Garland “as a way to unify the country.” After McConnell learned of Schumer’s advice, @TeamMitch (an official Twitter account of the senator) posted a GIF that showed Michael Jordan rocking with laughter. Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh.

The challenge of winning everywhere is complicated by the vastness and variety of the United States. The longstanding Republican tactic has been to compress the playing field by aggressively promoting certain “values.” These values have little to do with conservative ideals—theoretically, to reduce the power of the state in favor of market forces—and everything to do with creating a highly partisan political tribe. The tribe is made up of white Christians and those in their orbit. Many of the tribespeople are former Democrats. What they have in common is a conviction that their core values and traditional sources of social capital are existentially threatened by the Democratic Party and its urban hordes of nonwhites, immigrants, snobs, and sexual deviants. They also have in common membership in an information community—Fox News, right-wing Facebook groups, talk radio, etc.—that transcends geography and builds ideology.

Contrary to popular belief, the attachment of many Americans to the Second Amendment isn’t natural. It is the product of an innovative and disciplined nationwide campaign started by the NRA in the late 1970s. The success of the anti-abortion movement is rooted in institutional grassroots work by the National Right to Life Committee, an organization founded and financed by the Catholic Church in the 1960s. You don’t get people singing from the same hymn sheet unless someone is writing the hymns, printing and distributing them, and building choirs everywhere.

[Stephen Fox]

https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/ot ... eral-right

I hope some of you will listen online to this conversation yesterday on NPR On the Media. One of the more fascinating I've heard in a while about right wing Catholicism has made peace with Trumpism.

A lot of implications as they aver for church state, but more immediately the world of Heroes of the Fourth Turning ( the off broadway play) and the Catholic Mick Mulvaney now at the heart of the Trump Ukraine scandal.