Opinion If today's GOP baffles you, consider what motivates its base

[LetMyPeopleVote]

The beliefs of White evangelical Christians, who make up the core of the GOP are really sad and scary. These asshole want to make America Great by getting rid of immigrants, keep women out of the workforce and have non-white being able to mistreat and discriminate against non-whites.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/11/01/white-evangelicals-survey-trump-republicans/

How can so many people buy into false election fraud claims, climate change denialism or panic over White people being “replaced”? How can they vote for manifestly unfit Republicans such as Georgia U.S. Senate nominee Herschel Walker or Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano?

For answers, turn to the Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Survey, which provides insight into the beliefs of White evangelical Christians, who make up the core of the GOP. It reveals a lot about what they think and why they vote the way they do.

A striking 71 percent of these voters think the country has gone downhill since the 1950s (when women were excluded from most professions, Black Americans faced barriers to voting, 50 million Americans still used outhouses and only about 5 percent of Americans were college-educated). Because White Protestant evangelicals make up such a large share of the GOP, that means 66 percent of Republicans want to go back to the time of “Leave It to Beaver.”.....

Half of White evangelical Protestants also think God intended America to be the promised land. Nearly two-thirds say immigrants are a threat, and 61 percent say “society has become too soft and feminine.” And they are the only discrete religious group polled to support overturning Roe v. Wade.......

The implications of the American Values Survey are profound. If millions of Americans think our country was best when White males were dominant and now think feminization plagues it, a great many would find comfort in the GOP’s toxic masculinity and in forced-birth laws that relegate women to the role of motherhood against their will. And if they dismiss the legacy of racism, many would favor policies that make it harder for minorities to vote and to access higher education (i.e., opposing affirmative action to rebalance college admissions in Whites’ favor).

These views also explain why so many Republicans seem perpetually angry and dissatisfied. What they want is unattainable. America is becoming less White, less male-dominated and less religious. Nothing politicians do or say will change this.....

What endangers American democracy and democratic values goes far beyond one demagogue, one election or one set of policies. When so many Americans are driven by fear, resentment and antipathy toward inclusion, pluralistic democracy is at risk. Until we grapple with that reality, millions will remain vulnerable to cynical right-wing media and ruthlessly ambitious Republicans.

When you see an asshole wearing a MAGA hat, understand that these assholes yearn for the days when it was okay to treat non-whits as second class or third-class citizens and to forbid women from leaving the home.

[republianmushroom]

1. this nails it

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. GOP's Michels admits the truth, eyes permanent partisan control

The GOP does not believe in fair elections and want to change the rules so that the will of the voters do not matter.

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https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/gops-michels-admits-truth-eyes-permanent-partisan-control-rcna55193?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

In the months that followed, Michels gained support, largely in spite of himself. For example, the Republican took radical positions on elections, saying he wouldn't commit to certifying 2024 results, and in response to reporting that he and his wife donated $250,000 to anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion groups, Michels used rhetoric that sounded to many like a possible call for political violence.

The GOP candidate might very well win anyway — FiveThirtyEight’s forecast gives Michels a 48% chance of defeating incumbent Democratic Gov. Tony Evers — and he’s apparently making ambitious plans for his prospective administration. The Washington Post reported yesterday:

Hinting at his plans to overhaul how elections are run, the Republican running for governor of Wisconsin this week said his party would permanently control the state if he wins. “Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I’m elected governor,” construction executive Tim Michels told supporters Monday at a campaign stop.

The candidate’s candor did not seem accidental. It was not a slip of the tongue. As a video clip from the event shows, Michels appeared quite sincere — and his supporters at the campaign stop applauded in response to the comments.

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....To be sure, this is already a critical concern in the Badger State. Republican legislators have gerrymandered Wisconsin’s district map to such an outlandish degree that the state is barely recognizable as a democracy: The GOP has rigged the system so that Republicans keep power in Madison, even when Democrats win more votes. As Mother Jones’ Ari Berman explained in a report last week:

If the redistricting maps drawn in secret by Republican staffers and passed by the GOP-controlled legislature in 2011 were unfair, the new maps adopted by Republicans in 2021, over Evers’ objections, are even more one-sided. As a result, the number of GOP-leaning seats in the state assembly has increased from 61 to 63 out of 99 and from 21 to 23 out of 33 seats in the state senate. Democrats would have to win the statewide vote by 12 points just to get to 50 seats in the assembly, according to calculations by Marquette University Law School research fellow John Johnson, while Republicans could garner a majority with just 44 percent of votes.

To hear Michels tell it, this isn’t good enough, apparently because it’s still possible for Wisconsin voters to elect some Democrats to some offices.