Joining the Club (Part 3)

Recently, I wrote about the surprisingly large percentage of women and Latinos who want to join the GOP in its crusade against, well, women and Latinos.

To conclude this trilogy of terror, let’s look at people who support Christian nationalism, even though they are not Christian.

Of course, you might say that the Republican Party is not officially a religious organization. However, about two-thirds of the GOP, and virtually all of its leadership, is Christian. So it is fair to say that a certain theology guides the organization. 

And if you doubt this, consider that “more than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation.” In addition, GOP leaders routinely exclaim that they want to eliminate the separation of church and state, and the Republican speaker of the House boasts of being a Christian warrior.

All that is not terribly welcoming to other religions. In particular, Jews might be alarmed that so many Republican leaders have the unfortunate tendency of hanging out with Nazis.

But the war in Gaza has convinced many Jewish voters that the GOP supports them, even though much of that backing is due to a weird biblical belief of some Christians. It involves Armageddon and forcefully converting Jews (seriously, this is a thing).

Conservatives are eager to bring Jewish voters into the GOP tent. So they have painted campus protests as seething cauldrons of antisemitism, full of Jew-hating young progressives. Of course, some progressives have made this an easy sell by embracing vile, antisemitic nonsense.

So a Jewish person rightfully repulsed at a liberal saying positive things about Hamas is more likely to consider the Republican Party, despite that party’s intention to turn America into one big mega church where everyone worships Jesus or else.

Now, there is another reason why many Republicans profess to love Jews. And that is because many of them hate Muslims even more. This is the party, after all, that wants to ban Muslims from ever setting foot in the country. This is the party that clamors to eviscerate Palestinians and turn Gaza “into a parking lot.”

But even in this case, Republicans will temper their Islamophobia if they can find someone to despise even more. For example, some conservative Muslims “have joined forces with right-wing Christians in a bigoted crusade against gay and trans literature in public schools.”

Yes, the “forces who supported a president who called for a Muslim immigration ban are now, through a shared hostility toward gay and trans people, uniting with local Muslims … to demand the imposition of ignorance.”

It just goes to prove that no matter how much a group is oppressed, many of its members are just fine oppressing others.

And speaking of homophobia, remember that the most recent GOP platform called for a ban on gay marriage. State-level branches of the Republican Party have gone even further, with the Texas GOP declaring that “homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.”  

But the obvious loathing that the GOP has for homosexuality hasn’t deterred the 17 percent of gay people who voted for Trump in 2020. To them, the fact that Christian nationalists would gladly throw every gay person in jail is not an issue. 

Yes, there is likely a gay Latino Muslim immigrant who appears in drag shows but is an ardent Republican. And he probably lives in a swing state.

So we have ethnic minorities supporting bigots, women supporting misogynists, religious minorities supporting Christian fundamentalists, and gay people supporting homophobes. It is festival of self-delusion.

The conservative vision for America is unabashedly narrow, where white Christians call all the shots.

In fact, the Republican Party “is 68 percent white and Christian in a country that is 42 percent white and Christian.” 

Based on those percentages, conservatives need people to vote against themselves.

That’s the only way they win.