Republicans placate an evangelical base that’s getting nastier with sexism — even if costs the party women’s votes
“Stand where he tells you to stand, wear what he tells you to wear, and do what he tells you to do.”
This is the wedding night advice offered to brides by Josh Howerton, a senior pastor at Lakepointe Church in Dallas, Texas. Lakepointe, according to the Dallas Morning News, is one of the biggest megachurches in Texas, with over 13,000 people a week attending its main location. The church itself cites a number over 40,000 a week, between its six campuses and online services. Howerton opened Sunday morning services on February 25 with this paean to sexual coercion.
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It’s not just the assault on abortion rights, which they can’t seem to hold back from, despite the resounding unpopularity of the anti-choice stance. It’s that the MAGA base is getting ever more vitriolic with its misogyny. Part of that is due to the more secular dirtbags of the Joe Rogan/Elon Musk variety, who have become such a loud part of the Republican coalition under Trump. But this escalation of boldly misogynist rhetoric is also coming from the evangelicals. Republicans can’t win without keeping those people happy, since the Christian right is where the GOP’s organizing power still mainly resides.
The problem is, the women who have been in his corner are proudly against their own interests.
They seem to derive identity from being against their own gender’s acquisition of rights and status.
They’re akin to the sizable women’s anti suffrage movement that came with the suffrage movement, patronizingly acting like they know better than to give people like themselves equal status to men.
Hopefully this pushes away the no-low information independent women, but the only way for Trump to lose Republican votes he currently has would be to suddenly find civility, tact, and demonstrate basic respect towards his opponent, which would never happen.
You could argue that most people on the conservative side vote against their interests most of the time.
Pick a topic: taxes, health care, food stamps, school lunches, climate change, social security, the VA… Republicans are obviously only working for the rich and themselves.
The die hard fans of Trump that I see don’t look very rich or well educated. Yet they think Trump is out to defend THEM.
I’m still amazed how Fox News and the likes manage to pull that off…
Thats easy when your education is completely underfunded. Kids in Costa Rica speak and write spanish, english, and cursive when I went there. I was 12 and felt stunted by these 2nd graders in the language department. Language is an extremely important factor in a lot of major brain functions. Its no surprise we nip that at the bud and tell people they only need to know American.
I just have to tell a story about my neighbor. He’s conservative, retired law enforcement. Chatting with him one day I learn that his wife has lost her job due to downsizing. He’s concerned because her unemployment is about to run out and “either she finds a job or I do.” The reason is that health insurance is so expensive, he tells me. They would be fine being fully retired except for the cost of insurance.
Meanwhile I’m screaming in my head - maybe you shouldn’t vote against having social healthcare then! Maybe having healthcare tied to a job is a bad idea!
I once heard someone make an argument that has stuck with me (as someone who very much grew up in that world) the Religious Right’s ideas about gender roles is a kink. The whole wives being submissive to husbands, and dressing a certain way, etc. Which would be fine if they didn’t force their kink on their kids, and everyone else. But instead they have decided that their kink is the only right way to live, and insist that anyone who doesn’t share it is sinning and must be made to conform.
Thankfully, I think this is a movement fated to self-destruct. It’s much easier to tell someone they should fight to be free than to ask them to fight to become slaves.
Well, how else will the lord open? Under his eye.
/s
