GQP Midterm Election Strategy: What Insurrection? Oh Look, We Overturned Roe v. Wade!

The January 6 MAGA/QAnon seditious insurrection at the Capitol more particularly was a white Christian Nationalist seditious insurrection.

Thomas Edsall of the New York Times wrote in January ‘The Capitol Insurrection Was as Christian Nationalist as It Gets.’ (excerpt):

It’s impossible to understand the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol without addressing the movement that has come to be known as Christian nationalism.

Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, professors of sociology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the University of Oklahoma, describe Christian Nationalism in their book “Taking America Back for God”:

It includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism. It is as ethnic and political as it is religious. Understood in this light, Christian nationalism contends that America has been and should always be distinctively ‘Christian’ from top to bottom — in its self-identity, interpretations of its own history, sacred symbols, cherished values and public policies — and it aims to keep it this way.

In her recent book, “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism,” Katherine Stewart, a frequent contributor to these pages, does not mince words:

It is a political movement, and its ultimate goal is power. It does not seek to add another voice to America’s pluralistic democracy, but to replace our foundational democratic principles and institutions with a state grounded on a particular version of Christianity, answering to what some adherents call a ‘biblical worldview’ that also happens to serve the interests of its plutocratic funders and allied political leaders.

This, Stewart writes, “is not a ‘culture war.’ It is a political war over the future of democracy.”

While much of the focus of coverage of the attack on the halls of the House and Senate was on the violence, the religious dimension went largely unnoted (although my colleagues Elizabeth Dias and Ruth Graham made the connection).

I asked Perry about the role of the religious right, and he replied by email: “The Capitol insurrection was as Christian nationalist as it gets.”

Perry elaborated:

Obviously the best evidence would be the use of sacred symbols during the insurrection such as the cross, Christian flag, Jesus saves sign, etc. But also the language of the prayers offered by the insurrectionists both outside and within the Capitol indicates the views of white Americans who obviously thought Jesus not only wanted them to violently storm the Capitol in order to take it back from the socialists, globalists, etc., but also believed God empowered their efforts, giving them victory.

Together, Perry continued, the evidence

reflects a mind-set that clearly merges national power and divine authority, believing God demands American leadership be wrested from godless usurpers and entrusted to true patriots who must be willing to shed blood (their own and others’) for God and country. Christian nationalism favors authoritarian control and what I call “good-guy violence” for the sake of maintaining a certain social order.

“The norms of white supremacy have become deeply and broadly integrated into white Christian identity, operating far below the level of consciousness,” Jones writes. “The story of just how intractably white supremacy has become embedded in the DNA of American Christianity.”

The House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol held hearings this week with Capitol Police officers who defended the Capitol that day, and learned “They Sought To Convert Us”: Officers’ January 6 Testimony Reveals The Riot’s Dark Righteousness (by Jeff Sharlett):

Maybe the bitterest, truest line of the day was uttered by Officer Harry Dunn: “Everything is different, but nothing has changed.” The violence is visible for all to see, but still we are blind. It’s no accident that such language echoes faith. The insurrection, insisted Officer Daniel Hodges, was religious.

“It was clear the terrorists perceive themselves to be Christians,” he said in a testimony acutely sensitive to the symbolic language of the mob. “I saw the Christian flag directly to my front. Another read, ‘Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president’”—a staple at Trump rallies—“Another, ‘Jesus is king.’” From early on, insurrectionists mistook themselves for missionaries. “Some of them would try to recruit me,” said Officer Hodges. “One of them came up to me and said, ‘Are you my brother?’” When it was Hodges’s turn at the front—in the “meat grinder” where an insurrectionist literally tried to rip his head off—they still attempted to evangelize: “Even during this intense contest of wills, they sought to convert us to their cult. One man shouted, ‘We all just want to make our voices heard, and I think you feel the same. I really think you feel the same.’”

But what was “the same”? Hodges called it a “white nationalist insurrection.” That it was also a Christian nationalist one is no contradiction. The insurrectionists, says Anthea Butler, a UPenn historian of religion and the author of White Evangelical Racism, “played out what American history has been for white supremacists—Christian nationalism steeped in racism from slavery to the present. But today the Capitol police officers showed us there’s a straight line from the Confederacy to the January 6 insurrectionists.”

[C]hristian nationalism … is the religion of the “lost cause,” whether that of the Confederacy, Donald Trump, or the mammoth Southern Baptist Convention that has recently declared critical race theory—by which they mean the whole history of race—a main theological foe, a sin somehow not listed in scripture. Christian identity, in the vaguest of senses, as euphemism for the idea of an American one that is white in biological fact or ideological essence.

Absent its discussion, we won’t truly name what happened on January 6 or the ways it’s still happening—the quickening of Republicans’ move from denial to pride in the “political prisoners” who, along with Ashli Babbitt, they name as the day’s martyrs, its sacralized witnesses. As Officer Hodges made plain, the Christian nationalism of January 6 was there for anyone with ears to hear or eyes to see.

White Christian Nationalism is the GQP base. It is anti-democratic, and anti-majoritarian. It is authoritarian, and theocratic (Dominionism, Christian Nationalism).

It is not denominational: “For many, their religious beliefs were not tied to any specific church or denomination — leaders of major denominations and megachurches, and even President Donald Trump’s faith advisers, were absent that day. For such people, their faith is individualistic, largely free of structures, rules or the approval of clergy.” A horn-wearing ‘shaman.’ A cowboy evangelist. For some, the Capitol attack was a kind of Christian revolt. “Even before Jan. 6, some sociologists said the fastest-growing group of American Christians are those associated with independent ‘prophets’ [cult leaders] who largely operate outside denominationalism.”

The White Christian Nationalist GQP base is threatened by the more than 500 arrests and pending prosecutions of the domestic terrorists who tried to stage a coup d’etat for Donald Trump. The White Christian Nationalist GQP base is threatened by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack, in particular, the 147 Republican lawmakers who still objected to the election results even after the Capitol attack. Some were complicit in aiding and abetting the seditious insurrection, and all were complicit in providing aid and comfort to the seditious insurrectionists, and are continuing to do so. See 18 U.S. Code § 2383:

Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.

That’s 147 GQP traitors in Congress who should be removed from office.

Traitor Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and his Sedition Caucus desperately want to disappear the MAGA/QAnon seditious insurrection on January 6 down the memory hole and pretend that it never happened, because they desperately want to take control of Congress in the 2022 midterm election, so they can complete their coup d’etat and overthrow American democracy.

To keep their white Christian Nationalist base politically motivated and willing to overlook the traitorous MAGA/QAnon violent seditious insurrection against the United States government, the GQP midterm election strategy is turning to the radicalized Republican U.S. Supreme Court, and going back to the well of anti-abortion culture war politics.

The radicalized Republican U.S. Supreme Court has already gutted the landmark Voting Rights Act, opening the door to GQP Jim Crow 2.0 voter suppression laws and partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts.

In case this is not enough, they are asking the radicalized Republican U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade (1973), the long sought-after goal of white Christian Nationalists.

Mississippi’s attorney general Lynn Fitch has asked the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade:

Mississippi’s attorney general told the Supreme Court on Thursday that Roe v. Wade was “egregiously wrong” and should be overturned as she urged the justices to allow a controversial law that bars most abortions after 15 weeks to go into effect.

“The conclusion that abortion is a constitutional right has no basis in text, structure, history, or tradition” state Attorney General Lynn Fitch told the justices in a new brief, launching the opening salvo in the most important abortion-related dispute the court has heard in decades.

Fitch said the case for overruling Roe is “overwhelming.”

The entire GQP political structure quickly followed suit. The Republican Attorneys General Association, a 24 state coalition (which includes our partisan hack Attorney General Mark Brnovich) filed an amicus brief. Under indictment and FBI investigation Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a brief joined by 23 other states supporting Mississippi and urging the court to overrule Roe.

https://twitter.com/AGEricSchmitt/status/1420860767394353155

A dozen Republican governors, including our “Wimpy Kid” Governor, “Do Nothing” Doug Ducey, also filed an amicus brief. 12 Republican governors ask Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade:

Twelve Republican governors on Thursday filed a brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, which set a precedent for the constitutional right to abortion.

Governors from Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma and Texas joined South Carolina in signing the brief.

The Phoenix New Times adds, Both Ducey and Brnovich Are Openly Asking the U.S. Supreme Court to Overturn Roe v. Wade:

Governor Doug Ducey joined eleven other Republican governors across the nation in signing an amicus brief that was filed today with the Supreme Court in the high-profile abortion case out of Mississippi involving a law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In their brief, the governors urged the court to “overrule” Roe v. Wade.

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, who is currently running for U.S. Senate, also signed onto a different brief filed today by attorneys general from various states that called for the court to overrule Roe v. Wade.

[In] the amicus brief that Ducey signed, the governors call on the Supreme Court to overrule Roe v. Wade and another significant abortion case ruling from 1992, Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, which reaffirmed Roe v. Wade. They argue in the brief that Roe v. Wade “upset the constitutional balance between States and the Federal Government” and that there is no constitutional right to an abortion.

“The Fourteenth Amendment does not include the right to terminate the life of an unborn child,” the brief states. “The misapplication of the Fourteenth Amendment in Roe and Casey is, to be sure, reason enough to overrule those decisions and return to the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

“The Court should take this opportunity to correct the mistakes in its abortion jurisprudence and recognize that the text and original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment have nothing to do with abortion,” the brief goes on to state. “Rather than creating a federal constitutional right, the Court should leave regulating abortion to the States.”

The brief also called on the Supreme Court to “reverse” the lower court’s decision to strike down Mississippi’s abortion law.

In the brief signed by Brnovich, the attorneys general made similar arguments. That one states that the Mississippi 15-week abortion law cases “presents the Court with an opportunity” to strike down Roe and Casey and that the rulings “created and preserved a nonexistent constitutional right.”

“The time has come to return the question of abortion to where it belongs — with the States,” the brief says. “The Court should overrule Roe and Casey.”

In a statement that was released today, Ducey defended his support of overturning Roe v. Wade.

“The Constitution preserves the rights of the states by specifically enumerating the authority granted to the federal government. Unfortunately, almost 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to ignore the Constitution and created policy which has led to the over-politicization of this issue for decades,” Ducey said. “Every single life has immeasurable value. That includes children who are preborn — and I believe it’s each state’s responsibility to protect them. It is time for the U.S. Supreme Court to fix their mistake and return this authority to the individual states as the democratic process intends. I’m proud to sign onto this brief to reaffirm Arizona’s commitment to protecting families and preborn children.”

This is the same governor whose criminal negligence in mismanaging the Coronavirus pandemic is directly responsible for the unnecessary deaths of thousands of Arizonans. How dare he pretend to be “pro life.”

This has always been a religious fetus fetish: the GQP is only concerned about a fetus in utero in a woman’s womb – it is all about the state’s ability to control women’s bodies (never men). Once a child is actually born, they are all “you’re on your own baby!” Republicans resist providing funding for health care, early childhood development, child care, education, nutritional assistance, safe housing, etc. They don’t give a rats ass about children once born.

Earlier this year, Ducey signed a highly controversial law, Senate Bill 1457, that criminalized some abortions and threatens abortion doctors with jail time. That bill, like the Mississippi abortion law, was also criticized as an attempt to challenge Roe v. Wade by attracting lawsuits and getting an abortion case before the Supreme Court.

In addition, 228 GOP lawmakers call on Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade:

Nearly 230 Republican members of Congress told the Supreme Court on Thursday that it should overturn Roe v. Wade and release its “vise grip on abortion politics.”

The new brief is the latest filing in a dispute that will be heard next term and represents the most significant abortion-related case the justices have taken up in nearly a half a century. The 6-3 conservative court, bolstered by three of former President Donald Trump’s appointees, could gut, or invalidate court precedent, and that’s what the GOP lawmakers are calling for.

“Congress and the States have shown that they are ready and able to address the issue in ways that reflect Americans’ varying viewpoints and are grounded in the science of fetal development and maternal health,” lawyers for 228 Republican lawmakers, including leadership in both chambers, told the justices.

The lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, are supporting Mississippi’s request to allow the law to go into effect. They are represented by the group Americans United for Life.

In Thursday’s brief, they asked the court to “affirm the constitutional authority of the federal and state governments to safeguard the lives and health of their citizens, born and not yet born.”

The lawmakers say the court should revisit the viability line established in court precedent, because it “binds the States in a one-sided constitutional tug-of-war in which they are subject to intense factual scrutiny on the abortion advocates’ issues but unable to establish the factual basis for their own vital interests.”

Earlier in the week, three other Republican senators — [insurrectionists] Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, and Mike Lee of Utah, who clerked for the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito — respectively, also weighed in in favor of Mississippi using their brief to make the argument that Roe should be invalidated even though it has been on the books since 1973.

The trio argued that while Stare Decisis considerations may be important to the judicial process, “they are not absolute” and that abortion precedent needs to be revisited.

“A history of confusion in the lower courts, an unstable pattern of Supreme Court decisions, and a persistent lack of judicially manageable standards all suggest that a precedent is or has become unworkable,” they said in their friend of the court brief.

“This Court has propounded a constitutional law of abortion for half a century, and no one can describe it with any certainty,” the states wrote. “Because the purported right to abortion lacks any textual or historical foundation, it is defined only by the Court’s constantly changing opinions.”
Paxton, a Republican, urged the Supreme Court to reject a strict viability line.

“States have every right to fight for the lives of unborn children, and scientific research has proven that babies in utero can survive with modern medicine months before what is considered viable,” he said in a statement. “States should be able to act on scientific developments in regards to brutal abortion practices.”

Abortion would remain legal in 21 states and would likely be prohibited in 24 states (including Arizona) and three territories if Roe v. Wade is overturned, according to the Center for Reproductive Right’s “What if Roe Fell?” project.

According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in April 2021, About six-in-ten Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases:

Today, a 59% majority of U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 39% think abortion should be illegalin all or most cases. These views are relatively unchanged in the past few years. The latest Pew Research Center survey, conducted April 5 to 11, finds deep disagreement between – and within – the parties over abortion. In fact, the partisan divide on abortion is far wider than it was two decades ago.

In the latest survey, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are 45 percentage points more likely than Republicans and Republican leaners to say abortion should be legal in all or most cases (80% vs. 35%). This gap is little changed over the last few years, but the current divide is wider than it was in the past. For instance, as recently as 2016, there was a 33-point gap between the shares of Democrats (72%) and Republicans (39%) who supported legal abortion in all or most cases.

This wider gap is mostly attributable to a steady increase in support for legal abortion among Democrats. In 2007, roughly two-thirds of Democrats and Democratic leaners (63%) said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Support among Democrats has risen by nearly 20 points since then, and 80% now say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Views among Republicans have remained relatively steady during this period. In 2007, around four-in-ten Republicans (39%) said abortion should be legal in all or most cases; today, 35% say this.

There are ideological differences within both parties over abortion, though the divide is starker within the GOP. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, 59% of moderates and liberals say abortion should legal in all or most cases, compared with just 22% of conservative Republicans.

While liberal Democrats are 17 percentage points more likely than conservative and moderate Democrats to say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, wide majorities of both groups (89% and 72%, respectively) say this.

[W]hite evangelical Protestants continue to be opposed to abortion in all or most cases. Around three-quarters of White evangelicals (77%) say it should be illegal in all or most cases, while 21% say it should be legal in at least most cases. In contrast, a majority of White Protestants who are not evangelical (63%) say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.

Religious “nones” – those who are religiously unaffiliated – overwhelmingly support legal abortion. Around eight-in-ten (82%) say it should be legal in all or most cases, while just 16% say it should be illegal.

Among the public overall, there is a modest gender divide in views of whether abortion should be legal: 56% of men and 62% of women say it should be legal in at least most cases. Within both parties, the views of men and women are largely aligned: 80% of Democratic women and 79% of Democratic men say abortion should be legal in all or most cases; similarly, 32% of Republican men and 39% of Republican women say the same.

White Christian Nationalists, opposed to democracy and majoritarianism, want to overthrow American democracy and to impose a theocracy under Christian Nationalism, a tyranny of a minority.