Is the GOP a Religion?

By Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Beast

12 September 11

he Dish covered the remarkable web essay of Mike Lofgren, but I didn't comment myself because it so closely follows my own argument in "The Conservative Soul" and on this blog, that it felt somewhat superfluous. But I want to draw attention to the crux of the piece, because if we are to understand how the right became so unmoored from prudence, moderation and tradition and became so infatuated with recklessness, extremism and revolution, we need to understand how it happened.

It is, of course, as my shrink never fails to point out, multi-determined. But here is Lofgren's attempt at a Rosebud:

How did the whole toxic stew of GOP beliefs - economic royalism, militarism and culture wars cum fundamentalism - come completely to displace an erstwhile civilized Eisenhower Republicanism?

It is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in America) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - at least in the minds of followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets.

That too is my view: that the GOP, deep down, is behaving as a religious movement, not as a political party, and a radical religious movement at that. Lofgren sees the "Prosperity Gospel" as a divine blessing for personal enrichment and minimal taxation (yes, that kind of Gospel is compatible with Rand, just not compatible with the actual Gospels); for military power (with a major emphasis on the punitive, interventionist God of the Old Testament); and for radical change and contempt for existing institutions (as a product of End-Times thinking, intensified after 9/11).

Lofgren argues that supply-side economics attaches to the fundamentalist worldview purely by coalition necessity. The fundamentalists are not that interested in debt or economics (they sure didn't give a damn as spending exploded under Bush) but if their coalition partners insist on a certain economic doctrine, they'll easily go along with it, as long as it is never compromised. If it's presented as eternal dogma, they can handle it - and defend it with gusto. If it also means that Obama is wrong, so much the better. Most theo-political movements need an anti-Christ of some sort; and Obama - even though he is the most demonstrably Christian president since Carter - fills the role.

And so this political deadlock conceals a religious war at its heart. Why after all should one abandon or compromise sacred truths? And for those whose Christianity can only be sustained by denial of modern complexity, of scientific knowledge, and of what scholarly studies of the Bible's origins have revealed, this fusion of political and spiritual lives into one seamless sensibility and culture, is irresistible. And public reminders of modernity - that, say, many Americans do not celebrate Christmas, that gay people have human needs, that America will soon be a majority-minority country and China will overtake the US in GDP by mid-century - are terribly threatening.

But all these nuances do not therefore vanish. The gays don't disappear. China keeps growing. The population becomes browner and browner. Women's lives increasingly become individual choices not social fates. And this enrages and terrifies the fundamentalist even more. Hence the occasional physical lashing out - think Breivik or McVeigh - but more profoundly, the constant endless insatiable cultural lashing out at the "elites" who have left fundamentalism behind, and have, on many core issues, science on their side. So within this religious core, and fundamentalist mindset, you also have the steely solder of ressentiment, intensified even further by a period of white middle and working class decline and economic crisis.

That's how I explain the current GOP. It can only think in doctrines, because the alternative is living in a complicated, global, modern world they both do not understand and also despise. Taxes are therefore always bad. Government is never good. Foreign enemies must be pre-emptively attacked. Islam is not a religion. Climate change is an elite conspiracy to impoverish America. Terror suspects are terrorists. When Americans torture, it is not torture. When Christians murder, they are not Christians. And if you change your mind on any of these issues, you are a liberal, an apostate, and will be attacked.

If your view of conservatism is one rooted in an instinctual, but agile, defense of tradition, in a belief in practical wisdom that alters constantly with circumstance, in moderation and the defense of the middle class as the stabilizing ballast of democracy, in limited but strong government ... then the GOP is no longer your party (or mine).

Religion has replaced all of this, reordered it, and imbued the entire political-economic-religious package with zeal. And the zealous never compromise. They don't even listen.

Think of Michele Bachmann's wide-eyed, Stepford stare as she waits for a questioner to finish before providing another pre-cooked doctrinal nugget. My fear - and it has building for a decade and a half, because I've seen this movement up-close from within and also on the front lines of the marriage wars - is that once one party becomes a church with unchangeable doctrines, and once it has supplanted respect for institutions and civility with the radical pursuit of timeless doctrines and hatred of governing institutions, then our democracy is in grave danger.

If you ask why I remain such a strong Obama supporter, it is because I see him as that rare individual able to withstand the zeal without becoming a zealot in response, and to overcome the recklessness of pure religious ideology with pragmatism, civility and reason. That's why they fear and loathe him. Not because his policies are not theirs'. But because his temperament is their nemesis. If he defeats them next year, they will break, because their beliefs are so brittle, but will then reform, along Huntsman-style lines. If they defeat him, I fear we will no longer be participating in a civil conversation, however fraught, but in a civil war.

'People Are Close to Revolt'

By James Fallows, The Atlantic

11 September 11

esterday I quoted a long-time Congressional staffer - one involuntarily retired by the mid-term results in 2010 - who ratified previous comments about the Republican-led nihilism of the Congress and the disgusted reaction it was evoking in the rest of the country. A university librarian in the Midwest responds:

-- I've never actually written to a journalist before, but I was one of the 1,252 people arrested this weekend in front of the White House. I also live in the rural Midwest and your source is right. People are close to revolt. I think it will be a five year process of movement building, but even my very conservative staff of library assistants all cheered me on when I told them what I was doing. The people I interact with here and the ones I met in DC are all fed-up at a deep and fundamental level.

All of the people I know who are capable of rational thought also understand that the combination of (we're rural so pretty much everyone gets climate change) climate change and energy issues, lack of jobs, and the refusal of government to provide us with basic services means that a new revolutionary social movement is needed. Food prices are soaring, gas prices are making it hard for people to get to low paying jobs, and the amount of suffering because of lack of access to medical care is dire.

I sent a staff person home today (without pay since she's part-time) with a draining ear infection and a high fever. She also has a mass in her abdomen. She has no insurance and she's divorced with children and her ex also has no money. She is paying her bills with what I would call scam student loans that will eventually ruin her. These people are getting closer and closer to the point where we will have fundamental break-down of law and order.

How far does Congress think they can push before they get pushed back? --

Several more worth reading after the jump, a small sample of what has arrived. I am out of the country and on the road and will catch up with these as often as I can.

The US has been through difficult moments in public life before, including many I experienced and remember myself. This is different from the eruptions and desperation of the late 1960s, it's different from the Constitutional crisis of the Nixon era, it's different from a range of other bleak episodes that come to my mind. But today's fatalistic exasperation about the basics of self-government - about whether a rich and still-powerful nation can address its rudimentary and most obvious challenges - is more than I remember in a long while.

From a former Senate staffer and academic specialist in Congressional operations, the must-win battle to the death:

-- Thanks for bringing to our attention the fine Lofgren piece. I agree with his comments and those of another former staffer, but I'd add a couple points.

When challenging Speaker Jim Wright over his book sales and then during the House banking scandal, Newt Gingrich defended his efforts as "We have to destroy the House in order to save it." I think you can make a line connecting that approach with Reagan's "government is the problem" and Grover Norquist's "starve the beast." Many Republican leaders somehow believe that they and the country will benefit if they undermine public trust in and support for government - and they see no difference between the national and partisan benefits from such an outcome.

I think it's also significant that large segments of the opposition party have believed that our last 3 presidents were fundamentally illegitimate: Clinton, with 43% of the vote and personal misbehavior leading to impeachment, Bush for winning in the Supreme Court but not the popular vote, and Obama for his exotic background and birth certificate controversy.

As much as I defend Congress - because I remember a time when there was more civility and some good things were accomplished - I must admit that in recent years the Republicans have turned every disagreement into a must-win battle to the death.Their party unity is stunning, I guess because they are quite willing to punish deviants severely.

The only way to stop them is for the voters to reject their approach - and the polls showing greater criticism of the GOP than of Obama suggest this might be working. I don't know if the political system can survive until that punishment is meted out. --

From another reader, what "starve the beast" really means:

-- What I find interesting about this is that it isn't news. Republicans have long (since Reagan) spoken of the need to "starve the beast" to radically reshape government to their specifications. I think most people have viewed it as some kind of a colorful metaphor. But if you remove the blinders and take it literally, what would starving the beast look like?

Choking everything that has sustained the beast: Cutting revenues (taxes); Undermining the economy; Damaging the institutions that have sustained the beast; Removing beast-loving voters from the voting booth. Republican tactics and goals all involve choking: crimping tax revenues, crimping voter access, crimping resources, crimping legislative processes.

There is very little that the Republicans have been promoting which, if clearly and effectively laid out for the voters, would be approved by a majority of American voters. The Republicans have to have known this. And so they starve the beast, and the beast includes the US government as we have known it for the last several decades. The government and its institutions are being choked to death.

Oh. And one more thing: Obama and Biden have mentioned that in being mentored as new senators, they were told, no matter what, never question the good intentions of your opposition.

This is excellent advice for preserving a collegial institution where all the participants truly are dedicated to the integrity of the government. However, if one party actually wants to undermine the government, it is a prescription [for disaster] for today's Democratic Party. --

From a reader in (I think) his 20s with some Congressional staff experience, the Tragedy of the Commons:

-- First, the life of a congressional staffer is grueling and difficult, with a very high turnover for the 20-somethings that arrive each year. I'd bet that staffers are caught in a negative feedback cycle - as Congress gets worse, it becomes harder and harder for anyone less interested in their proximity to power to stay. Idealism is tough to maintain, especially given the examples that Members and Senators are setting, and sweeping out droves of elected officials doesn't change the underlying population that keeps the Hill ticking (or not ticking).

Second, remember that the debt deal was made by Biden + McConnell, one of the few long-standing relationships between credible party leaders. Those relationships were crucial; they allowed our leaders to see each others humanity, and to trust each other far more than today's politics allows. Being able to fly home to one's district may be good for that particular Member, but it's a Tragedy of the Commons - if no one sticks around in DC, national policy making suffers. And has suffered.

Why don't we think of Congressional service like a military deployment? Soldiers can't come home each weekend, and those that spend the money on their wars shouldn't either. --

Of course this last writer recognizes all the reasons why you couldn't - and shouldn't - keep Congress in DC for months on end. But the drive-by nature of today's legislative interaction has its own destructive consequences, as he points out. More soon.