Tag: GOP culture wars

Paul Krugman: GOP ‘family values’ rhetoric is as ‘intellectually bankrupt’ now as it was in 1992

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“Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, who is seeking the GOP nomination in Ohio’s 2022 U.S. Senate race, was cynically playing the family values card when he railed against the “childless left” during a speech on Friday night, July 23 — and he even mentioned some Democrats by name. Liberal economist Paul Krugman has responded to Vance’s speech in his July 26 column for the New York Times, stressing that Republican “family values” rhetoric is as empty and vacuous in 2021 as it was when the GOP made “family values” the theme of the 1992 Republican National Convention.

Vance was speaking at an event hosted by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and the Democrats he singled out as examples of the “childless” trend in the U.S. included Vice President Kamala Harris, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York City. And Vance praised Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — a far-right authoritarian — for encouraging more procreation in his country. Booker and AOC, reporter Martin Pengelly noted in The Guardian, don’t have any children. Harris has two stepchildren with her husband, Doug Emhoff.

Vance’s speech, Krugman writes, brought back memories of the GOP’s “family values” rhetoric of 1992. Continue reading.

Abortion rights face most difficult test yet at Supreme Court

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Abortion rights groups are issuing dire warnings that abortion access is likely to be sharply curtailed across the country if the Supreme Court uses a Mississippi case to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision.

The admonishments come after Mississippi on Thursday explicitly urged the justices to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling when the court reviews Mississippi’s ban on virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

“It cannot be overstated how dire the implications would be if Roe v. Wade were overturned,” said Vangela Wade, president of the Mississippi Center for Justice, which is co-counsel on the case. “Women across Mississippi and this nation would lose their fundamental right to chart their own future. Instead, that power would be in the hands of the government.” Continue reading.

Mississippi’s attorney general asks Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade

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Mississippi’s attorney general urged the Supreme Court in a Thursday brief to overrule Roe v. Wade next term when the justices review Mississippi’s ban on virtually all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

Calling the court’s precedent on abortion “egregiously wrong,” Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R) explicitly set the dispute over Mississippi’s restrictive law on a collision course with the landmark 1973 decision in Roe that first articulated the constitutional right to abortion.

“This Court should overrule Roe and Casey,” Fitch wrote, referring also to the court’s 1992 decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. “Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong. They have proven hopelessly unworkable. … And nothing but a full break from those cases can stem the harms they have caused.” Continue reading.

Historian: Republican culture war fight driven by need to hide a basic fact about American history

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Critical Race Theory (CRT) has become a lightning rod for conservative ire at any discussion of racism, anti-racism, or the non-white history of America. Across the country, bills in Republican-controlled legislatures have attempted to prevent the teaching of CRT, even though most of those against CRT struggle to define the term. CRT actually began as a legal theory which held simply that systemic racism was consciously created, and therefore, must be consciously dismantled. History reveals that the foundation of America, and of systemic racism, happened at the same time and from the same set of consciously created laws.

Around the 20th of August, 1619, the White Lion, an English ship sailing under a Dutch flag, docked off Old Point Comfort (near present-day Hampton), in the British colony of Virginia, to barter approximately 20 Africans for much needed food and supplies. The facts of the White Lion’s arrival in Virginia, and her human cargo, are generally not in dispute. Whether those first Africans arriving in America were taken by colonists as slaves or as indentured servants is still debated. But by the end of the 17th century, a system of chattel slavery was in place in colonial America. How America got from uncertainly about the status of Africans, to certainty that they were slaves, is a transition that highlights the origins of systemic racism.

Three arguments have been put forth about whether the first Africans arriving in the colonies were treated as indentured servants or as slaves. One says that European racism predisposed American colonists to treat these Africans as slaves. Anthony and Isabella, for example, two Africans aboard the White Lion, were acquired by Captain William Tucker and listed at the bottom of his 1624/25 muster (census) entry, just above his real property, but below white indentured servants and native Americans. Continue reading.

Reproductive rights debated during Missouri Senate ‘hearing that resembled a remedial sex education course’: report

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If Roe v. Wade is overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court, Missouri is one of the Republican-controlled states in which abortion will likely be outlawed. But far-right social conservatives, as many feminists have noted, are not only going after abortion, they are opposed to contraception and sex education as well. And reproductive freedom, journalist Jonathan Shorman reports in the Kansas City Star, was a prominent topic last week during a “heated hearing that resembled a remedial sex education course.”

Shorman reports that a committee in the Missouri State Senate “debated the merits of restricting Medicaid coverage of birth control and limiting payments to Planned Parenthood as part of a must-pass renewal of a hospital tax that generates $4 billion a year to fund Medicaid, which provides health coverage to low-income residents.”

“A group of conservative senators are demanding limits on birth control coverageand Planned Parenthood payments be included to win their support, though Medicaid is already prohibited from paying for abortions,” Shorman explains. “The tax, called the Federal Reimbursement Allowance or FRA, expires September 30. But Gov. Mike Parson plans to impose draconian spending cuts if an extension isn’t approved by July 1, when the new budget year begins.” Continue reading.

I’m a scholar of critical race theory — here’s the reality about it behind the conservative moral panic

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Critical race theory (CRT) is the current conservative media boogeyman spreading moral panic about poor white people being confronted with the history of racism in the United States. Claims about critical race theory range from plausible but incorrect (it’s about white privilege and white people’s racism) to outlandish and bizarre (it supports a white genocide and confiscating all white people’s property). The truth of critical race theory is that it’s a socio-legal framework for analyzing the disparate impact of policies on marginalized communities, most often Black people.

OK, but what does that mean? Since CRT was an academic methodology taught in law schools and advanced college courses until recently, those who truly understand CRT often speak in academic language that can be difficult to understand. However, unlike a lot of academic methodologies, CRT has clear and practical real-world applications. Due to its name and origin, people often believe it’s an overly theoretical study without concrete evidence. In reality, the scholarship in CRT is often based on the study of statistics, laws and legal cases (about as concrete as you can get).

Berkeley Law Professor Khiara Bridges, a scholar of intersectionality and reproductive rights, provided a list of key tenets of critical race theory in her book Critical Race Theory: A Primer. Professor Bridges argues that critical race theory is concerned with Justice (with a capital J) and is not a thought experiment or academic exercise. Her tenets are that CRT acknowledges that race is a social construction, not a biological reality, that racism is a normal embedded feature of American society (not an aberration), a rejection of traditional liberalism’s understandings of racism, and a connection between scholarship and people’s real lives. While Professor Bridge’s list of core tenets restate a lot of earlier CRT scholarship, it is relevant that her book was published in 2018 and continues to agree with the originators of CRT, such as Derrick Bell and Kimberle Crenshaw. Often, critics of CRT claim the origins are reasonable but the current state is what is problematic. As a newly minted CRT PhD, my scholarship remains loyal to the origins and agrees with Professor Bridge’s core tenets. Continue reading.

GOP senator cites racist, anti-LGBTQ Fox News contributor in floor speech

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Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) finds a kindred spirit in Mark Steyn.

In a speech given on the floor of the Senate on Monday night, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) extensively quoted from a bigoted column written by conservative pundit Mark Steyn.

Tuberville made his statement in the course of attacking “critical race theory,” an approach to the academic study of systemic racism that many Republicans have recently called a divisive anti-American concept that they falsely claim is being taught in primary and secondary schools.

Claiming that “critical race theory is pushed on school districts across the country,” Tuberville said, “Simply put, critical race theory reinforces divisions on strict racial lines. It doesn’t teach kids moral values, like treating everyone with respect regardless of race. It’s just the opposite. Critical race theory teaches kids to hate one another.” Continue reading.

How Republicans Became the ‘Barstool’ Party

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The Barstool-ification of the GOP could reconfigure its cultural politics for a generation.

Earlier this year, when Echelon Insights released its way-too-early pollof voters’ preferences for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, political wonks could be forgiven for having to Google the name at the bottom of the list next to Sen. Josh Hawley: somebody called “Portnoy,” polling at zero percent. 

As founder of the self-consciously lowbrow Barstool Sports digital media empire, Dave Portnoy has, over the past decade, parlayed an outsized, aggressively macho social-media presence into a status as a right-leaning populist champion. He threatened — via Twitter, almost certainly illegally — to fire any Barstool employees who might attempt to unionize. He went viral with his impassioned rants against Covid-19 lockdowns. He feuded with Elon Musk on the behalf of meme-stocking, little-guy day traders. (He also heads an online outlet that has shamelessly stolen content and engaged in flagrant racism and misogyny, leading harassment campaigns against anyone who would dare call them out.)

Portnoy jokingly “announced” a presidential campaign on Twitter shortly after the poll’s release, but an actual run is highly unlikely. There’s no obvious reason to mount one: his presence in the poll is evidence enough of how the Republican Party has become the party of Barstool Sports. Continue reading.

North Carolina lieutenant governor tells pregnant women: ‘It’s not your body anymore’

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The comment was one of a number of offensive remarks Republican official Mark Robinson made at his state party convention.

North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson gave a speech on Friday at his state party convention that many would consider wildly offensive. Included in his comments were statements that imply women lose the right to control their bodies once they get pregnant, that transgender people are not worthy of respect, and that Black Americans don’t deserve reparations but rather owe a debt to their enslaved ancestors.

Local station WRAL reported on Robinson’s remarks, saying the crowd of Republican voters ate up his remarks, which included nearly every right-wing culture war issue.

He spoke about his opposition to abortion, even for victims of rape or incest, appearing to allude to Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection, saying he felt no sympathy for those who sought abortion. Continue reading.

50 years later, the culture wars debate over the child care crisis has barely budged

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Conservative counterproposals to Biden’s families plan look to promote the traditional family at a time when marriages and birthrates are at record lows.

In 1971, President Richard Nixon vetoed a bipartisan bill that would have laid the groundwork for a national child care system, saying it would have placed the government on “the side of communal approaches to child rearing [and] against the family-centered approach.”

Fifty years later, as President Joe Biden makes subsidized child care for low- and middle-income families a major plank of his legislative agenda, the socially conservative argument against his plan sounds much the same as the one Nixon aide Pat Buchanan was making when he wrote that veto message.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., argued that Biden’s prescription would “incentivize women to rely on the federal government to organize their lives” in an interview with the Fox Business Network soon after Biden announced his plan last month. In a tweet, she compared the proposal to Soviet-style child care. Continue reading.