The Lies Didn't Start with Trump, Part 3
The feigned morality of the GOP is all a pose of unfathomable hypocrisy
We’ve all heard the Republican line, often spoken with a growl of self-righteous hatred: Abortion is murder. Life begins at conception, so terminating a fertilized egg is morally the same as drowning a toddler. Women who have abortions should be locked up as murderers, and providers should be executed. It’s a mindset that further inflames the fevered mob of Biblically illiterate and morally simplistic members of the GOP base, granting vindication for their endless, fist-shaking desire to rage at Democrats.
And Republican politicians all know that this red meat is a pile of hooey, something they just say rather than actually believe.
Think about it for a moment: Herschel Walker, the GOP’s senate nominee from Georgia and a the candidate most likely to star in the next remake of Dumb and Dumber, has been exposed as having paid for the abortion of a woman he impregnated. My God! Walker is a baby murderer! No one - no one - could ever possibly vote for a man who murdered a baby!
If evidence established that a Democrat committed infanticide, there would be universal demands that this person drop out of the race and be prosecuted. (Walker, of course, would face no issue as a Democrat for having paid so that a woman could exercise her own bodily autonomy.) But the Republicans! Faced with someone they believe - har-har - in their midst who kills babies, their reaction has been, “Who cares? We want to kick the people we hate.”
Erick Erickson, a prominent conservative evangelical, shrugged that he thought this was old news. (Old news? You mean, he hasn't care for a long time about supporting someone who was obviously willing to plunge a dagger into a child’s heart?) Ralph Reed, one of the most hypocritical conservative evangelicals walking the earth, said that no one in Georgia would care that their nominee murdered a baby, and the he “100 percent” expected not only that his fellow “devout” Christians would stand by the killer, but that more of them would vote for Walker because, I don’t know, they like thinking about toddlers being boiled in oil?
And then there are the ones who are cheering and waving and jumping up and down with eagerness about voting for the Republican’s version of Freddie Krueger, the child killer, because they control of the Senate. “I have faith and confidence that Herschel will vote the right way,” said Debbie Dooley, a conservative activist in Atlanta. ““I am totally for Walker,” said Newt Gingrich, serial adulterer who also used to serve in Congress. “I don't care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate," said GOP activist, former NRA spokeswoman, and longtime wince-inducer Dana Loesch. (This is the same Dana Loesch when asked in 2019 about the moral failings of her God King, Donald Trump, said she didn’t want to “take lectures on morality from individuals of a party who think it is perfectly permissible and moral to murder infants.” Unless, of course, that “murderer” can help Republicans get more tax cuts and guarantee more mass gun slaughters because, you know, that’s what Jesus wants.)
We’ve seen Walkerism - no abortions for thee, plenty for my girlfriends - repeatedly among GOP hypocrites. Elliot Broidy, the former RNC deputy finance chairman, impregnated his Playboy Playmate mistress then paid her $1.6m after she got an abortion. Rep. Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, who celebrated himself as a pro-life Republican, resigned after it was revealed he had urged his mistress to get an abortion. Rep. Scott DesJarlais, a Republican from Tennessee, was also a big pro-lifer - who cheered his now-ex-wife’s decision to get two abortions before their marriage, and later pressured a 24-year-old mistress he impregnated to get an abortion. Congressman Todd Rokita slammed a GOP senator for donating to a candidate who the Congressman screamed was a“pro-abortionist” - but he donated to DesJarlais, the Congressman who pressured his mistress into having an abortion.
These aren’t the worst of the worst of the abortion hypocrites. That award goes to Scott Lloyd, the head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement under Trump. While other administrations provided abortions as medical assistance, Lloyd wanted to force the world to live under his political talking points. So he did everything in his power to make sure that no refugees have access to abortion, including a 17-year-old girl who had been raped. “The child – the one who is destroyed – is not an aggressor,” he argued. Yah, you know where this is going: Years before, he drove a girlfriend to get an abortion and paid half of the cost.
And this is not just hypocrisy of the political leaders - it is infused throughout the entire Republican base. A national survey by Lifeway, a Christian research organization, found that self-proclaimed Christians are the most abortion-iest in America. making up 70% of all women who terminate a pregnancy. Making there hypocrisy more disgusting, almost one out of four of the women who obtain an abortion - or 23% - identify as evangelical Christians. A majority of the women who regularly attended church kept their abortion secret, mostly out of fear of being judged. And almost half agreed that their pastors’ teachings on forgiveness don't seem to apply to women who have an abortion.
The anecdotal evidence is grotesque. In her book "My Life On The Road," Gloria Steinem, the feminist activist, wrote, "When I visit clinics, I've learned to ask the staff if they have ever seen an (anti-abortion) picketer come in, have an abortion, and go back to picketing again. From Atlanta to Wichita, the answer is yes."
One thing is clear: The GOP “morality” argument - the one that is at bottom the foundation of the culture wars - is a fraud, which is why Republicans find it so easy to dismiss the Herschel Walker situation. The party has made it clear that its claims to absolute moral rules are purely situational. This is a political party which, when seeing the prospect of impeaching a Democratic president who received oral sex from a consenting adult, intoned sternly about the importance of morality in the White House. They say Walker - who threatened his wife with a gun and, if his son is to believed, was physically abusive and is now known to have paid for an abortion - is more devout than his opponent, Rafael Warnock, a literal senior pastor at a Baptist Church. The Republicans are the ones who said that Hillary Clinton - a Methodist who carries a Bible and teaches Sunday school - hated God, the same thing they now say about Joe Biden, a devout Catholic. But when Trump - a man who does not attend church, who cites as his favorite verse of the Bible words from the Old Testament that were specifically repudiated by Jesus, an adulterer who bangs and bribed porn stars, a friend of pedophiles, a pathological liar - is the Republican nominee, he is declared not only a man of God, but for some of his craziest supporters, the Second Coming of Christ.
There is one consistent requirement for GOP political moralism: It is all about forcing others to live the lives that the Republican base demands, even if GOPrs don’t live it themselves. Abortion, LGBTQ rights, book bans - all of it is about what other people do. It is oh so simple to preen with moralistic superiority - even if it is based on a lie - when you are demanding nothing of yourself, particularly when you wrap your selfishness in a cherry-picked or ignorant view of the Bible. But the real moral issues from the book they supposedly cherish, the requirements straight out of the mouth of Jesus in the Gospels and many by the Apostle Paul - those are just ignored. Giving half of what you own to the poor (I want tax cuts! Those lazy people should take care of themselves!"). Treating children with goodness (Rip them away from their mothers! Lock them up!) Loving all, including your enemies (Gays should die!)
In fact, what is most astonishing about the GOP’s claim to morality based on the “Word of God” is the magnitude of conservative Christians’ Biblical illiteracy. I’ll get more into that in another part of this series, but let’s drop just one fact right here.
The GOP says God opposes abortion. But the Bible, in Numbers 5:11-31, gives specific instructions on how to perform one, all to test if a woman has been unfaithful. In Matthew 24:19, Jesus bemoans the harm that could come in the End Times to pregnant women and nursing babies, but says nothing about fetuses. And Exodus 21 makes clear that God considers a fetus to be property, while a pregnant woman is life - those who cause attack a pregnant woman and causes her to miscarry must pay a fine, but the attacker must be killed if the assault causes the woman to die. As for prohibitions against abortion? The Bible is silent.
But never mind all that. Republicans have lies to scream, all to win votes of a “religious” base that knows more about who is winning American idol than they do about the Bible they claim to worship.