It is self-evident that Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party into little more than a cult – with members who worship him and officeholders who pledge unconditional loyalty to him.
Hypocrisy in pursuit of power is a virtue, not a vice
I have written many commentaries analogizing the lost Israelites forsaking their religious tenets to worship a golden calf with the MAGA Republicans forsaking their political principles to worship a gilded-tower grifter.
But nothing betrays how far they have lost their way quite like even Evangelical Republicans embracing the Trumpian art of displaying hypocrisy – not just as an article of faith, but as a virtue. They did so in dystopian fashion this week when they circled the wagons around Herschel Walker, their Georgia Senate nominee. They were protecting him from the trail of abortions he funded that are now coming home to roost.
No Republican has spouted this hypocrisy with more Trumpian zeal than Dana Loesch, the wannabe female Rush Limbaugh:
I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate! If the Daily Beast story is true, you’re telling me Walker used his money to reportedly pay some skank for an abortion, and [Sen. Raphael Warnock] wants to use all of our moneys to pay a whole bunch of skanks for abortions. So, it doesn’t change anything for me!
(The Raw Story, October 9, 2022)
The problem is that, like all Republicans these days, Loesch would probably vow to sacrifice the Baby Jesus just to “own the libs.” And, given the “pro-life” doctrine Republicans used to proselytize, I’d say that Loesch testimony comes pretty damn close.
Is Walker a Christian vessel or a useful idiot?
Republicans hail Walker as a born-again Christian who has learned from the error of his ways. This, even as he compounds the abortions he funded years ago by repeatedly lying about them today. But again, hypocrisy’s the thing that will earn him the greatest praise in Trump’s MAGA cult now masquerading as the Republican Party.
Except that, if Walker had any common sense, he would understand what Loesch’s testimony really says about him. After all, it clearly betrays what little respect Republicans have for him, and what a useful idiot they think he is. Because only that explains all of them hailing Loesch for calling the mother of his child a ‘skank’.
The problem, of course, is that the disrespect they are showing Walker is surpassed by the lack of respect Walker is showing himself. After all, no matter how he personally feels about the mother of his child, no self-respecting man would tolerate anyone publicly dissing her like this.
Yet Walker has continued to just ‘shuck and jive’ along the campaign trail. Mind you, he comes across as so oxymoronic, he probably thinks that, in dissing the mother at issue, Loesch was complimenting him. Sad!
What hypocrisy? We’re standing up for a black man!
That said, there’s no denying the hypocrisy afoot would not resonate nearly as much if Walker were white. Because key among the platitudes Republicans used to preach about family values were racist screeds about the absentee fathers, and all the social maladies that breeds in black communities. And, lo and behold, it turns out Walker himself personifies that absentee black father…in spades.
Even so, Republicans are reveling too much in fake absolution to give a damn about any of that. Because they are masking not just their hypocrisy on abortion but their history of racism with their Trumpian support for this one black man.