With total control of all levers of government, it is reasonable to state that it is high tide for the Republican Party as they hold majorities in both chambers of the U.S. Congress and hold the White House. One thing about high tides, they always eventually recede. I’m curious as to what all the receding Conservative tide will reveal in the coming months. One silver lining to last year’s toxic and fractious election campaign was the true colors of certain interest groups came shining through with unmistakable clarity. White evangelical Christian conservatives that comprise the largest religious voting block that supported President Trump, while some may have held their nose and marked a ballot for the GOP candidate, all were forced to completely set their purported religious values aside in favor of the prospect of granting overwhelming power to those politicians who represented their values. By doing so they in effect made a pact with the Devil. All such agreements, be they calmly tacit or eyes-wide-open active, come with strings and consequences.
In a previous post I alluded to the loss of any existing moral credibility of any Christian that voted for Trump. Indeed, if any Christian believer who seeks to elect leaders with a Christian world view and lifestyle, Candidate Donald Trump was one they had to ignore too many religious shortcomings to dismiss as isolated aberrations. It was not like all Conservative voters were not given fair warning about the character of their candidate during the course of the campaign. The double-edged sword of Mr. Trump’s high profile public persona left little to the imagination which makes it difficult for any supporter to claim ignorance long after the fact. To accept such a candidate as the ostensible standard bearer of the Republican Party and by extension the Conservative movement to which most evangelical Christians follow blindly required a complete disregard of many of their established core religious values and beliefs. Mind you, these included many of the same people who had no qualms with the impeachment of then President Bill Clinton over one under-oath falsehood regarding one act of fellatio. Because part of the Trump agenda includes lowering the wall (if not completely removing it) between church and state, being led by the devil that we know as President Donald J. Trump is entirely okay with the evangelical wing of the GOP base.
For a candidate and now elected official who very successfully sold the most salient point of himself as being a non-politician, he is saying all the right things politicians say to connect with and assuage the concerns of their most ardent followers. He even has evangelical leaders now not only carrying his water but integrating his leadership into their religious message. Many of those in the Congress who were resoundingly reelected in 2016 verbalized few if any bones with riding Mr. Trump’s electoral coattails back into their House or Senate seat. Looking at the big picture, this alliance is bearing some bitter fruit or at least has in the short run. At the one month mark into the Trump era, it is apparent that what worked for Candidate Trump on the campaign trail is failing him in terms of governance. He has failed to spread his appeal to more citizens than just his base and his poll approval numbers are reflecting it. For all the criticism of the Democrats over their perceived focus on the election results, Mr. Trump has an overt obsession with his own victory. I’m sure nobody would argue with the premise that being elected to the highest office in the land would make a person great. Part of being a great leader is assuming 100% accountability for all that goes on under your leadership, right or wrong for better or worse. We have yet to see any of this but then again . A common man who happened to be a Democrat unexpectedly found himself wearing the mantle of Commander-in-Chief, one President Harry S. Truman. President Truman had sign on his desk in the Oval Office that in no uncertain terms was the embodiment of absolute accountability communicated in a very straight-forward and succinct message:
Where the buck stops under President Trump is anybody’s guess. Looking at the big picture, life is a negotiation and living is full of trade-offs. Suffering under the incompetence of the Trump regime is one of those trade-offs that go with making a pact with the Devil. The GOP may have gotten everything that they wanted last November 8th in terms of Congressional majorities, however it may not be the end-all to their problems. Some are finding out that the contract they figuratively had to sign in blood may come back to haunt them sooner than they thought. Certainly the “best and brightest” are having second thoughts about serving under such a problem prone Administration. The latest example I can point to, Vice Admiral Robert Harwood’s pass on becoming President Trump’s replacement for Gen. Flynn as National Security Advisor, is very telling and should be a cause for concern for all those currently in government.
It remains to be seen if any of the coattail riding Republicans, so many representing badly gerrymandered districts, will pay any real political price for entering into a pact with Satan. Bill Maher articulated the patriotic impunity of being a Republican as only he can do during his New Rules segment this past Friday evening:
Read what I post now, believe it later. Supporting this President, for whatever reason, has required a pact with Satan. It would not be so bad if this particular devil was not working (or trying to) at his level of incompetence. Painful as it is to watch, this is now what passes for American leadership and all who entered into this pact, be it tacit approval or active support, are now bear responsibility for the results borne by their decision. I suppose a reasonable question is can any of them place a monetary value of a clear conscience. I’m not sure that can be answered yet.
I wonder if any reputable polling agency is gathering data regarding why people voted for their chosen candidate in the 2016 election. I wonder because, during preliminaries, I heard a lot of talk about selecting “the lesser of two evils” in regard to either candidate, leaving me with the impression that very few Americans were strongly drawn to a candidate based upon personal/political values. I cannot quite get my head around evangelical folks’s supporting Donald, who appears to be unacquainted with Christ’s teachings about caring for the weak, the poor, the downtrodden, the exploited, and the refugees, and is equally unfamiliar with the commandment regarding loving our enemies as well as loving our friends. Only their hatred for other possible candidates could have possibly fueled support for a man who, obviously, is so well off that he has no need for God. What does this choice mean when we say that “America has spoken” in the results of this election? People may have wanted a change, but the changes we are getting are not going to bode well for us. Those “checks and balances” that I learned about in Jr. High Social Studies classes are the only things that give me a sense of security, but only as long as we, the people, make it clear that we want freedom and justice for all, not just for some.