CONSERVATIVES: THEY'LL BE WHINING WHEN THEY'RE WINNING

You might have imagined that social conservatives would temporarily put their persecution complexes on hold and spend a few moments savoring yesterday's Hobby Lobby victory. But that's just not the kind of thing right-wingers do. The sense of victimization must be sustained. That's why Rick Santorum's film studio chose yesterday, a day on which movement conservatism scored a huge win, to announce the upcoming release of a documentary depicting the movement as subject to ongoing -- and literally Hitlerian -- persecution:

The production company run by former Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said this week that it planned to release a movie about Monday’s Supreme Court decision that gave some corporations the right to deny birth control to women based on religious objections.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, EchoLight Studios will release the documentary -- called One Generation Away: The Erosion of Religious Liberty -- on Sept. 1.

A trailer for the movie points to the Hobby Lobby case that the Supreme Court decided on Monday as proof that the government is trying to destroy religious freedom. Filmmakers compare the situation to Nazi Germany, when Christians in Germany did not "wake up."

Here's the trailer. Nazis show up at about 1:44, in a montage that includes a shot of a Hobby Lobby store and footage of two evil men sawing down a cross.

OGA Trailer 1 from EchoLight Studios on Vimeo.

(The filmmakers treat Nazism as bad, though the darling little blond girl seen sadly traversing the felled cross could have come straight out of Third Reich propaganda.)

Notice the release date for the film: September 1. This is clearly meant to be a base motivator for the midterms. But why announce the release date on the very day when you'd think these folks would be saying that the doomsday clock for religious freedom in America was pushed back a few minutes?

Because they can't bring themselves to say that they're winning. They have to keep arguing that they're still oppressed. This works as a team-building measure (right-wingers like feeling oppressed). It helps prevent movement complacency. And, well, these folks really do still think they're under the jackboot.

So we get this in a statement from Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal:

The Court has made clear today that the Obama administration's assault on religious freedom in this case went too far - but this assault will not stop, in our courts, in our schools, and in the halls of power. It will take believers who are willing to risk their fortunes and public ridicule and the modern slings and arrows to stand up for what's right.

This despite the fact that these guys just keep winning, and will continue to win. Here's Matt Bowman, a lawyer involved in the Hobby Lobby case, explaining what else is up to the readers of National Review. It seems like nothing but good news for the right:

Beyond Conestoga and Hobby Lobby, several other family-business cases against the mandate were sitting on the Court’s desk waiting to be resolved.

This morning the Supreme Court denied review in all the cases the family businesses had won outright: the Newland and Grote families, who I represent (Grote is consolidated with Korte in the Seventh Circuit). And it "GVR'd" the cases where the government had won all or part of the decision (Autocam -- Sixth Circuit, and Gilardi -- D.C. Circuit) (a GVR grants review, vacates the decision, and remands for further proceedings consistent with Conestoga-Hobby Lobby).

... In not only Hobby Lobby, but in Newland from the Tenth Circuit (the first injunction ever granted against the mandate), and Grote and Korte from the Seventh Circuit, the Courts of Appeals affirmatively concluded that the [contraceptive] mandate is not supported by a compelling interest. This morning's orders denying review in those cases leave in place this circuit precedent.

... both the Eleventh and Tenth Circuits ruled yesterday afternoon (after the Supreme Court ruling), for EWTN and for the Catholic Diocese of Cheyenne Wyoming and Wyoming Catholic College among others, that non-profit groups are entitled to injunctions pending appeal against the mandate's so-called accommodation.

Translation: these folks are winning in case after case.

And yet they're still whining. But that's how it goes on the right -- right-wingers win and then they demand to win more. They feel aggrieved and persecuted if they don't win repeatedly. They don't savor victories. They savor feelings of self-pity. They savor rage. They savor their hatred of us.

And then they win even more.