SO MANY DEVILS

New York magazine's Ed Kilgore is puzzled.

The conventional wisdom on how to run a midterm campaign if your opponent controls the White House is pretty simple: ride the wave, stay focused on your most popular talking points, and don’t do anything to give the opposing party the chance to turn the election into something other than a referendum on the president, especially if said president is unpopular. The textbook target in a midterm election is the so-called median voter, typically a centrist who isn’t necessarily that focused on politics and definitely doesn’t belong to either party’s base....

But are Republicans campaigning that way? So far, by and large, no. Instead, to a remarkable extent, Republican candidates and elected officials are going whole hog into culture-war topics. They’re pushing near-total bans on abortion, making law-and-order demands for a crackdown on crime, and railing against the alleged “woke indoctrination” of public-school students on matters of gender, sexuality, and race.

He struggles to find an explanation.

Are Republicans incapable of message discipline or out of touch with an electorate that’s relatively progressive on cultural issues? Are they consumed with “base mobilization”? Or maybe they’re just mirroring Donald Trump’s self-destructive tendencies?

Let me help him with that: Republicans are always "consumed with 'base mobilization,'" and most of the time it work for them. Look at the polling in two states most people regard as purple. In Texas, according to Real Clear Politics, Greg Abbott has a lead over Beto O'Rourke of 7.7 points; the state's appalling abortion law, which a majority of the state's voters oppose, isn't hurting Abbott. In Florida, Ron DeSantis, the most polarizing governor in America, has leads of 8.8 and 12.8 points over his two most likely Democratic opponents. So base mobilization clearly works, and probably appeals to swing voters because they simply get caught up in the enthusiasm (or like the fact that the polarizing Republican "fights").

Kilgore suspects that Republicans are trying to appeal primarily to the religious voters in their base:

The most obvious reason Republican politicians are serving up culture-war fare is that their party base is dominated by conservative Christians who are more concerned about the supposed deterioration of traditional values than just about any other political topic.

But Kilgore shouldn't assume that only religious conservatives respond to culture war attacks on abortion and the LGBT community.

I occasionally lurk at patriots.win, which used to be TheDonald.win and, before that, was the Reddit forum r/The_Donald. January 6 strategizing took place there. It's not primarily religious.

Here are some comments in a patriots.win thread that refers to a Miami Herald story headlined "With DeSantis’ Signature, Florida Bans Most Abortions After 15 Weeks":

What's funny is that fewer abortions will only increase the speed of white replacement. Minorities get far more abortions than whites.

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You're not wrong, but killing babies is still wrong.

We should subsidize birth control

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Instead of subsidizing birth control I'd prefer we remove every last illegal immigrant, get rid of birthright citizenship, start promoting citizens plugging criminals on the spot, and get rid of all gibs. You'll find that things work out pretty well after that. Oh, and promote responsible citizens to have more kids.

("Gibs" means government benefits.)

... we already subsidize birth control, and that is one of the gibs I mentioned, which goes directly against "get rid of all gibs." Plus, the birth rates in the US are abysmally low already, especially among white people, and need to be increased, not decreased.

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Yes it is. Your solution requires handing responsibility over to the people already irresponsible enough to get an abortion. Birth control already exists and is cheap as fuck and they don’t use it. His solution is much better.

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No chain immigration

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Fucking BASED

The Dems would cease to exist if they couldn't promise gibs. Stop the gibs and you stop the entire damn cabal.

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Want to be on welfare? Sterilization should be a requirement.

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You shouldn't be able to vote if you are on welfare at the very least.

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You gotta wait until they're grown before tossing them off the helicopter?

Downthread, there are some traditional religious right calls for a full abortion ban, but the comments about "white replacement" and getting rid of all the "gibs" are by far the most upvoted. If you talk about a religious right issue, these folks think about whiteness.

And here's one of the top comments from a thread in response to a Hot Air post titled "Disney's "Not-at-All-Secret Gay Agenda" Appears to Be Backfiring":

They don’t care about money anymore. Human flesh is their currency now, and they want to spend spend spend. Whether that’s in War, or in a slow boil genocide that convinces people to end their genetic lines through sterilization or suicide. Cut your genitals off, play at thuggery and shoot your own kind, have a dog instead of a child.

Whatever it takes to make fewer of us so that the resources they think are finite will become theirs to own a d control.

It's the Great Replacement again, in a comment that ties into QAnon, Alex Jones, The Matrix. Downthread there's religious talk, but there's also talk about the Chinese Communist Party, about secret societies, even about lizard people. There's this:

Sociopath is not even a strong enough word to describe the behavioral issues these people exhibit.

Narcissistic psychopath is not even coming close enough in many cases.

Perhaps if they were untouched by their worlds of greed and lust for power, if they were just born again naked humans, completely unwashed by the world, and still had some sort of chemical imbalance, then the words our fields of study have to describe psychological issues would perhaps be sufficient to label them and their issues.

But these people have transcended that into something else. They have gone beyond mere chemical imbalance, behavioral issues, and mental instability. They have gone into a new realm of choice, where they're tempted by things most men cannot even begin to fathom, or even if they can, believe that human beings would never given into such evils -but there lies the problem, the dimensions these people live in now are so warped and twisted, what we view as "evil" doesn't even register as being worth consideration to them.

Regular, that is, "normal" human beings get sick to their stomachs with moral depravity, the people you're talking about see it as just another Tuesday.

I've often visualized these people as a weird sort of alien race, similar in features to that of a vulture, but more demonic looking, with voracious features, dripping with blood of their victims as they feast, but dressed in their best tuxedos, as they circle around their tables loaded with grand smorgasbords as they glutton themselves on their worldly desires, in giant rooms of decadence and depravity.

That's what these people really and truly are. Something most people can't understand.

Sociopath isn't even on the same planet.

Hey, I don't like rich corporate chieftains either, but I never imagine them feasting on human blood.

Our popular culture has been ComicConned in the past generation; QAnon and Alex Jones tap into that worldview as much as the Bible. In our movies and games, superpowers are routine -- so why shouldn't much of the country believe the "woke" CEOs they're being trained to hate are supernatural grotesques? The religious right believes in God and the Devil; these folks think virtually everyone is, potentially, a god or a devil. I'm not sure how you sustain a democracy under these circumstances.