What It’s All About

Remember that old song, “What’s it all about, Alfie?” The melody and refrain were running through my mind as I read Tuesday’s “Letter from an American” from Heather Cox Richardson.

One paragraph in that Letter in particular really summed up the contemporary American–and global–dilemma. Forget, if possible, the daily eruptions that are evidence of a diseased polity–the crazed “representatives” doing anything but “serving” in Congress; the almost daily mass shootings; the bizarre behaviors of  state legislatures (and not just in Florida and Texas)…and the multitude of other examples.

Focus instead on the underlying dilemma, an existential contest that Richardson says is between liberalism and autocracy but might just as aptly be identified as a contest between good and evil. She began by reminding readers of the Trump agenda that plays to the GOP/MAGA base.

He offered its members the anti-Black, anti-immigrant, and antiabortion measures it craved, in exchange for utter commitment to his leadership. His drive for authoritarianism dovetailed with a religious movement to create a new ideology for the Republican Party, one that explicitly rejects democracy.

That argument, articulated most clearly by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, is that the secular principles of liberal democracy—equality before the law, free speech, freedom to go to church or not, academic inquiry, a free press, immigration, companies that can make decisions based on markets rather than morality—destroy virtue by tearing down the sexual and religious guardrails of traditional society. In order to bring that virtue back, right-wing thinkers argue, the government must defend religion and self-sacrifice (although it’s hard to miss that they’re looking for other people to make those sacrifices, not themselves). 

Last week, on May 4 and 5, the Conservative Political Action Conference met in Budapest for the second time, and once again, Orbán delivered the keynote address. The theme was the uniting of the radical right across national boundaries. “Come back, Mr President,” Orbán said of Trump’s 2024 presidential bid. “Make America great again and bring us peace.” Orbán claimed his suppression of LGBTQ+ rights, academic freedom, and the media is a model for the world. 

(Un)representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) called Orban, “ a beacon.” Richardson reminds us that the Americans who celebrate this ideology are those who routinely attack immigrants, LGBTQ Americans, the media, reproductive rights, and education.

Florida, led by governor Ron DeSantis, has been out front on these issues, but other Republican-dominated states are following suit. Eager to stay at the head of the “movement,” Trump recently claimed that universities are “dominated by marxist maniacs & lunatics” and vowed to bring them under control of the radical right. “He will impose real standards on American colleges and universities,” his website says, “to include defending the American tradition and Western civilization.” 

Needless to say, DeSantis–and Abbott, and the culture warriors in Red State legislatures very much including Indiana’s–have a very distorted picture of American tradition and Western civilization, one diametrically opposed to the expressed values of the nation’s founders.

The decision to hold the Right-wing CPAC convention in Budapest–for the second time!–is chilling enough, but the fact that Diego Morales–Indiana’s Secretary of State not only attended that gathering, but spoke at it, was a reminder of just how firm a grip Indiana’s MAGA Republicans have on the state. Morales joined Tucker Carlson (via video), unsuccessful Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, and other members of American and international Right. 

I’ve previously written about Morales, an election denier who should never have won his race against an infinitely superior candidate, Destiny Wells. (When he was nominated, James Briggs–then of the Indianapolis Star–called him “so broadly unacceptable that the selection must be setting some kind of record for political ineptitude.” Briggs evidently forgot that, in Indiana, unacceptable is now synonymous with “Republican.”)

Morales wraps himself in “conservative” rhetoric, but today’s Right is anything but traditionally conservative. I’m old enough to remember when “conservative” meant conserving the liberties protected by the Bill of Rights and the principles that Richardson correctly labels as inherent in liberal democracy—”equality before the law, free speech, freedom to go to church or not, academic inquiry, a free press, immigration, companies that can make decisions based on markets rather than morality.”

Those principles are what next year’s elections are all about. And as I observed in the book Morton Marcus and I recently published, I am reasonably confident that most American women (and a significant number of men who care about us)  will go to the polls to endorse those foundational principles, joined by voters disgusted by gun fetishists’ mischaracterization of the 2d Amendment, and by still others fed up with Republican refusal to make the rich pay a fair share.

That, “Alfie,” is what it’s “all about.”

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The Big Lie Guy Running For Secretary of State

When Newsweek runs a story about an Indiana race for Secretary of State, you know something unusual is happening.  Even for Red Indiana, where our lawmakers routinely prostrate themselves before our most retrograde, frightened White Christian Nationalist voters, the outcome of the GOP contest to be the Secretary of State nominee was an embarrassment.

As the linked article reported,

Former Mike Pence aide Diego Morales’ shocking victory in the Indiana secretary of state Republican primary is the latest example of a candidate who backed Donald Trump’s false election claims that potentially could end up overseeing statewide policies for elections.

Morales, who beat incumbent Holli Sullivan following a second round of voting on Saturday, was previously quoted by the Associated Press as calling the 2020 election a “scam.”

Morales has been transparent about his desire to make voting more difficult: he has promised to cut early voting days before each election from 28 days to 14, and–echoing Trump’s xenophobia–to  require new voters to prove their United States citizenship when registering.

As James Briggs wrote in The Indianapolis Star,

The Indiana Republican Party on Saturday nominated a secretary of state candidate so broadly unacceptable that the selection must be setting some kind of record for political ineptitude.

Their choice, Diego Morales, once worked in the secretary of state’s office. That would normally be a good thing. Experience!

Except …

Except that, well, Morales got fired in 2009 over incompetence and a “lack of professionalism,” according to his personnel file. Morales disputes the record, as IndyStar’s Kaitlin Lange wrote, but his file doesn’t leave much ambiguity as to whether he met expectations in his job as a special assistant under Todd Rokita.

That wasn’t the only time: he reportedly rejoined the office in 2011 (why they would rehire someone whose work was previously so unsatisfactory is a mystery, but then, pretty much everything Todd Rokita does is politically motivated, so who knows)  but soon, his supervisors tried to place him on a work improvement plan, citing “poor execution of required daily tasks” and “incomplete event planning and management.”  He evidently  resigned rather than sign the form.

So how did this nomination happen? According to Briggs,

For Republicans, nominating Morales was an unforced error made out of delegates’ spite for Gov. Eric Holcomb. Right-wing Republicans have been furious at Holcomb, a moderate, over his mask mandate and other COVID-19 restrictions, as well as not being forceful enough in pursuing issues important to the conservative base.

Many of those anti-Holcomb Republicans showed up Saturday to the Indiana State Fairgrounds among the 1,667 delegates who voted in the nominating convention to choose candidates for secretary of state, treasurer and auditor through a nominating convention. The delegates rebuked Holcomb by passing over Secretary of State Holli Sullivan, whom Holcomb appointed in 2021, and going with the anti-establishment choice.

According to Briggs, the Associated Press previously reported that Morales also  embellished his resume and exaggerated the details of his business ownership.( He’s evidently what you’d call “a real piece of work.”)

The Democratic candidate for the office is Destiny Wells. I don’t know her personally, but I’ve heard positive things, and I absolutely loved her recent tweet: “When it’s easier to carry a gun than to vote, we have a problem.” Her website is here.

As veteran political observer Brian Howey reported,

Asked what his victory over Sullivan meant, Morales answered, “I will say one word: Praise the Lord.” Morales, who accused Gov. Eric Holcomb of “abusing his power” during the COVID-19 pandemic, added, “The vision today is to keep that American dream alive. We must secure our elections … so we can increase voter confidence.”

Morales vowed to purge voter rolls, limit absentee ballots and allow voting only on Election Day. “No one in Indiana cemeteries will be allowed to vote,” Morales told GOP delegates. The problem with that is there is no evidence of dead Hoosiers voting…..

While Indiana isn’t a swing state and will almost certainly vote for a Republican presidential nominee in 2024, the notion of installing an election denier as the state’s top elections official is a dicey proposition.

No kidding!

It’s bad enough to live in a state governed by people who want to arm the entire population (okay, to be fair, just the White part), make LGBTQ+ folks second-class citizens, control women’s bodies, and make it easier for a pandemic to kill you. The last thing we need is a nutcase “Big Lie” proponent overseeing our elections.

Go to Destiny Wells website and send her some money. Then VOTE FOR HER.

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