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justinspoliticalcorner · 2 months ago

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Mark Sumner at Daily Kos:

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance is a jerk. The Ohio senator is a feckless liar and inveterate blowhard whose squinty-eyed smirk only flashes after he’s delivered a line that he thinks will cause someone pain. There’s a very good reason why Vance is the most disliked figure on either party’s ticket this election year: He’s an unmitigated asshole.

But there’s a group of white men who believe that he may be something more. They see Vance’s ugly attacks on women, immigrants, and others as points to be celebrated. And they see him as the leader they’ve been looking for, a kind of anti-diversity messiah—a “Christian Prince” for a white nationalist America. As Mother Jones reports, these men pore over Vance’s words, searching for hidden signals with a kind of fervor usually reserved for “Bible code” numerologists. When Vance says America is “a group of people with a shared history and a common future” they don’t hear patriotic pablum. They hear a clear message that America was created for them and only them—and everyone else needs to go.

[...] They’re looking beyond, to a nation Trump barely hints at. For Trump supporters, he may be Orange Jesus, but for the “TheoBros” who thirst after Vance’s every word, Trump is more John the Baptist—the guy who made it possible for the real deal to take center stage. Christian nationalists have been a threat to American democracy for decades, but as Mother Jones reports, these aren’t the dusty old evangelists who have crowded the AM radio airwaves and supported past Republican candidates.

[...] The idea that the 19th Amendment should be repealed gives a good idea of what they think about Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. As one of Vance’s biggest admirers writes, the idea of being governed by a woman is a “punishment from God.” With her diverse ethnic background, her record of professional accomplishments, and her lack of biological children, Harris might as well be standing in a flaming red pentagram as far as these men are concerned. That her husband is Jewish is not a plus. Vance—a conservative Catholic married to a Hindu—doesn’t seem like the obvious candidate to carry the message of angry, narrow-minded, Protestant purity. However, he’s found that as long as he regularly voices their ideas on the national stage, the TheoBros seem willing to overlook his little peccadilloes and provide him with rabid support. He knows how to blow their dog whistles, and he blows them regularly.

Far-right male TheoBros, led by Joel Webbon and Douglas Wilson, are pushing to make Trump VP Pick J.D. Vance the “Christian Prince” of America with its Christian Nationalist vision.