EVEN WORSE...:

While I appreciate the party's longstanding commitment to protecting the unborn, too often they erroneously convey that this exhausts what it means to be a morally conscientious person -- as if being anti-abortion is all they need to achieve the mantle of The Party of Morality. They are dead wrong about this.

Instead of a starting point for decency, the party seems to use their pro-life messaging and status as a technique to get away with deeply immoral behavior, as a way to excuse and overlook other major ethical deficits. At times, the Republican Party has embodied the most jarring of contradictions: a fervency for protecting the unborn with a willful dismissal of the importance of character, charity, and morality itself.

This is what the last five years have shown us -- from the time Donald Trump outmaneuvered other, far more decent people for the Republican nomination in 2015-16, to the January 6, 2021 episode in which a mob stormed the Capitol building during the Electoral College vote certification and proceeded to trespass, destroy property, and threaten lawmakers who were just doing their sworn duty.

When then-candidate Donald Trump emerged on the scene in June 2015, both Democrats and Republicans alike, including and especially those in mainstream spaces, were certain he would not become the nominee for president. Some even encouraged him, certain that a Trump candidacy would spell certain doom for the Republican Party. Once he emerged from the crucible of the 2016 primaries, people on the right fell in line -- previously critical conservatives all of a sudden pledged to support him through thick and thin. A major reason why was abortion.

Most observers knew anywhere from one to three Supreme Court justices were in play across the next four to eight years. This had potentially dramatic ramifications for the pro-life cause. But this also began to give people wide psychological latitude to make peace with the least morally scrupulous presidential candidate in the history of American politics.

For these conservatives, what mattered was (a) Trump would likely nominate better federal judges than Hillary would on the issue of abortion and (b) Trump was very rhetorically aggressive against the Democrats. That's what mattered.

But how many moral issues can you spot there? I count only one: abortion. It seems as if, for many people, the fact that Trump could probably be counted on to be more anti-abortion than his opponent covered a multitude of his sins. Describe Mexicans as rapists? Not to worry, he'll protect the unborn. Viciously mock a disabled reporter? Here's the thing, he's going to nominate someone like Gorsuch. So don't let that stop you from showing enthusiasm for him.

Indeed, for these people, the question of abortion seemed to be exhaustive of morality itself.

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