Remember the last couple of weeks of June, when the country seemed a bit more liberal after the Supreme Court had wondrously ruled in favor of marriage equality, the Affordable Care Act and housing? And then the Confederate flags came down?
Slap.
It didn’t happen overnight, but the country seems to have rebounded from that initial leftward-leaning stance and is now back in the throes of the Republican Party’s Krazy Nominatin’ Pizzazzle led by Donald Trump (still) and another thousand or so people who are hoping to be elected president in 2016.
Trump is not backing off his incendiary comments about John McCain’s service during the Vietnam War, doubling down on the idea that there were many uncaptured American soldiers who fought bravely for years but nobody remembers them, and chastising McCain for not only getting captured but having the temerity to be held prisoner for a long time. Trump probably thinks that if McCain was such a he-man that he should have escaped or something, rather than been tortured for real and not just because he didn’t get the skyscraper approval from the Brooklyn Borough Council. Presidential material for sure. The real test will be in the next poll of Republican voters. If Trump holds his place near the top, then the party is in worse shape than it was four years ago. Slippage will mean that, Ted Cruz notwithstanding (he refuses to criticize Trump no matter what he says), the party faithful know a fool when they see him. Or hear him. Or spot the hair coming their way.
If that wasn’t enough, it seems that support for marriage equality has slipped a bit since the end of June. On top of that, Republicans in the House have offered new laws that would exempt those people with religious or moral opposition to marriage equality from having to follow the law. I’m sure that President Obama would veto the bill, but this goes to show you that the Supreme Court can say what they want, but evidently that’s not the last word. In the end, those people who oppose and act on their opposition to marriage equality will likely be marginalized or will lose business or might even continue to succeed financially. The bias in the United States is towards more equality, not less.
The political pendulum swung left last month and is coming back to the right. That’s to be expected. How far to the right will determine how entertaining the political discussion will be between now and the first Republican debate on August 6.
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