American People Series #4: The Civil Rights Triangle, 1963 ©Faith Ringgold

I first met these folks in 1980 when the Nebraska Chair of the Democratic Party sent me to try to stop the Republican Party’s foray into theocracy.  I went to the County convention to save the platform from folks trying to remove support from the ERA and decimate Reproductive Health.  Pat Robertson’s political campaign had ignited them.  They had to be bussed in because they simultaneously showed up like some kind of cult army.  They all carried the list of who and how they should vote on colored cards. The women were versions of each other.  Hand-made pioneer=looking dresses of little floral prints, long dull hair, bowed heads and herded like sheep by men.  I watched them later in 1992, screaming and yelling about ‘multicultural influences’ in the school curriculum. They never gave up, and here we are. They are angry, violent, and hateful. They are everything I always was taught that biblical Jesus was not.

This is from Politico.  “Trump consolidates evangelical vote in Iowa. Kari Lake swooped into Bob Vander Plaats’ church on Sunday, a show of force — if not an outright troll — ahead of the caucuses.”  Trump suits them to a tee.

Just as the Sunday morning service started here at Soteria church, a top Donald Trump surrogate and Arizona firebrand, Kari Lake, walked in.

To any political observer, it appeared to be an obvious troll. In a metro area rich with churches, Soteria has hosted several Republican presidential candidates in the past year. But the Baptist church, with its 1,300-member congregation, also has a well known parishioner: the Iowa social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats, who endorsed Ron DeSantis and angered Trump and his allies in doing so.

Lake said she woke up on Sunday and just wanted to go to church.

But it was also a flex. For all the attempts by DeSantis and his evangelical allies to court the conservative Christian vote, Trump not only remains dominant with the group, but is relying on it to fuel his massive lead in Iowa ahead of the caucuses on Monday. A critical faction of the GOP that once blocked his ascendance here in 2016, evangelicals are now a primary reason he is so far ahead.

“Of course I’m caucusing for President Trump,” said Judy Billings, a loyal member of the congregation, clutching her Bible as she entered the foyer. “I just love the guy. I think he’s a total hero, and he has my full support … I think he’s the only one that can win and lead our country.”

Some Republicans are saying the quiet part out loud now that Donald has made being openly racist cool again.

Malcah Zeldis, Martin Luther King, 1995

Elizabeth Spiers has a great Op-Ed up in the New York Times. “What Nikki Haley — and I — Learned at a Segregation Academy.”

After her failure to identify slavery as the cause of the Civil War generated a wave of criticism last month, Nikki Haley assured her potential constituents that she had Black friends, and that she understood the war’s origins. Growing up in South Carolina, she said, “literally in second and third grade, you learn about slavery.” Conveniently producing Black friends is, alas, not surprising, but claiming she learned that the Civil War was a battle over slavery in second and third grade is.

Governor Haley attended a segregation academy, a type of private school established in the years after the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education by white parents who did not want their children attending school with Black children.

By 1975, the number of private schools in South Carolina grew more than tenfold, enrolling as many as 90 percent of the white children in some majority Black counties. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that discrimination on the basis of race wasn’t legal at private schools, either, but even today, many segregation academies remain overwhelmingly white.

Ms. Haley graduated in 1989 from Orangeburg Preparatory School. Orangeburg was the product of a merger between Wade Hampton and Willington Academy, also segregation academies, the former of which was named after one of the largest slaveholding families in South Carolina. At one point, graduates of Hampton received Confederate flag lapel pins, which were meant to symbolize resistance against integration. The year Ms. Haley graduated, her high school yearbook featured at most a handful of Black students.

I believe they refer to this as passing.  No wonder Haley identifies as white on the census and other forms.   While Haley haunts Iowa, our Vice President speaks at an NAACP conference in South Carolina.  She also did this virtual speech.

Another black woman defending the rule of law in our country has taken the podium today.

Slave Rape #3: Fight to Save Your Life, 1972 © 2021 Faith Ringgold

Meanwhile, back in Iowa, John McCormack of The Dispatch reports this. “Courting the Kook Vote in Iowa, Vivek Draws the Ire of Trump. Ramaswamy is fourth in the polls, but top-of-mind for the former president.”  I admit I’m giggling over these sparring bullies.

Vivek Ramaswamy was just going through his implausible plan for firing 75 percent of the federal workforce—“the first four agencies we’re going to shut down outright are the FBI, the ATF, the CDC, and the U.S. Department of Education”—when he was interrupted by a man in the crowd.

“What about the CIA, sir?” asked an Iowan named Nathen Trausch. “That’s where all the pedophiles are.”

“Well, CIA is a major problem, but they shouldn’t even exist outside of the military,” Ramaswamy replied. He tried to turn the conversation back to his plan to slash the federal government before Trausch interrupted him again.

“Department of Defense has 5,000 pedophiles in it that in 2019 got arrested by Trump,” Trausch said.

“Well, you know, they deserve to actually be held accountable,” Ramaswamy replied. He later promised Trausch that he would arrest even more child sex-traffickers than Trump did.

It was par for the course for Ramaswamy, who in recent weeks has made an aggressive play for the kook vote. At the December 6 GOP presidential primary debate—the last he qualified for—Ramaswamy emphasized that he was the only candidate on stage who would say that “January 6 now does look like it was an inside job.” He spent the last week campaigning with Candace Owens, a media personality who has made headlines in recent months for her anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric, and former Iowa congressman Steve King, who was stripped of his committee assignments and defeated in a GOP primary following his comments questioning whether white supremacy should be considered “offensive.”

What does Ramaswamy have to show for it? The final Des Moines Register poll conducted by the highly respected J. Ann Selzer found Ramaswamy ticking up a few points since December, from 5 percent to 8 percent, while Donald Trump ticked down a few points, from 51 percent to 48 percent.

Malcha Zeldis (NY/Israel 1933-) Peaceable Kingdom

Vivek, however, evidently can’t pass as white. This is from The Independent. “Voter tells Vivek Ramaswamy’s wife that some Iowans don’t support him because ‘they think he’s Muslim’. The presidential hopeful’s religion and skin colour are still factors that prospective voters are considering, locals told Apoorva Ramaswamy.”  I also wonder about the current hatred of immigrants among Republicans impacting the few bits of diversity we find in its presidential candidates.

Some voters in Iowa are still hesitant to throw their support behind Vivek Ramaswamy because they “think he is Muslim”, according to supporters of the presidential hopeful.

Mr Ramaswamy’s religion and skin colour are still factors that prospective voters are considering, locals told his wife Apoorva Ramaswamy at a recent campaign event.

According to polling by FiveThirtyEight, Mr Ramaswamy lags far behind his three Republican rivals on both a national and state level – commanding just 6.6 per cent of the vote in the latter survey – ahead of the Iowa caucuses on Monday.

At a campaign meet-and-greet on Thursday, Ms Ramaswamy asked supporter Theresa Fowler “what do people say” about why they were not supporting her husband.

“Well, the only one I have and I couldn’t even remember who said it to me, but they mentioned his dark skin and they think he’s Muslim,” Ms Fowler said.

“I kind of set them straight on that. I don’t know if they believe me or think I was covering for him, I don’t know.”

Ms Ramaswamy replied: “Not much we can do about that one.”

No, there’s not much you can do about that one.  It’s why we need to up the Voting Rights Act, which is something Republicans abhor. Why be a part of that?  Why put your children through that? Why teach your children to be like that?

Have a wonderful day!  Those Caucuses have coverage tonight, but I’ll be doing something else.  I can’t imagine listening to the press interview any Iowa Republicans these days.  It makes my stomach churn just thinking about it.  Anyway, I’m off to load up on some hot steel oats and take on those pipes and faucets.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?