Protectors of their own kind by @BloggersRUs

Protectors of their own kind

by Tom Sullivan

Concern for security is core to the conservative/Republican brand. At least it was until Wednesday when former special counsel Robert Mueller testified before two House committees about his investigation into Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election.

The "daddy party" is one of the colloquialisms defining the nation's major conservative party. (As opposed to the "mommy party," the Democrats.) Cognitive scientist George Lakoff famously detailed the parameters of the psychology underlying the world views defining both in "Moral Politics" (1996).

Republicans take a strict father's view of the world, Lakoff explained. The strict father views the world as a dangerous place. He protects his children, disciplines them harshly, and teaches them self-reliance to instill the tools they need to survive a world with dangers around every corner. The strict father believes in a natural hierarchy with himself (naturally) at its apex.

Psychologists find the personality type may have roots in biology. A 2008 study found conservatives tend to possess a heightened startle response and to favor "defense spending, capital punishment, patriotism, and the Iraq War." The more subjects exhibited a heightened response to threats, the more they advocated "policies that protect the existing social structure from both external (outgroup) and internal (norm-violator) threats."

A more recent study found neural responses to repulsive images predicted with 95 percent accuracy whether a subject was liberal or conservative. "At a deep, symbolic level, some researchers speculate, disgust may be bound up with ideas about 'them' versus 'us,' about whom we instinctively trust and don’t trust," wrote Kathleen McAuliffe in The Atlantic.

What does threat sensitivity have to do with Robert Mueller's testimony Wednesday? Mueller's investigation concluded that Russia criminally interfered with the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump win it. Trump's campaign welcomed the help and likely committed crimes in doing so. Business Insider summarized:

Former special counsel Robert Mueller warned that Russia and other nations are likely to attempt to interfere in the 2020 election as Russia did in 2016 in a Wednesday congressional hearing.
Mueller’s team investigated Russian meddling in the 2016 election and identified two separate Russian efforts: hacking of the Democratic National Committee, and an elaborate online disinformation campaign
Mueller agreed with Rep. Will Hurd that groups like the Russia’s Internet Research Agency “pose a significant threat to the United States,” and warned that there are “many more countries developing the capability to replicate what the Russians have done.”
The former special counsel added: “It wasn’t a single attempt. They’re doing it as we sit here. And they expect to do it during the next campaign.”

And Republicans? Huggers of the flag, defenders of the border, champions of national defense, guardians all that is holy ... jumpers at things that go bump in the night? They are blocking election security legislation in the U.S. Senate. Democrats attacked Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump Tuesday for sitting on their hands:

“The only people that are stopping these kinds of common-sense measures from becoming law of the land are … leader McConnell and President Trump,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, said during a Capitol Hill press conference.

While Republicans and Democrats alike have attempted to pass a variety of legislation to improve election security over the past two years in response to Russian interference, McConnell has repeatedly stood in the way of the bills and argued against the need for a greater federal role to protect voting.

“The alarm bells are going off, the lights are flashing and Mitch McConnell is blithely sleepwalking through it all,” said Rep. John Sarbanes (D-Md.), chair of the House Democracy Reform Task Force. McConnell again blocked movement on the bill last night.

For the most part Wednesday, McConnell's House colleagues ignored Mueller's warnings, choosing instead to attack the messenger for calling into question the acting president's election. They dismissed warnings of a foreign threat to the republic as a partisan effort to smear Donald Trump.

Trump is their protector, their strict father. They will dismiss his many failings to remain in his good graces and under the umbrella of what they perceive as protection. Some will kill for him.

Trump's coziness with foreign autocrats and his party's focus on cutting off the flow of migrants/refugees — children and families — across the Mexico border suggests something else. Members of the "daddy party" are not interested in defending the country or its ideals, but themselves and those they perceive as part of their in-group. Despite the red, white, and blue bunting, it is an in-group no longer defined by national borders, shared values or political ideology. They are bound together by fear. Fear of those not part of their in-group, be they brown, poor or not conservative.

Fear, like politics, creates strange bedfellows. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. So one must ask, does America's conservative party now consider foreign adversaries hostile to the U.S. part of their in-group?