Trump starts a culture war
IN EARLY 2016, when the controversy over North Carolina’s transgender bathroom law was dominating the headlines, Donald Trump broke with others in his party, such as Senator Ted Cruz. He suggested this culture war wasn’t worth fighting.
“North Carolina did something that was very strong. And they’re paying a big price. There’s a lot of problems,” Trump said. He added: “Leave it the way it is. North Carolina, what they’re going through with all the business that’s leaving, all of the strife – and this is on both sides. Leave it the way it is.”
That Trump looks a lot different than the one we saw Wednesday. He announced on Twitter that he would ban transgender people from serving in the US military.
“After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow ... transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the US military. Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming ... victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”
This is something even the Obama administration wrestled with and the Pentagon rescinded its ban on transgender service members only about a year ago. But Trump’s decision is a bold one for a few reasons: “In any capacity” sounds like an extremely broad ban and Trump’s choice of words (“tremendous medical costs” and “disruption”) are likely to outrage the LGBT community.
That’s a community that had hoped Trump would be something of an ally, or at least not an adversary.
It’s not totally clear that Trump is preparing to go down the culture-warrior road here, but for an embattled president who seems to love controversy and is increasingly just trying to maintain his base, it would seem an attractive and logical move – a prospect that GOP (Grand Old Party) leaders should be very concerned about.
I think Commentary’s Noah Rothman put it well, suggesting that the culture wars could be a kind of emergency fallback for Trump, who faces a broadening Russia investigation and a record-low approval rating for a new president:
“When the going gets real tough, Trump is going to break the glass on the ‘English as the official language’ debate and set the place on fire.”
There are few better ways to rally the socially conservative troops than to warn about things such as the dangers of transgender people serving alongside US troops or using the wrong bathrooms. A bathroom law debate in Houston in 2015 included brutal and suggestive campaign ads, with innuendo about sex offenders entering bathrooms with children.
But while local and state Republicans have waged bathroom-bill fights, the national GOP has largely steered clear of them. And as the country has moved sharply in favour of same-sex marriage and LGBT rights, the national GOP has largely moved on from these issues. Rather than taking progressive positions, it has simply ignored them. More than a decade after “values voters” were supposed to have delivered George W Bush his re-election win, the party has recognised that the country has moved past it on these issues.
But Trump’s decision is already reigniting the culture wars.
One White House official said: “This was not a political decision. It was a military readiness and military resource decision.” However, he added: “It will be fun to watch some of them [Democrats] have to defend this.”
Even that quote should terrify the GOP. The idea that anybody in the White House sees political gain from this decision suggests that culture wars are on the table. – The Washington Post