Recently, conservatives–especially conservative Christians–have said some pretty bad things about Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s VP pick. As we noted in our recent roundups of evangelical responses to the Harris-Walz ticket, some evangelicals are calling Walz an “unhinged moral degenerate,” “demonic,” and “sick and perverted.” Much of the name-calling stems from Walz’s commitment to transgender rights, gender-affirming care, and a woman’s right to choose an abortion. One of those evangelical pontificators–the one who called Walz an “unhinged moral degenerate”–is doubling down:
Side Note: Walker seems to think he is special–that we have a weird obsession with posting his tweets. Actually, we have been doing these evangelical roundups for years. As a historian and curator, I try to get the best cross-section of voices in the evangelical community. Of course I add my own thoughts to these roundups, and that makes them political, but my primary reason for doing them is research. I am trying to capture a particular historical moment in evangelicalism and share my findings with you, the regular readers of The Way of Improvement Leads Home! (Have I mentioned that we just celebrated out 16th birthday?)
Walker seems to be a guy who likes his status as an influencer. There was actually an X campaign to make him the successor to Brent Leatherwood of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Commission after Leatherwood was fired for 12 or so hours last month. Walker should be happy that we are taking him seriously by including him in the roundups as someone who is shaping the course of evangelicalism right now. I personally don’t think he is shaping evangelical political witness in a very positive or constructive way, but he does appear to be a growing voice in the right-wing of the movement, especially among Southern Baptists.
But I digress.
What disturbs me about the words and phrases used to describe Tim Walz–“unhinged moral degenerate,” “pervert,” “sick,” “demonic”–is their ontological nature. I do not agree with some of Walz’s positions (anyone who reads this blog regularly will know where I probably part ways with him), but I do think he is a generally a good man with a moral conscience. And he wants to use that conscience to serve others. Here is Katherine Rampell today at The Washington Post:
Republicans have smeared Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz as an “extremist,” “communist” and “left-wing radical.” They warn of the “dangerously liberal” agenda that he’s implemented as governor of Minnesota and that he might soon inflict upon the entire country.
You know what? The country should be so lucky.
In general, Walz’s state agenda has been politically smart, fiscally sound and family-friendly — not to mention long overdue pretty much everywhere else in America. In fact, Democrats should seriously consider rebranding themselves as the “MAMA” ticket: “Make America Minnesota Already.”
By now, for example, you might have seen the heartwarming footage of children hug-bombing Walz as he signed a law providing universal free school lunches and breakfasts. The scene was unquestionably great PR for a party accused of being “anti-family” and beholden to “childless cat ladies.” It provided an especially compelling contrast with a similar photo op staged by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R), who was surrounded by frowning kids as she signed a law expanding child labor. One of these two gubernatorial figures looked “radical,” and it sure wasn’t Walz.
But that specific law Walz was signing — a key plank of the MAMA agenda — happens to be quite good policy, too. Making nutritious meals available to kids, without stigmatizing the poorest among them, is a valuable public investment. A recent meta-analysis of past studies on universal school meals found positive associations with children’s diet quality, food security and academic performance.
Other policies that he’s pushed also look like good stewardship of public funds — in addition to being, you know, compassionate.
For instance, Minnesota is developing a program to ensure that kids on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program are continuously insured from birth to age 6, rather than periodically kicking them out of the program if their family’s income fluctuates slightly.
This is no small mercy. The paperwork required for reapplication is burdensome. It often results in eligible kids losing access to needed medical coverage because of administrative errors, even when their family’s income doesn’t change. Similar programs have been associated with improvements in kids’ health.
Minnesota’s version looks like a pretty good bargain for taxpayers, too. Research suggests that historical Medicaid expansions for kids offer high returns on investment. These policies often “pay for themselves,” says MIT economics professor Nathaniel Hendren, because of “improved later-life health of those children (which reduces future Medicaid spending) and increased later-life earnings (which increases tax revenue).”
One of Hendren’s specialties is developing a standardized system for evaluating which government programs provide the biggest bang for taxpayers’ bucks (and which are hopeless money pits). Based on his work with Ben Sprung-Keyser at the University of Pennsylvania, many of Minnesota’s other supposedly “radical” policies appear fiscally smart.
For example, under Walz, the state made college free to students with household incomes below $80,000. Policies that expand college enrollment tend to have a high return on investment; that’s because college enrollment leads to higher wages, which then pay back some or all of the upfront investment because of increased tax revenue.
Republicans have also ragged on Walz’s law ordering state utilities to switch to 100 percent carbon-free power by 2040. Though this exact climate policy hasn’t been modeled before, researchers have found that other kinds of subsidies for renewable energy offer a terrific return on investment.
Other policies Walz has implemented in Minnesota, such as paid family and medical leave, lack detailed, long-term fiscal assessments but are nonetheless associated with improved health outcomes. They also happen to poll phenomenally well.
A recent survey conducted by Morning Consult found that 82 percent of registered voters support paid family and medical leave. Among the supporters: 76 percent of Republicans. I supposed that means three-quarters of Republican voters must be “communists” like Walz, too.
Rampell is describing a candidate with a moral, pro-family, (dare I say “pro-life” or “Christian”) agenda. I could even imagine some of his Christian Right critics in Minnesota taking advantage of such policies. Of course if your understanding of what it means to be pro-life and pro-family only focuses on gender and abortion, you will not see or promote this part of Walz’s political work. You may even call him an unhinged moral degenerate. You may think he is perverted. Perhaps you might think he is an agent of Satan.
Of course the larger issue here is that this kind of name calling seems to be at the center, as it has been for a long time, of conservative evangelical political witness. Little has changed since the days of Falwell and Robertson. In fact, with the rise of social media, it is now worse.