The fury of wingnuts scorned

In politics, losing a battle tends to provoke internal division, infighting, and recriminations.  The Supreme Court ruling on gay employment protections is a case in point.

When asked how they can support Trump despite his many repulsive traits, conservatives often point to the courts.  Trump has delivered a legion of right-wing judges, including two on the Supreme Court itself, who in turn will deliver the kinds of rulings his base wants.  In this context, Gorsuch's concurrence with yesterday's ruling is being denounced across the wingnutosphere as an epic betrayal.  Here are a few examples.  Pundit Varad Mehta opines:

The whole point of the Federalist Society judicial project, the whole point of electing Trump to implement it, was to deliver Supreme Court victories to social conservatives.  If they can't deliver anything that basic, there's no point for either.  The damage is incalculable..... This is also the end of the Federalist Society judicial project.  Gorsuch was grown in the Federalist Society lab and did this.  The whole thing just imploded.  It's all finished.

And Erick Erickson:

All those evangelicals who sided with Trump in 2016 to protect them from the cultural currents, just found their excuse to stay home in 2020 thank to Trump’s Supreme Court picks.

One can hope.  On LifeSite News at least, Trump's statement that he would "live with" the decision is being reported primarily as a signal that he will fail to "challenge or mitigate" it, a further betrayal.  Further inflaming the situation, religio-wingnut sites are claiming that the decision will not merely protect people from being fired for being gay or transgender, but may force employers and other venues to give biological males access to women's restrooms and changing rooms and allow them to compete in women's sports (claims I haven't seen on any non-wingnut site), or would even force churches to recognize gay marriage (something the First Amendment would seem to rule out).  Many of their readers will likely believe such claims -- they're largely the same people who believe in Pizzagate, QAnon, and that the success of the gay-rights movement is the work of Satan.  To them this ruling is the Apocalypse -- the Apocalypse of the month, at least -- and Trump is getting much of the blame.

While I relish this kind of collective freak-out among the enemy as much as anyone, there's a warning here as well.  Even if everything these people are saying were true, their response would still be irrational and self-defeating.  The only effect of refusing to vote for Trump would be to make a Biden presidency more likely, and his judicial nominations would be far less favorable to a wide range of right-wing causes than Trump's.  Similarly, while some people on the left are unhappy with Biden for various reasons, the only practical effect of failing to support him would be to make Trump's re-election more likely -- something far worse for the causes they care about than anything Biden might do.  We've had ample evidence for this principle since 2016.  While Gorsuch may have deviated from wingnut orthodoxy in this one case -- and Kavanaugh didn't -- I'd still rather have two Hillary Clinton nominees on the Court in their place.

Will Trumpanzees actually stay home on election day because of this?  Probably not many.  In four and a half months other issues will eclipse the ruling in their minds, and most will realize Trump is still a better fit for their twisted agenda than Biden is.  But insofar as any do stay home, it will benefit Democrats.  Ideological purism is poison to whichever side it erupts on; it disempowers those possessed by it, laying them open to their own defeat.