Who’s following Sharia law now?

I’m not referring here to the fact that both Islamist fundamentalists and the evangelical white Christian fundamentalists who make up the core of our own Republican Party agree on so many social issues, like hostility to the rights of women.

Rather, the overlap I’m pointing to becomes clear in a Robin Wright report on tomorrow’s first round of the Iranian presidential election, which The New Yorker posted on its website today. Consider the following excerpted paragraph:

Given Iran’s myriad challenges, [Supreme Leader Ayatollah] Khamenei may be trying to influence more than the succession [to the presidency], Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group, told me. The Supreme Leader is willing to risk the legitimacy of the election—which would be reflected in a large turnout—in order to consolidate monolithic control by hard-line politicians loyal to rigid revolutionary principles … Khamenei hopes to orchestrate a political overhaul that could effectively remove the republican aspects from Iran’s political system … "Khamenei understands that the system is dysfunctional," Vaez said. "The Supreme Leader cares more about outcome than turnout because he is laying the groundwork for structural changes in the Islamic Republic."

Sound somewhat familiar? Diminishing the size and changing the composition of the electorate is central to both the Ayatollah’s and the Republicans’ strategies—in Iran, by barring moderate candidates from the ballot, thus giving moderate voters no reason to vote; here in the U.S., by suppressing non-Republican votes. Each seeks permanent rule through changes to the electoral system that will keep them in power, even should they represent a minority of their nation’s voters and would-be voters.

OK, so the Republicans oppose the nuclear deal with Iran. At the level of ideology, however, that opposition melts away. Neither the party of the ayatollahs nor the party of Mar-a-Lago has anything good to say about democracy or the concept of majority rule. Theocrats and Trumpocrats, bonded in common hates and fears.