Are there still Protestants who are assmad about the “papist” Catholics?
Yes, there are.
I strongly suspect right now the stuff we just saw with Vance and now MTG is an attempt to exploit existing American anti-Catholic vitriol that's been in the USA since forever. Basically, a further attempt to "divide and conquer" the USA using existing religious divides. I don't think this is just some variation of Republicans being hypocrites, I think all of this is to purposefully further an agenda to divide America further to prevent unity, this time between white Catholics and white Protestants.
The Catholic Church has absolutely done lots stuff that is wrong, in modern times and historically, but at the same time, in certain Protestant households you still have folks putting Catholics in the same sentence as Muslims and Jews when they go on their bigoted and racist screeds. They see Catholics in the same way they see black folks, Jews, Muslims, immigrants, etc. But since it's "white Christian against white Christian" people don't talk about it much, it's more acceptable to hate Catholics.
And you also get ex-Protestant/ex-religious folks who were raised like that, to see Catholics as pagan, who don't seem to realize that while there's definitely stuff the Catholic church has done wrong, there ALSO is a whole shit-ton of Protestants in the USA who simply hate Catholics because they were taught that from childhood, along with all of the other racist stuff.
They might have started to de-clutter their mind of other stereotypes or biases or racisms they grew up with, like the ones against Jews or Muslims or whatever, but don't stop to wonder about how much shit they were told about Catholics is wrong or right. So they're still susceptible to dog-whistles even if they consider themselves atheist.
And that's what Vance and MTG are doing right now, dog-whistling against yet another group in the US to prevent unity with them.
