Is anti-wokeness a winning election issue for Republicans?

[GeneralMacArthur]

I promise this isn't just a "what happened to the sane GOP of yore" thread punching down against Republicans, it's a serious thread.

So when I think about the non-culture-war parts of the Republican platform a decade ago, here's what I think of:

• Lower taxes
• Repealing Obamacare
• Reigning in government spending (waste, fraud and abuse!)
• Deregulation and job creation
• Aggressive, interventionist foreign policy
• Curbing illegal immigration
• Expanding energy production
• A generic sense of American exceptionalism

most of the attacks on the Democrats revolved around an exploding national debt, poor job creation, weak and deferential foreign policy, and obsession with environmentalism at the expense of the economy.

Yes there were lots of lunatics who thought Obama was a muslim, wanted to shoot IRS agents, thought we should eliminate the Department of Energy, wanted to eliminate the income tax altogether, and so forth, but the mainstream of the party put out a pretty cohesive message.

Now let me think about the Republican Party's main message in this election cycle:

• Inflation is bad
• We need to drill for more oil
• Biden failed in Afghanistan
• There's an invasion on our southern border

And that's about it for non-culture-war issues.  Immigration seems to have lost some of its power as a salient issue, and Afghanistan has faded from voters' memories, leaving just energy and inflation as issues voters care about and agree with Republicans on.  And that clearly wasn't enough.

Instead, a whole lot of what Republicans ran on was culture war issues, specifically, being against "wokeness."  They attacked BLM, went after the gay agenda, attacked social media companies and behemoths like Disney for going woke, talked about crime in cities as a byproduct of woke Democrats who think crime is good and refuse to prosecute it, obsessed over trans rights issues, and went really hard after schools for CRT, LGBT, 1619, and other buzzwords they're supposedly inflicting upon your child.

And ever since the election, it seems like the GOP has shifted even more into being a primarily anti-woke party.  The big hero for the base right now is Elon Musk who's promising to reveal the grand woke conspiracy behind Twitter and make it a place for free speech absolutism.  All the weird wingnuts online that the base always loves, your Tim Pool types, spend like 80% of their time talking about woke issues.  They never talk about inflation.  If you look at GOP social media accounts it's all woke woke woke.  And the big rising star, their top presidential contender, is Ron DeSantis, who's mainly made his name battling wokeness.

The question is, is this actually a winning issue for Republicans?  A majority of Americans hate "wokeness" and don't want it shoved down their throats or brought into their school classrooms.  But do they actually care enough to vote Republican on this issue, at the expense of various kitchen table, foreign policy, and good governance issues?  Or is the GOP veering off on the wrong track simply because it's fun to talk about and appeals to young Republicans in particular?

[Mr. Reactionary]

Call a hispanic person a Latinx and see what happens.

[Vosem]

The question is, is this actually a winning issue for Republicans?  A majority of Americans hate "wokeness" and don't want it shoved down their throats or brought into their school classrooms.  But do they actually care enough to vote Republican on this issue, at the expense of various kitchen table, foreign policy, and good governance issues?  Or is the GOP veering off on the wrong track simply because it's fun to talk about and appeals to young Republicans in particular?

Lean yes, I think, but I think it has to be treated sort of cautiously. Democratic candidates who over-performed in 2022 often did so based on social issues (particularly abortion), and Republican candidates who conspicuously underperformed did so based on affinity to Trump or having questioned the result in 2020. There was a pretty strong overlap between Republicans who questioned the 2020 result and Republicans who ran on largely culture war type issues, and these candidates did pretty poorly.

But the candidates who managed to fight on culture war issues without being perceived as election questioners actually did stunningly well. This was true of a number of GOP Governors (most obviously DeSantis, but Kemp's campaign also sort of had this undertone; DeWine ran on more conventional and old-fashioned social conservatism and still did decently well) but was difficult to pull off for open-seat candidates, since I think it requires inherently having some gravitas to pull this strategy off without looking like a loon, which is easier for an incumbent than a challenger. One of the most fascinating campaigns was Hung Cao's challenge to Jennifer Wexton, which was fought very substantially on this sort of issue in a left-trending suburban area and where Republicans over-performed a great deal.

So my answer to this question is 'yes' (Youngkin and Ciattarelli also pulled off this sort of campaign in 2021), but it has to be done cautiously, and candidates have to be aware of the boundaries between 'culture war' issues that are winners for conservatives and those that are not.

Call a hispanic person a Latinx and see what happens.

I think this was meant as a joke, but it's sort of perceptive -- part of why this kind of campaign works, in many areas, is that it can bait Democratic candidates into coming off pretty out-of-touch with the electorate. (My hope is that SCOTUS bans affirmative action in the near future, not just because it's correct law and the morally right thing to do -- although that's true in both cases -- but because I suspect Democratic complaints about this and attempts to run on the issue will end up coming off rather unhinged and similar to the feverish pro-BLM rhetoric of 2020). This campaign is less likely to work against a disciplined Democratic campaigner, like Laura Kelly, and likelier to work against someone less practiced who is taking their victory for granted, like Terry McAuliffe or Kathy Hochul.

[MasterJedi]

Let Republicans run on banning wokeness, abortion and gay marriage while Democrats focus on making healthcare a right and not a privilege and taxing the criminal class (rich and business owners) more. See what happens.

[Arizona Iced Tea]

Democrats a year ago: Inflation doesn't exist and if it does it's only transitory, Republicans are making a mountain out of a molehill.
Democrats now: Why aren't Republicans talking about inflation!!!

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

Let Republicans run on banning wokeness, abortion and gay marriage while Democrats focus on making healthcare a right and not a privilege and taxing the criminal class (rich and business owners) more. See what happens.

How many Democratic politicians even sincerely support this position? Biden certainly doesn't. He helped block universal healthcare in 1994 and lied about supporting a public option in the primary. In the senate you have Sanders, Warren, Fetterman when he gets sworn in, and maybe Markey. Sure, there's probably lots more who say they would, but it's all a lie, like Kamala endorsing Medicare For All then reneging. The Democratic party is bought and paid for by big pharma. The GOP certainly isn't better on the issue, but there's not going to be some big push for universal healthcare from the Democrats.

[Vosem]

Let Republicans run on banning wokeness, abortion and gay marriage while Democrats focus on making healthcare a right and not a privilege and taxing the criminal class (rich and business owners) more. See what happens.

Democrats run on 'making healthcare a right' and get predictably demolished (see 2010 and 2014), and run referendums on taxing the rich and get predictably demolished (see WA-2016, IL-2020, CA-2020). I don't think this comparison says what you want it to.

(If Republicans run on fighting wokeness and Democrats run on 'these people are lunatics who want to ban democracy and abortion, we are competent technocrats', then they might well win; this isn't a slam-dunk issue for the GOP or whatever and it's one that's easily mishandled. But your strategy is a guaranteed loser for Democrats, as every single thing that's happened since Obama took office makes clear.)

Let Republicans run on banning wokeness, abortion and gay marriage while Democrats focus on making healthcare a right and not a privilege and taxing the criminal class (rich and business owners) more. See what happens.

How many Democratic politicians even sincerely support this position? Biden certainly doesn't. He helped block universal healthcare in 1994 and lied about supporting a public option in the primary. In the senate you have Sanders, Warren, Fetterman when he gets sworn in, and maybe Markey. Sure, there's probably lots more who say they would, but it's all a lie, like Kamala endorsing Medicare For All then reneging. The Democratic party is bought and paid for by big pharma. The GOP certainly isn't better on the issue, but there's not going to be some big push for universal healthcare from the Democrats.

Screw that: how many Democratic voters even sincerely support these positions? Referendum results suggest it's only like two-thirds, and there's an enormous right flank of the party that doesn't.

[darklordoftech]

Depends on the issue. If “wokeness” is “slavery existed” and “don’t worry about gay teachers”, it’s not a winning issue for Republicans. If “wokeness” is “rioting is good”, it would be a winning issue for Republicans.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Republicans should have stuck with the Youngkin model rather than the election denialism Trumpist model .

[DrScholl]

The election results prove that it is not. The homophobic and transphobic attacks seem to have yielded them no results. Had it not been for inflation and gerrymandering they wouldn't have taken the House and might have even lost seats.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Depends on the issue. If “wokeness” is “slavery existed” and “don’t worry about gay teachers”, it’s not a winning issue for Republicans. If “wokeness” is “rioting is good”, it would be a winning issue for Republicans.

As I wrote about in another thread on this subject, liberals gleefully pretending that Republicans are against "allowing gay teachers to teach" or "teaching that slavery existed" is only helping the Republican cause.  There are vanishingly few swing voters willing to believe that Republicans actually want to teach that slavery never happened, so when liberals say things like this, voters just assume liberals are making a strawman argument to cover up what they're actually trying to do.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Democrats a year ago: Inflation doesn't exist and if it does it's only transitory, Republicans are making a mountain out of a molehill.
Democrats now: Why aren't Republicans talking about inflation!!!

Republicans talk plenty about inflation but all their talk includes zero solutions. They act like they are pundits and not politicians running for office.

[darklordoftech]

Depends on the issue. If “wokeness” is “slavery existed” and “don’t worry about gay teachers”, it’s not a winning issue for Republicans. If “wokeness” is “rioting is good”, it would be a winning issue for Republicans.

As I wrote about in another thread on this subject, liberals gleefully pretending that Republicans are against "allowing gay teachers to teach" or "teaching that slavery existed" is only helping the Republican cause.  There are vanishingly few swing voters willing to believe that Republicans actually want to teach that slavery never happened, so when liberals say things like this, voters just assume liberals are making a strawman argument to cover up what they're actually trying to do.

I used what each party’s most partisan supporters believe about the other party to make a point about how big the tent covered by “wokeness” is.

[progressive85]

I still don't think enough voters can pin-point what "woke" means, it's a weird word, and I don't even get it.  It's a buzzword on the right that isn't clear, and in political communication, clarity is important.

It seems to be just generally an opposition to modern-day movements, trends, and societal changes.  That's been around forever - you could say that women's suffrage was once "woke" or "too woke", or civil rights for black people.  Every generation has its major social causes.

Ron DeSantis has become Mr. Anti-Woke, I don't know if that being the basis of his whole image is going to matter that much in debates on so many other issues.  It will draw in supporters, but these are not presidential issues.  Ranting and raving about "Latinx" and pronouns can only get you so far.  After a while, you start to appear as obsessive with it as the activists you're opposing.

[justfollowingtheelections]

Maybe it was a year ago, but it won't be in 2024.  Most Democrats/left leaning voters do not consider themselves "woke", whatever that stupid term means.  Republicans may try to use it as a boogieman, but it will fail miserably.

[GeneralMacArthur]

I still don't think enough voters can pin-point what "woke" means, it's a weird word, and I don't even get it.  It's a buzzword on the right that isn't clear, and in political communication, clarity is important.

It seems to be just generally an opposition to modern-day movements, trends, and societal changes.  That's been around forever - you could say that women's suffrage was once "woke" or "too woke", or civil rights for black people.  Every generation has its major social causes.

Ron DeSantis has become Mr. Anti-Woke, I don't know if that being the basis of his whole image is going to matter that much in debates on so many other issues.  It will draw in supporters, but these are not presidential issues.  Ranting and raving about "Latinx" and pronouns can only get you so far.  After a while, you start to appear as obsessive with it as the activists you're opposing.

Some combination of:

• Influencers on TikTok who try and fill your kid's head with all sorts of bad historical takes, especially on race/gender and anti-Americanism
  
• San Francisco school board members who try to teach your kids that white people are bad and to blame for all the nation's problems
• Activist schoolteachers trying to teach kids about LGBT issues from a young age without consent from parents
• Corporations that try to show how diverse and tolerant they are by forcing every product to include some tribute to diversity and including racial/gender/queer politics in formerly apolitical products (Disney being the main culprit)
• College kids who read A People's History of the United States and immediately become edgy anti-American reactionaries and iconoclasts who want to tear down statues, rename buildings, and cancel various historical figures
• Dopey white people wanting to start out your NASCAR race with a land acknowledgment
• Businesses mandating that every bathroom be nonbinary, or other similar highly-visible societal changes to marginally improve life for a very small portion of the population.

and so on.  It's a pretty easily-identifiable cultural phenomenon when you see it.  To most normal people, things like this are just kind of mildly annoying and eye-rolling, and something that's been part of our culture since the 60s at least.  But conservatives have a knack for inventing more insidious forms of wokeness (such as schoolteachers trying to convince your 8-year-old to become trans and transition) that frighten voters regardless of whether they actually exist in the real world or not.  The primary focus is on children, because they're so impressionable.  Nobody really cares about adults, or even college kids, getting obsessed with "wokeness" except for when they try to cancel your favorite celebrity.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

I mean...it depends on what wokeness means, obviously. Most people resent the idea that they should just suck up getting mugged and observe National Mourning Day instead of celebrating Thanksgiving, yet most people also think that there are some real bad cops and prison guards out there and don't really see a huge problem with Mr. Ratburn being gay.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

The question is, is this actually a winning issue for Republicans?  A majority of Americans hate "wokeness" and don't want it shoved down their throats or brought into their school classrooms.  But do they actually care enough to vote Republican on this issue, at the expense of various kitchen table, foreign policy, and good governance issues?  Or is the GOP veering off on the wrong track simply because it's fun to talk about and appeals to young Republicans in particular?

I'm not really sure why this question is even being asked. The entirety of your post is about how the GOP is increasingly leaning on the framing of "anti-wokeness" and they just suffered a pretty embarrassing midterm considering the national environment. Of course it's not a winning issue for them - they did it and literally lost an insane number of very winnable seats.

I think there's a pretty good question to be asked (maybe you're trying to ask this question in a roundabout way) about what distinguishes winning vs. losing anti-woke campaigns. That at least seems to be a common thread in a lot of the answers here. Is this what we should be asking ourselves?

[Joe Republic]

There's already numerous articles out there explaining why part of the reason the Red Wave ended up as nothing more than a puddle was the baffling decision to focus their messaging on fearmongering about transgender issues.  I know this first hand; all three of the GOP campaign text messages that somehow reached me were specifically on this theme.  I mean, if this was what they wanted to spend their remaining campaign funds that Donald Trump didn't steal for himself, then have at it…

[Joe Republic]

Republicans should have stuck with the Youngkin model rather than the election denialism Trumpist model .

Fox News doesn't talk about CRT any more after its peak frenzy in the middle of 2021.  Their viewers have accordingly moved on as well.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Even if the answer is yes, it won't be for much longer.

The fact is that wokeness is on a decline. It's significantly weaker now than it was in 2020 and has now been mostly rolled back to just being something associated with some liberal arts colleges and weirdos on Twitter that normal people ignore. Corporations using weird terminology is a lot less common (Mainly with "Latinx" of course but other weird terms like "womxn" have been basically put to bed entirely) and you don't see massive controversy anymore over trivial sh!t like someone not having pronouns in their social media bio or how the annual hubbub over Halloween costumes in October this year was a lot more muted than in years past (this incredibly cringe Buzzfeed listicle notwithstanding, however it received almost universal derision in response and they even deleted their tweet on it due to the ratio and backlash.)

So why is that? Well a big factor is that a lot of this stuff was just trends and was never going to last anyway, another is that very few people have the stomach to try to live a truly woke lifestyle long term but I think an underrated factor is that Biden neither promotes and furthers wokeness nor does he inspire a backlash boosting it like Trump did. A lot of the weird woke sh!t of the late 10s was really weirdo true believers and/or grifters trying to capitalize on the backlash to Trump and it was actually making progress with normie liberals. (especially with the way social media works and how Trump's tweets spread on Twitter and the people dunking on him, pretty easy to see how people breaking down why Trump's tweets were "problematic" and the real issue with them was cis straight white male privilege or whatever could actually take hold.) That doesn't happen with Biden obviously and there aren't any other prominent Republicans now who inspire that sort of backlash...Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are just too boring. Similarly Biden doesn't really promote or intentionally further it like someone like Elizabeth Warren might.

If this trend continues and there's no reason to believe it won't, then Republicans will just start to look like weirdos railing against made up issues, like the whole litter boxes in schools thing...that's not taken seriously by swing voters or anyone who isn't a total kool-aid drinker and thus Democrats actually used it to their favor attacking some Republicans who made that claim in 2022. That's likely the future of woke attacks in general.

[Vosem]

I mean...it depends on what wokeness means, obviously. Most people resent the idea that they should just suck up getting mugged and observe National Mourning Day instead of celebrating Thanksgiving, yet most people also think that there are some real bad cops and prison guards out there and don't really see a huge problem with Mr. Ratburn being gay.

I think wokeism often boils down to ‘ideas about race or identity which became common in left-wing American circles after 2013’, which are pretty commonly resented and are far from the views of a population where prohibiting affirmative action runs about 30 points ahead of the GOP in referendums, and literally further ahead rather than less over time. (This itself generalizes to a preference for equality rather than ‘equity’; nothing or identical ladders for everyone at the fence regardless of height).

This affects relatively few people’s lives and so must be deliberately made the central issue of a campaign rather than becoming one automatically (where this has been done, it has usually been through focus on education as an issue, though one notes DeSantis targeting unfriendly industries and being massively rewarded as a new tactic). It also tends to work, where it does work, by baiting left-wing candidates into very out-of-touch statements, more so on race relations than any other issue.

[Хahar 🤔]

The fact is that wokeness is on a decline. It's significantly weaker now than it was in 2020 and has now been mostly rolled back to just being something associated with some liberal arts colleges and weirdos on Twitter that normal people ignore.

See, right here is the problem with uncritically adopting meaningless right-wing terminology like "wokeness". What exactly does it mean to assert that "wokeness is on a decline"?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The fact is that wokeness is on a decline. It's significantly weaker now than it was in 2020 and has now been mostly rolled back to just being something associated with some liberal arts colleges and weirdos on Twitter that normal people ignore.

See, right here is the problem with uncritically adopting meaningless right-wing terminology like "wokeness". What exactly does it mean to assert that "wokeness is on a decline"?

Most specifically note how corporate PR social media accounts rarely performatively use "Latinx" or other such lingo anymore.

[PSOL]

Getting rid of affirmative action actually is a winning issue, given the only white men who have any real support for it are nonvoters or gay, and the African American bloc is more divided for it to lead to higher turnout for the Democratic party.