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Is "anti-woke" a dying strategy? [1]
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Date: 2023-08-06
Once upon a time, the hero Ron DeSantis was going to ride his anti-woke magic carpet over Trump and to the White House. For a few brief weeks in the fall of 2022, after the collapse of Trump’s candidates in the midterms, followed by the 2020 loser’s uninspiring and celebrity-free campaign announcement, DeSantis was the hot new thing — Trump without the baggage. Then the wheels fell off.
If there is a day that historians will identify as the moment hate became the official policy of the GOP, it is June 16, 2015 — the day Trump announced his first run for the presidency. While the event got a lot of coverage, few people — probably not even the candidate — thought it was anything more than a marketing maneuver to rebuild the Apprentice/Celebrity Apprentice TV franchise. (In 2004, the show had been a ratings hit , with 28.1 million watching the season finale. By 2015, viewership for the finale had tanked to 6.1 million.
The political intelligentsia gave the flabby, polyester-haired buffoon no chance. Venerable British bookies, Ladbrokes, offered 150-1 odds against. And the general belief was that the putative billionaire would provide some comic relief before he was hoisted by the heir apparent, Jeb Bush. This accepted wisdom seemed prescient when Trump told the nation and his rented supporters ,
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best ... They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with [them]. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."
It was considered a step too far by most. It even got Trump fired from Celebrity Apprentice. He had broken the fourth wall of politics and said the quiet part out loud. The GOP welcomed intolerance — the party was committed to denying same-sex marriage. But they had always buried the bigotry behind protestations of morality and biblical mandates. Trump ripped the covers off the hypocrisy.
Trump became the nominee and won the Electoral College vote. In turn, the GOP, who had run on the usual Republican talking points in 2016, declared that, from then on, the party’s platform would be “what he said.”
Meanwhile in Florida, Ron DeSantis, a little-known US Representative who barely prevailed in 2018, won reelection in 2022 in a landslide. His main themes were his ‘success’ at guiding Florida through the COVID pandemic, his anti-immigration stunts , and his sponsorship of Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act (" Stop WOKE Act ") in 2021 and the Parental Rights in Education Act (aka “Don’t Say Gay Law” ) in 2022.
He carved out a reputation for being one of America’s nastiest politicians as he based his entire political future on his “anti-woke” policies. It was the theme of his book “The Courage to be Free”. And it underpinned his big government attack on the free market as he tried to punish Florida’s largest employer, Walt Disney, for having an opinion.
Unfortunately for DeSantis, his decision to run against woke proved shortsighted. Americans did not care as much as he bet they did. His sadism astounded liberals. Independents worried about other issues — mainly jobs, the economy, and crime. And the MAGAs were too deep in the Trump cult. Ron made everything worse by proving to be a sublimely incompetent politician.
He is crap at retail politics. He has the personality of wet wool. He cannot even fake that he gives a shit. And when the messenger stinks, the message takes a beating. DeSantis’s financial backers have noticed. Robert Bigelow, a $20 million contributor, and Ron’s biggest donor, has told the candidate to adopt a more moderate approach — especially after DeSantis signed Florida’s 6-week abortion ban.
“He does need to shift to get to moderates. He’ll lose if he doesn’t ... extremism isn’t going to get you elected.”
Even Trump, who has a preternatural ability to read his base, has dismissed woke.
“I don’t like the term ‘woke.’ It’s just a term they use — half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is.”
Today the New York Times reports on the failing power of anti-woke as a vote-getter.
“When presented with the choice between two hypothetical Republican candidates, only 24 percent of national Republican voters opted for “a candidate who focuses on defeating radical ‘woke’ ideology in our schools, media and culture” over “a candidate who focuses on restoring law and order in our streets and at the border. Around 65 percent said they would choose the law and order candidate.”
It gets worse. The NYT goes on to say,
“Among those 65 and older, often the most likely age bracket to vote, only 17 percent signed on to the “anti-woke” crusade. Those numbers were nearly identical in Iowa, where the first ballots for the Republican nominee will be cast on Jan. 15.”
No Republican candidate can afford to lose seniors. The older white traditionalist is the backbone of the GOP. You would think the Governor of Florida would be sensitive to that fact — and be hyper-alert to what they are saying. But DeSantis only seems to listen to his wife, Casey. And God knows who she listens to.
When DeSantis fails out of the race — the only unknown is the date — the war on wokeness will have lost its white knight. And Vivek Ramaswamy is the only other candidate who has made it a significant part of his campaign. In his book , Woke, Inc.: Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam, this B-tier candidate is even more passionate about his distaste for empathy than Ron. But so far, it has not floated his electoral boat.
I have a belief — which is probably naive wishful thinking — that there is a point on the conservative spectrum that separates the spit-flecked, core-belief haters from the right-wingers who accept the rhetoric of the zealot but who think actually hurting people goes too far. And they do not like anti-woke warriors. We will have to see what they do.
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https://dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/6/2185648/-Is-anti-woke-a-dying-strategy
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