2022 midterms

Why Republicans Are Turning an Like shooting fish in a barrel Ballot Into a Culture War

Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photos: Getty Images

The conventional wisdom on how to run a midterm campaign if your opponent controls the White House is pretty simple: ride the wave, stay focused on your most popular talking points, and don't do anything to give the opposing party the chance to plow the election into something other than a referendum on the president, peculiarly if said president is unpopular. The textbook target in a midterm election is the and then-called median voter, typically a centrist who isn't necessarily that focused on politics and definitely doesn't belong to either party'southward base. If in that location is any outcome of great concern to said median voter that won't atomic number 82 to conflicted reactions, and then talk about information technology again and again, emphatically.

Translated into the context of the 2022 midterms, Republicans have all the ingredients for a simple midterm message: an unpopular president, a discouraged Autonomous base of operations, and a simple economic event that gives Democrats a lot of problems they cannot solve (inflation). History suggests they are on their mode to victory, at least in terms of winning back the U.S. House (a really big deal since information technology kills a rare Autonomous governing trifecta in Washington) and making gains at the state level also. It'south kind of a no-brainer.

But are Republicans campaigning that way? So far, past and large, no. Instead, to a remarkable extent, Republican candidates and elected officials are going whole sus scrofa into civilization-state of war topics. They're pushing near-total bans on abortion, making police force-and-order demands for a crackdown on law-breaking, and railing confronting the alleged "woke indoctrination" of public-schoolhouse students on matters of gender, sexuality, and race. This is happening more than at the state level than in Washington. But anyone who watched the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on the Supreme Courtroom nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson or pays attention to the antics of Marjorie Taylor Greene knows that congressional Republicans are as capable of wild civilisation-state of war gyrations every bit your average conservative occupying a prophylactic state-legislative seat in the rural Southward.

So what's going on? Are Republicans incapable of message discipline or out of touch with an electorate that's relatively progressive on cultural issues? Are they consumed with "base mobilization"? Or perchance they're just mirroring Donald Trump's self-destructive tendencies?

Here are some possible explanations for a midterm strategy gone wild.

The almost obvious reason Republican politicians are serving up civilization-war fare is that their political party base of operations is dominated past bourgeois Christians who are more than concerned nearly the supposed deterioration of traditional values than merely about any other political topic. Indeed, there is some evidence that such voters are in a counterrevolutionary state of mind, anxious to use a Republican resurgence to roll back contempo progressive gains on a broad range of issues, and complimentary of whatever inhibitions about displaying their religious motivations. Equally the New York Times recently reported, there's a new mood firing up the Christian right's marriage of convenience with the Republican Party thanks to the MAGA movement's radicalism:

The infusion of explicitly religious fervor — much of it rooted in the charismatic tradition, which emphasizes the power of the Holy Spirit — into the correct-wing motion is changing the atmosphere of events and rallies, many of which feature Christian symbols and rituals, especially praise music.

With spiritual mission driving political ethics, the stakes of any conflict, whether over masks or schoolhouse curriculums, tin can feel that much larger, and compromise can be even more hard to achieve. Political ambitions come up to be about defending God, pointing to a desire to build a nation that actively promotes a particular set of Christian beliefs.

These are not people willing to accept LGBTQ+ rights and same-sexual activity marriage every bit just office of the contemporary landscape. Emboldened past a correct-fly trend in judicial circles that may stop or sharply curtail abortion rights in a matter of weeks, and finding new allies among parents and wage earners infuriated by COVID-19 restrictions, key elements of the GOP base are not inclined to hibernate their light under a bushel at present, even if conventional political thinkers in their party wish they'd continue a lower profile. And considering of the importance of turnout in non-presidential elections, Republicans past and large don't want to do anything to dampen base enthusiasm, even if information technology flows from theocratic yearnings that volition exist difficult to satisfy down the route.

Even if the central motivation of many conservative-base of operations voters is even so traditional Evangelical or Catholic religious views and a rejection of progressive cultural accomplishments, at that place are new wrinkles in the onetime fabric of right-wing cultural politics. The emergence of transgender rights equally the new frontier of gender and sexual inclusiveness is discomfiting to a lot of people who typically consider themselves enlightened and accepting of others. And an aboriginal, faith-based hostility to public education (a.k.a. "government schools") has institute new energy in concerns well-nigh COVID-19 lockdowns and the power of teachers unions, which bleeds over into "parental rights" agendas long prepare past homeschoolers and others wanting public subsidies for private didactics.

For that thing, "wokeness" itself as a political curse word has given new impetus to one-time-school racist and sexist impulses, beyond the ranks of conservative ideologues. And contempo criminal offence trends — or, arguably, a law-breaking panic based on the inevitable reversal of decades-long reductions in most crimes — have made quasi-disciplinarian attitudes toward urban areas as dystopian sinkholes of disorder and social pathology more common, even amid swing-voter elements of the electorate.

In other words, a diverseness of circumstances have made correct-wing civilisation-war politics something of a flavour of the month beyond the fever swamps in which information technology typically festers.

Information technology's important to empathise that a lot of the current culture-war energy on the right is emanating from places where conservatives already enjoy power, notably state legislatures in both red and regal jurisdictions. For many of these people, the 2022 midterms are non an opportunity to deny Democrats power or even seize more power for themselves; they're an opportunity to aggressively govern in a culturally conservative manner without much fright of voter backfire. With the wind at their backs, Republicans are doing what they and their voters want, which is to redirect a culture perceived as godless and disordered back into its customary channels. Peradventure Republicans would be more careful near cultural counterrevolution in a less favorable political environment. Just for now the historic pattern of midterm losses for the White House party, intensified past the get-go serious inflation scare since the 1970s, and an unpopular presidency makes it possible for conservatives to let their not-freak flag wing.

Is this merely an unusual, dangerous moment that will fade if Republicans fail to meet their heaven-loftier expectations in Nov? Perhaps. Simply go on in mind that the enduring popularity of Donald Trump in today'south conservative politics owes a lot to the 45th president'southward habit of always remaining on the offensive and using divisive polarization to build a coalition of the radically aggrieved and merely enough swing voters to win elections. Trumpism means never having to moderate and never retreating. Worse withal for the country, when Republicans fail electorally, Trumpism tells them they should double down on base-exciting extremism. Don't expect them to retreat.

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Why the GOP Is Turning an Easy Election Into a Culture State of war