Culture war

On issue after issue, conservatives — and Republicans — have lost the “culture wars.” Not just lost but lost decisively and permanently. The victories are so secure on most issues that conservatives have abandoned the fight. At times, the result has been a more tolerant public consensus, for example regarding gay rights and marriage. There are two notable exceptions, however, where the cultural battles remain white-hot: abortion and transgender rights. Both issues motivated voters in 2024. On abortion, voters have been mobilized by controversial Supreme Court decisions. The fight began in earnest in 1973, when Roe v. Wade effectively legalized abortion throughout the country and throughout the nine months of pregnancy.

A new Pew Research poll with some stunning findings challenges common critiques from centrist and moderate politicos that the so-called “culture war” is a distraction or even imaginary. On the contrary, the results show a massive cultural chasm between Biden and Trump supporters that helps explain why America seems so politically divided — and why compromise often feels impossible.

For all the splits on the right at the moment, it’s worth taking note of rare unity in decrying former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s comments about the culture war to CBS This Morning on Monday.  Former wide receiver turned morning host Nate Burleson asked Ryan about what he described broadly as a GOP movement to prioritize the culture war. “Republican lawmakers around the country are pushing legislation when it comes to banning books, it could be trans rights, call it 'anti-woke,' however you want to label it,” Burleson said. “Is this a good approach? Is that a good strategy? You're a football fan, is that how you should approach the game?” https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1668604854539804674 “I’m not a culture war guy,” Ryan answered.

Ron DeSantis has declared war on woke. Donald Trump yesterday declared war on the word “woke.” Speaking in Urbandale, Iowa, yesterday, the Republican frontrunner said: “I don’t like the term ‘woke,’ because I hear the term ‘woke, woke, woke.’ It’s just a term they use, half the people can’t define it, they don’t know what it is.”  Close textual readings of Donald Trump’s stump-speech riffs are a dangerous game, but in this case a difference of opinion over word choice goes to the heart of Team Trump’s plan to paint DeSantis as a career politician who speaks in jargon, in sharp contrast to their candidate’s direct language and quick wittedness.

Mitch Daniels visited Washington this week to test the ground on the Senate side of Capitol Hill. "I’m worried about winning it and regretting it for six years," he told Politico. And well he might. The former Indiana governor and Purdue University president is debating whether to run for the seat of incumbent Indiana Senator Mike Braun, who after just one term decided he'd rather be back as governor in Indianapolis than stay in the cooling saucer for even one more minute. Daniels may find it equally abhorrent to join a body as a junior senator at the age of seventy-three. Either way, a run by him would immediately thrust the Indiana Republican primary into the national narrative, framed as a war between the pre-Trump and post-Trump GOP.

Having recently botched South African history, the New York Times is now turning its sights to Australia. Our friends Down Under are holding an election this week in which the Australian Labor Party is expected to beat the Liberal-National coalition for the first time since 2013. (For Americans in need of a guide, the capital-L Liberals in Canada stand for the left, in Australia for the right, and in the UK for nothing whatsoever.) It's the issue of trans rights in the Australian campaign that has the Times's unisex knickers in a twist. They're worried in particular about one candidate, Katherine Deves, a Liberal running for a seat in parliament. Deves has said that trans youths who undergo gender-transition surgeries are being "mutilated.

In the late 1990s, I attended a conference on conservatism held by the American Enterprise Institute at the Mayflower Hotel. Various eminences of the right were in attendance, including Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Podhoretz was on a panel with Glenn Loury, who had moved away from his conservative views, and Podhoretz ventilated his exasperation over this evolution. But the panel that really caught my eye was the one that Decter spoke on about American culture. She described a country in a state of breakdown, prompting her daughter, Rachel, to remark, “Mom, it isn’t that bad!” The audience laughed. For Decter, however, it was never a laughing matter. Decter, who recently died, formed what in retrospect can be seen as the vanguard of the culture war.

Record-high inflation and soaring gas prices are boons for the Republican Party. Nothing sours the electorate on the party in power faster than pain at the pump. “People are becoming poorer,” Tucker Carlson said during a recent segment. “The standard of living of Americans, who for almost 100 years have enjoyed the world's highest standard of living in any big country, is plummeting. So, what's the administration doing to fix this? What are they doing to help? Well, of course, that depends upon whether or not you're Ukrainian.” It’s a note Tucker has struck before. The Democrats in power only care about virtue signaling. It’s Ukrainian flag pins and transgender admirals all the way down. You can go broke for all they care. Just make sure you go woke first.

Conservatives suffer from a short attention span, and it largely explains their defeats in the culture war. They fight every battle as if it’s the only one they will ever have to fight. And so, win or lose, they are unprepared for what happens next. If they lose, they forget how all-important the last battle was, learning no lessons from defeat, nor about what’s vital and what isn’t. Twenty-five years ago, conservatives were adamantly opposed to putting women in combat or admitting them to institutions like the Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel. In recent years, conservative Republicans have celebrated the aspirations to office of female fighter pilots like Arizona’s Martha McSally and female graduates from Virginia Military Institute and the Citadel.