The Populist Right is Leading the GOP Into Irrelevancy

Most suburban families are dispositional conservatives. Many are not strongly ideological. They certainly won’t be galvanized in large numbers by “based” dunks on libs. And yet, so many Republican candidates tie themselves to the aesthetic and tonal qualities admired by the new right social media grifter class. These people live in a hermetically sealed political bubble.

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And, of course, Republicans also wrap themselves around the fortunes of Donald Trump. But while the former president is popular with Republicans, he is not particularly popular with Americans. Trump, like him or not, has an inherent grasp of connecting with crowds. Candidates who try and ape him sound like clownish impressionists. …

Social and economic conservatives like Brain Kemp, Ron DeSantis, and Glenn Youngkin — who, despite conventional wisdom, do well in a redistricted state that Biden won by 10+ points — are the most successful politicians on the right. But because they wear the wrong boots, or don’t show enough subservience to Trump, or aren’t interested in relitigating 2020, or because they don’t adopt a choleric tone, they are often dismissed as losers.

Do you know what time it is? It’s going to be 1977 forever if Republicans keep this up.

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[I wrote about this yesterday, but the issue isn’t populism per se. It’s more about the people who front it, and then value the performative over the substantive. But even they are responding to the incentives set by voters who want more to be entertained by such antics than actually convert them into real political gains. — Ed]

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