That’s the thesis of Michelle Goldberg’s latest column. More specifically, she’s arguing that objections to wokeness are all the right has left, i.e. the glue holding the whole enterprise together. It won’t shock anyone that I think she’s wrong on the big picture but I do think she gets at something which, if put a slightly different way, is probably true. The right’s foundations don’t seem as clear cut as they used to be.

…conservatives are relying on fantastical ideas about wokeness to tie together a movement that has otherwise lost much of its raison d’être.

After all, the nearly 50-year project of ending Roe is complete. Stirring crusades against Communism and then against radical Islam have subsided. The cult of personality around Trump has splintered. Many on the right would still like to obliterate the welfare state, but they’re deeply defensive about it. Hatred of wokeness is a brittle foundation for political identity, but it’s almost all that’s left…

I’m skeptical that anti-wokeness can be the basis for a durable mass movement. That’s not just because a recent USA Today poll found that a majority of Americans see the term “woke” positively but because wokeness is too niche a concern. The Federalist Society trained many young meritocrats who were willing to devote their lives to fighting legalized abortion. It’s hard to imagine the battle against neopronouns and the 1619 Project inspiring the same sort of single-minded intensity. Ronald Reagan used to describe conservatism as a three-legged stool, comprising social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and defense hawks. These days it looks a lot more like a pogo stick.

Where to begin? First of all, she’s almost certainly misreading that USA Today poll. What the poll showed was that a majority of people understand how proponents of wokeness use the term, i.e. to mean someone who is “tuned in to injustices.” But understanding the term and agreeing with it are not the same thing. To be fair, that was USA Today’s failure in interpreting the results of their own poll. But many on the left, not just Goldberg, went with it. If you look closely, it’s likely most Republicans and moderates aren’t fans of wokeness and don’t view it positively at all.

I don’t know if the poll was what sparked Goldberg’s entire column but it feels like that could be the case. Goldberg’s argument is that anti-wokeness is a thin foundation on which to build a movement or keep a party together. And the poll, at least as misinterpreted by USA Today, argues that most Americans see wokeness positively. If you were to Venn diagram these ideas they don’t completely overlap but you can sort of see how you could get one from the other. After all if most Americans are fine with wokeness then it’s not going to make a very effective issue for conservatives to rally around because they’ll never have more than a minority of Americans in support.

But again, I think that’s misreading the poll. I think there are all sorts of reasons to believe lots of Americans really dislike wokeness, including an increasing number of people on the left. Even Goldberg herself has at times admitted it goes too far. And that means it could be a good wedge issue for conservatives. It certainly seems to have worked out well for Gov. Glenn Youngkin and more recently for Gov. DeSantis who has been emphasizing this point more than most in a state that was until very lately a purple hue.

I realize there are lots of people on the left arguing that DeSantis won’t play outside Florida. That’s clearly wrong when it comes to conservatives, many of whom already support him outside his state. But I guess the question of how his approach plays with a general election audience remains to be seen. We’ll have to wait and see. My own guess is that wokeness, especially with regard to children, is not a niche issue. I suspect a majority of parents are going to resonate with some of the same concerns, everything from trans women in girls sports to the teaching of gender identity and identity politics to young kids. As I’ve said before, it may be a given on the left that five year old girls should be told they can grow up to be boys and vice versa but I think progressives vastly overestimate how popular that view is outside their own bubble.

The other part of Goldberg’s argument is that Reagan’s three legged stool—social conservatives, fiscal conservatives and defense hawks— is now a pogo stick. She specifically mentions “crusades against communism” as a thing of the past.

Really? Are there no communists left? What about the most populist country in the world, China? What about the deranged lunatics in North Korea or the socialist dictator in Venezuela? The communists haven’t gone away. If you look around you might notice a substantial number of conservatives, from moderates like Mitt Romney to Kevin McCarthy all the way over to members of the House Freedom Caucus are very concerned about China. I’m not sure how Goldberg has missed this because it has been making news for weeks, from the balloon incident to the new House select committee on China. Anti-communism may not be as prominent as it was during the Cold War but it’s still there and still something that most Republicans agree on.

To be fair, there has been some upset on the right about sending money and weapons to Ukraine. So maybe it’s fair to say the defense hawks aren’t quite as hawkish as they once were.

Finally, Republicans are still pro tax cuts and against higher taxes but all you have to do is look at our current debt level to see that concern about the debt isn’t what it once was. A lot of this is the result of a once in a lifetime pandemic which led to lockdowns and huge amounts of spending to try to keep everyone afloat. And even so it’s fair to say there would have been even more spending, trillions more in fact, if not for Republicans and a couple of holdout Democratic Senators. But it does sort of feel to me as if the determination to hold the line on spending isn’t as firm as it was a decade ago. Back then we were talking, at least on the right, about dealing with entitlements to keep them from becoming insolvent. These days the Biden team has already primed the ground against any talk about that. If feels like we’ve slid down a very steep hill and are literally paying the price for it.

I think the way I’d put it is that the three legged stool still has two fairly solid legs, anti-wokeness/social conservatives, anti-communist/defense hawks, and one slightly banged up leg (fiscal conservatives). Maybe it’s fair to say things have changed but the idea that all the right has in common anymore is anti-wokeness is wrong. Ultimately, we probably do need some new leadership from someone who can frame the issues and rally people around them the way that Reagan did.