No One With a Functioning Brain Sees the GOP as the ‘Party of Normal’
Republicans love to argue that they are the voice of real America and not the coastal elites whom they constantly deride. But, when you listen to these two speeches back-to-back, it’s Republicans who sound out-of-touch and consumed by their pet social issues. For all the GOP claims that Democrats are obsessed with wokeness, it's Republicans who spend far more time talking about them.
To take just one example, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—a 2024 GOP primary frontrunner—has declared his state the place where “wokeness goes to die” and even named one of his signature pieces of legislation the “Stop W.O.K.E. Act.”
U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) yells at U.S. President Joe Biden as he delivers his State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., February 7, 2023.
REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
One of the results of that legislation is that Florida elementary schools are pulling
literally hundreds of books off their library shelves. Kind of hard to square all that with Sanders defense of “freedom of speech” or her assertion that “Democrats want to rule us with more government control.” But put aside the hypocrisy for a second: does anyone think Americans care more about issues like this than accessible health care, good paying jobs or even Ticketmaster putting huge fees on concert tickets?
Sanders’ speech captures the Republican Party’s entire political problem in a nutshell—and it has nothing to do with Donald Trump. The GOP simply has no economic or cultural message that appeals to non-Republicans.
All its party members know how to do is preach to the converted. They have no policy agenda, it seems, other than divisive culture war issues or trying to own the libs. They have no economic agenda, no health care plans, and no ideas for easing the burdens on middle-class families.
That's not a partisan statement. It's a fact.
This is a party, after all, that in 2020 didn't bother to come up with a policy platform at the Republican National Convention. In 2022, their policy agenda was little more than platitudes. That lack of policy infrastructure has reduced the party to finger-to-the-wind politics—seizing on the issues of the day, be it drag shows or gas stoves, to excite their base.