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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 23, 2023

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The republicans have a weird mix of strip mall baptist church combined with oligarch wealth vibe to them. Someone who lives in a major city, is educated and well travled probably feels out of place at a Trump rally. Even in the UK but even more so in other European countries there is a brand of pearl necklace wearing urban right wing that likes neoclassical apartments in major European cities and enjoy high culture. The Republicans seem too focused on rural boomers who are opposed to change and want a culture that is fairly alien to the PMC.

This is a new phenomenon. It used to be that the US equivalent of what you're talking about was the suburban conservative, a breed that dominated the Republican party up until 2016 (although it had been on a downslope since the financial crisis). A combination of cultural change (the suburban US of the early 2000's may as well be a foreign country to what it is these days -- the country was still majority Protestant and overwhelmingly Christian, the Mainline churches were, if not vibrant, at least healthy enough to be analogized to middle aged rather than on life support as they are now -- and this was a process of change that was well advanced by 2016) and reactionary disgust at Trump and everything he represented meant that a district like Virginia's 7th could go from electing a Republican like Eric Cantor by 40+ point margins, cycle after cycle, to reliably picking Abigail Spanberger out of disgust at the populist who picked off Cantor in a primary.

It's not really ideological: most of the Republicans the suburbs used to favor were as reliably conservative as anyone in the new party. It's about, as you highlight, cultural factors. Respectability politics was a positive thing in the suburbs and the kind of conformism that allows for it is in bad odor right now. Combined with the actual cultural change that has happened in suburbs (especially in the North and West; suburban Georgia is still much more up for grabs than, say, suburban Pennsylvania), there just isn't this the old kind of bourgeoisie conservative constituency like there used to be.

The US also used to have the kind of urbanite conservative you speak of, but it's been on the way out for even longer. The Republican Party stopped being theirs/they cultural died in the 60's and 70's. Now, urban conservatives are working class white ethnics, 'Reagan Democrats' and their descendants.