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An interesting "false flag" in the transgender culture war: a mystery group is impersonating a transgender group and sending texts and flyers to the wrong people:
https://www.kxan.com/news/texas-politics/texans-receive-texts-impersonating-transgender-advocacy-group/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/trans-student-mailers-hit-texas-210015782.html
As far as I can tell, of course, the transgender groups in question have no disagreement with the contents in these messages, but they have been sent to the wrong people. They want this content to stay on the down low and for parents not to know about it. As on twitter poster put it "The trans people wouldn’t be stupid enough to send this out right before midterms unless they thought you were trans" (emphasis added). The pages on the websites that the pamphlets and texts linked to have been taken down, though archive links show they had content on them previously: https://web.archive.org/web/20261005063417/https://transtexas.org/trans-texas-takeover-tour/ https://web.archive.org/web/20260807023304/https://transtexas.org/resources/ which is a very interesting thing to do for a group that presumably wants people to attend their tour and have access to some resources.
This does reinforce the idea that the trans project is both unpopular and/or secretly transing kids without their parents knowing, as they reacting with horror that parents are being exposed to their message.
This hiding behavior is certainly not standard among all groups. Most groups would be thrilled to get free publicity pointed to their website, even if the messages are coming from an anonymous benefactor (assuming it doesn't get them on a spam shitlist or something). Nevertheless, it does seem like democrat ideology mandates that they support the maximalist trans movement, and their solution is to distance from it.
Hmm. I got a pamphlet from them mixed into a bunch of political mail that 100% knows I'm a republican(one a flyer for my republican house member, one a Greg Abbot flyer, one a handwritten-by-machine letter from Ken Paxton's daughter, and one a Talarico add by a 'lifelong republican' crossover voter. Being a high propensity voter in Tarrant county right now is a great way to be deluged with political spam through all media). Let me dig it out of the trash and open it...
Return address is a private house in Houston. It signs off with 'You don't need to have everything figured out. You don't have to know whether you're definitely trans. You don't have to decide about hormones or surgery right now. You don't have to convince your parents. Your job right now is to stay safe, find people who will listen to you, and give yourself time to figure out who you are. There are other kids in Texas going through this too- and there are adults whose actual job is to help you. Even if your family doesn't accept you as you are, groups like these are ready to become your found family.' The entire pamphlet is clearly addressed to minors becoming trans against their parent's knowledge or consent. It was addressed to 'students of the (my family name)household' and very clearly labeled as 'Texas trans and LGBTQ+ student resource guide'.
Uh, guys, I think this is a false flag sent out to rile up republican voters. And I say that as a Ken Paxton donor.
Republicans have been doing this for a while. I used to get tons of text messages about Kamala Harris' purported sexual conquests with a "you go girl don't let the republicans keep you down" vibe.
If Dems don't like it they can fight back. Put out a flyer telling people to vote Ken Paxton so that he can help the president run for a third term and rename Texas Trumpsas.
It’s rather telling however that democrats get upset about republicans saying true things about them. If democrats made ads that said republicans want to cut spending and lower taxes, republicans would be thrilled even if they went to the wrong side.
Democrats are constantly running on "Republicans want to cut spending on [widely used government service or one that serves a sympathetic category] and pay for it by lowering taxes on the wealthy". That's like the single most common Democratic line besides "Trump is bad".
Ok, and the analogous situation would be if there were some kind of conservative NGO with a website and literature promoting these sorts of tax and spending cuts; and some Democrat supporters started spreading their literature among people who would be offended by such proposals; and they concealed the fact that they were the ones spreading the literature.
I think that in that situation, a conservative Republican candidate might respond with something along the lines of "I support tax cuts for everyone and my priority would be to cut taxes for the middle class, not just the wealthy." Which might be a bald-faced lie, but I think @MaiqTheTrue 's point is plausible.
It seems that much more than the Republicans, the Democrats have positions which are very unpopular, very embarrassing, but which they still are reluctant to disavow. To be sure, I am a conservative so I am possibly biased on this issue, but if anyone can identity a few analogous issues on the Republican side of things I would be interested.
I would suggest, speaking as a perpetually disappointed Republican, that Republican politicians do have a revealed preference for pursuing toxic, unpopular policies while in office. They simply lie about them if confronted with it in advance, and often continue to lie about it afterward.
Trump's war of choice with Iran is actually managing to be less popular than transgender kids. Pew polling shows 56% of Americans favor banning medical care for youth gender transition. While close to 2/3 of Americans polled disapprove of the handling of the Iran war. It should be noted that there has probably been an uptick in approval for a war with Iran after the war started, compared to approval for starting a war with Iran beforehand, though I couldn't find definitive polling on the topic.
But if in 2024 you put out a flyer saying "Don't elect Donald Trump, he'll start a war of choice without seeking public or congressional approval, raising gas prices;" Donald Trump would simply say that he won't start any wars while in office. Reminiscent of George W Bush running on reducing America's role as global policeman.
Democrats have a unique problem regarding issues like Trans rights and Reparations where they can't publicly disavow these policies, because the parts of their coalition that want these policies are insane spoiled children lobbying for status rather than for material or political success. Where the Zionist lobby or the oil companies are sophisticated enough to not care what you say about them in public as long as you deliver in private.
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True, but if I understand correctly, these are unedited flyers merely send to the wrong people. The group in question doesn't even claim that it disagrees with the content itself?
Anti-Rep ads on the other hand usually explicitly uses a Dem framing, like the planned medicare changes: Reps say they want to make access harder to make abuse more difficult, Dems say they just hate poor people (Btw, I'm against the medicare change).
That seems qualitatively different.
Yeah like Democrats had no problems with pushing a lot of 'Project 2025 is the secret plan of the Republican Establishments look how evil it is' when it's like one think-tank's opinions which have some overlap with Republican interests but are nowhere near 1-1. Reddit Libs were treating Project 2025 like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion for years.
The best thing about Project 2025 was that absolutely no one read it, so you could just say it had anything in it and people would believe or reject on pure tribalism.
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