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I wanted to write something about this, but old dickie Hanania beat me to it.
As a Republican, I’m amused and horrified. One common reaction was summed up by a tweet reading simply “We don’t deserve to win.” Just, what the fuck guys? Can’t we just be the normal ones? It shouldn’t be hard by comparison. But instead we’re attacking normality. We’re doing goofball shit.
Vivek, so recently a Republican candidate for President widely taken seriously, added to this genre tweeting out:
Such Texas Sharpshooter energy. I predict that the team that won last year’s Super Bowl will win this year’s super bowl, and that Taylor Swift will endorse the same person she endorsed in 2020 in the same race. But if the obvious happens, it’s a CONSPIRACY!
The problem is that even if you believe that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are artificially propped up, that Taylor is the result of media coverage and that the whole NFL is WWE with end zones, saying it doesn’t actually help you capture the millions of people who are fans of them. “Media Influence” is nearly always a Russell Conjugation: other people’s tastes are the result of media bias, my tastes are pure and formed entirely individually. People will almost never change their tastes as a result of being informed that they were “influenced” by the media, they will get angry. People will easily be convinced that other people are sheeple, they will almost never be convinced that they are. “Pop singers” Swifties will react angrily to this accusation, as will Chiefs fans. Neither will react kindly to the insinuation that their favorite thing is bullshit.
I can’t go through a week without hearing about Kelce from my mother or Swift from my wife. My wife is deep into the swiftie Gaylor conspiracy universe and asks my opinion on them when we’re stoned. My mother listens to every episode of the Kelce Brothers’ podcast, and gives me the highlights. Both are wealthy married white women, who own homes and cars, who value family and capitalism. My mother is not going to be convinced that she likes Travis Kelce because of the deep state and not because he is really good at getting open and he’s funny on mic. My wife is not going to be convinced that she doesn’t really like singing along to I Can See You. It’s a losing strategy to try to convince them that it’s all fake: most people start from the emotional opinion that everything is fake, they aren’t rationally convinced. Just as most atheists turn against the church for personal reasons and then become aware of all the rational arguments and contradictions involved.
The far better strategy by DR types would be to try to unwillingly recruit Swift and Kelce. The old “Aryan Princess” meme. Make them an icon of your side, and you make them problematic. Even when the inevitable Swift endorsement comes, it will feel hollow. Swift will be put in an uncomfortable position, weakened by being forced to deny being a white supremacist. Her fans will be offended by being called racists for liking the music they like, and start to turn against those calling them racists.
Of course, this isn’t happening because I doubt that Trump is declaring “Holy War” on Swift. That’s just a little unsourced TDS tidbit the liberal media couldn’t resist. This is just various hustling influencers seizing on a big name. But if you want to be an insurgent party, discipline is key, and this isn’t it.
AND YET
I find Hanania is being very uncharitable to the right, and buying into an essentially progressive framing of the world. The captured version of the NFL that we watch every week, with “STOP RACISM” written on helmets and in the end zones, with required interviews for minority coaching candidates*, with the mildly absurd farce of wildly-celebrated female coaches in minor functionary roles buried on the staff, with every ad break featuring female athletes (and especially the hypothetical female high school football player featured over and over). Equally, I saw the Eras Tour movie with my wife, and friends of ours went to the concert. It was clear that comparing what was on camera to the crowd at the actual concerts, they went out of their way to make it seem less white than it was. Prominent romantic roles were given to Black Male dancers on stage, despite Taylor herself dating only white men historically, prominent roles were given to flamboyantly gay and trans dancers. Taylor put in the effort in advance to make it a comfortable experience for liberals.
So when Richard says:
He’s ignoring the context. Liberals were “that guy” for years, and they were loudly whiny, and they succeeded. The NFL and pop culture and ordinary speech changed to accommodate liberals. And it seems to be working, with ratings rebounding from 2016 downtrends. But Hanania is praising liberals for being able to watch a football game telecast that has been designed to soothe them, while blaming Conservatives for being unable to watch a telecast that has been designed to soothe their enemies. It’s a trap Conservatives have fallen into, and they should be shamed for it! But it’s also the fruit of the Long March Through the Institutions.
*The Rooney Rule originally struck me as fairly decent, fairly fair: teams must interview one minority candidate for coaching positions. No requirement to hire, but you have to interview. The results have become increasingly absurd. The Eagles had black Offensive and Defensive Coordinators who had a terrible embarrassing end to the season, but had done well before. Both got a few token Head Coach interviews, to satisfy the Rooney Rule, and as a result the Eagles did not fire them, hanging onto them for way longer than anyone believed the Eagles would bring them back. Because if you get a black coach hired away, you get a compensatory draft pick for it. It was a silly spectacle to watch.
Hanania's schtick seems to be the Republican who exclusively criticizes Republicans for being unlikeable and out of touch.
The problem is that he himself embodies the very things he criticizes in others.
The argument Hanania goes like this: When the Republicans do have genuinely nice, non-weird leaders like Romney or Mike Johnson, those leaders still have massive amounts of shit slung at them. Is it any wonder that the Trumps and Musks of the world don't want to play the nice and normal game?
But for the record, I think Hanania's right. All thing's being equal, nice and normal wins. The average urban cat mom will still see Mike Johnson as the devil incarnate, but there are swing voters out there that will see a beautiful smiling family and think "maybe this guy's not so bad".
Hanania's a good writer. He should take his own advice and I bet he'd be more popular. He's trolled his way to a small amount of attention. Now it's time to pivot. When you're on the right, you need to save your weirdness points for what matters.
This isn’t really a problem. If you want Republicans who primarily criticize Democrats you can switch on Fox or try any of dozens of other outlets or commentators.
Hanania’s point, which he kind of keeps drilling in, is that a lot of Republicans aren’t serious people. They have a poor understanding of their own voters, their own principles and political strategy in general, kind of a trifecta of disastrous realities.
Romney did fine but was up against a hugely charismatic president on his second term who drew out the black vote and was a darling of white progressives.
Romney would have won in 2016, I’ve had arguments on this topic before and it’s an unproveable counterfactual but his problem was his opponent, not that he was ex-Bain or looked like a hedge fund manager. Similarly, 2008 McCain would also have won in 2016.
And of course the general perception of Obama was that he was a wholesome “nice, non weird” leader who loved his wife and kids, didn’t publicly cheat and seemed like a friendly enough guy, so Romney didn’t exactly have an ‘advantage’ in that area. Hillary, by contrast, was hated and seen as a soulless mercenary who chose to stay with her husband not out of love but out of a ruthless desire for political power.
I see Hanania more as a provocateur, less in the Fuentes or BAP sense where establishment conservatives will just switch off because of the language and overt extremist views, and more as someone who asks interesting questions about where US conservative priorities actually are.
The challenge for the right - which Hanania correctly diagnoses - is in converting little bursts of public outrage about things like BLM, trans bathrooms, the bud light controversy, Asian anger around affirmative actions, uproar in some southern states about critical race theory in schools etc into a coherent ideological program with policies at the local, state and federal level.
People like Rufo, Tucker and LibsOfTikTok have a big reach and make people angry, but their shtick is outrage bait. That’s not a bad thing, but it often goes nowhere.
not just an unprovable counterfactual, but a belief of yours which is apparently immune to any sort of evidence against it
whenever you fill in the any details or support for your counterfactual argument, significant claims of yours are wrong and yet when it's corrected the belief survives
it's the great myth of alternative GOP winner who will win resounding victories for the electorate of... 1984
Not only would Mitt Romney have won, but John McCain, a candidate who represented George W. Bush's 3rd term, a president so disastrous it caused a cultural shift making right-wing behavior and words as low-status and the opposite as high status and whose admin was so unpopular by the end of it that a near 60 Senate majority of the opposition party which made substantial changes to law and government which fundamentally shifted the entire apparatus leftward, was going to win in 2016? Okay.
Your claims are typically that Trump won because he energized some hardscrabble white working class communities in a handful of key states. Regardless of whether that’s true, it’s ridiculous to suggest that it represents the sole possible route for a Republican candidate to win in 2016.
This section is entirely your opinion about vague cultural shifts and the qualities of Bush as a leader. The brief “60” seat majority for the Democrats was during the biggest financial crash in postwar American history. The GOP losses in 2006 were within normal bounds well into the term of an existing president (Obama lost as many just two years into his first term).
There’s no actual argument to your thesis, and certainly no evidence. By contrast, Hillary was the most unappealing Democratic candidate in decades, possibly ever, reviled in polling data and distrusted even by many Democrats. All suggest any Republican would have won, as does polling from the 2016 primaries in which match-ups between candidates and Clinton (while Trump was already by far the dominant candidate) show Cruz and even Kasich outperforming Trump.
Eg.
Bush-era congressional Republicans had already harnessed the tea party movement to do extremely well in 2010. They understood some of their constituency. Blue voter turnout would be depressed with Clinton against a neocon type and 8 years of minimal change™️ minus a Trump-tier villain, which no amount of CNN could turn a Romney into. There were plentiful routes through the suburbs (which had done very well for the GOP in 2010) that didn’t require Trump’s county-by-county path to victory.
The onus is on YOU to prove that polling from 2016 clearly suggesting many or even all GOP candidates could beat Clinton in a match-up is somehow wrong.
A case could have been made that Trump mattered in the swing states which delivered his 2016 win. A more mainstream candidate would not have delivered those key votes.
A more mainstream candidate could probably have won Virginia, New Hampshire, and Nevada. And maaaaaybe New Mexico.
Plus, Bush '04 lost Wisconsin by a few thousand votes. Michigan and Pennsylvania may or may not be taller orders.
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