The scourge of unwoke Republicanism

An entire political party is delaminating over Trump and the culture war

You know what’s unwoke? Failure to subscribe to this newsletter. Get busy.

It used to be fairly easy to be a Republican.  You could get yourself a small town bank or a car dealership, a pair of white shoes and matching white belt, a bottle of Grecian Formula, membership at the local country club, a presentable wife and a penchant for low taxes, small government and a strong national defense, and you were home free. 

There were even reasonable Republicans you could vote for: John Lindsay, mayor of New York; Nelson Rockefeller, the state’s governor and vice president under Gerald Ford; Jacob Javits, senator from New York; Tom Kean, governor of New Jersey who chaired the 9/11 commission alongside Democrat Lee Hamilton; Margaret Chase Smith, senator from Maine from 1949 to 1973.  Out in the Midwest there was Bob Dole, senator from Kansas; Gerald Ford, minority leader of the House from Michigan and the president who succeeded Richard Nixon; George Romney, father of Mitt and Michigan governor who daringly came out against the war in Vietnam when he ran for president in 1968; Charles Percy, senator from Illinois; Clifford Case, senator from New Jersey; William Cohen, senator from Maine who served as secretary of defense under Bill Clinton.

These days, you would be more likely to encounter a frozen margarita in the middle of the Sahara desert than you would anyone like these gentlemen (or lady) in the Republican Party.  The party that gave the world Abraham Lincoln, Dwight David Eisenhower, both George Bushes, even Richard M. Nixon, is now the party of Donald J. Trump, Louie Gohmert, Matt Gaetz, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Mo Brooks, “Gym” Jordan, and Kristi Noem of South Dakota, celebrated in a full- page article in the New York Times today with the headline: “In Trump’s image, a star rises on the prairie.”

What in god’s name put the governor of a state with a population of 760,000, third smallest in the Union and nearly 90 percent white, on the map?  Well, according to the Times, she hosted a rally for Trump at Mount Rushmore on July 4th last year, where she gave him a model of the mountain with his face carved next to the rest of our greatest presidents.  But more recently, and more to the point, she picked a fight on Twitter with rapper Lil Nas X over his “Satan’s shoes,” a modified pair of Nike sneakers that features a pentagram, an inverted cross, and – supposedly – a drop of real human blood in the soles. 

Kristi Noem wants to cancel sneaker soles in favor of another kind of souls:  “We are in a fight for the soul of our nation,” the South Dakota governor tweeted, referring to the thousand dollar sneakers.  “Our kids are being told that this kind of product is, not only okay, it's ‘exclusive.’ But do you know what's more exclusive? Their God-given eternal soul.”

What Ms. Noem is doing is burnishing her bona fides as an aspiring culture warrior and what we might call an unwoke Republican.  Who or what are the unwoke, you may ask?  Well, they are Republicans who are four-square against woke Democrats for starters. In fact there was piece on NBC over the weekend about how Republicans are all against wokeness, but they don’t really know what it is.  They do agree, however, that they’re against the woke capitalists of Coke and Delta Airlines and other companies that came out against voting restrictions in Georgia, against the woke publishers that canceled Josh Hawley’s book and are resisting publishing other books by Republicans who deny the results of the 2020 election, against the wokeness of Black Lives Matter and the use of the 1619 Project and critical race theory as teaching materials in public schools and colleges, against the wokeness of transgender people increasingly asserting their rights to be who they are.

But number one with a bullet of unwoke Republicanism is rejection of the 2020 election results, what the Washington Post calls the “unofficial litmus test for acceptance in the Republican Party.”  It used to be good enough for Republicans to be against taxes, against abortion, against gay marriage, and for cutting the deficit.  Now none of that counts as much as being not only pro Trump, but pro Trump’s Big Lie that he won the election “by a landslide.”  You want to talk about “cancel culture?”  Unwoke Republicans want to cancel an entire election.

“I think I speak for many people in that Trump has never actually been wrong, and so we’ve learned to trust when he says something, that he’s not just going to spew something out there that’s wrong and not verified,” the Post quotes Deborah Ell, a Trump supporter and Republican organizer in Michigan who believes Trump, not Biden carried the state in the 2020 election.  She is working to remove Jason Roe as the Michigan Republican Party’s executive director because he supported the legitimacy of the election results by telling Politico that “the election wasn’t stolen,” and that “there is no one to blame but Donald Trump.”  Roe needs to go because “he said the election was not rigged, as Donald Trump had said, so we didn’t agree with that, and then he didn’t blame the Democrats for any election fraud,” said Ell.  “That’s something that doesn’t line up with what we think really happened.”

If you’re in today’s Republican Party and you believe “something that doesn’t line up with what we think really happened,” your future looks rather bleak.  Not only are Republicans going up against their own in Michigan, local officials faced votes of censure and recalls in Iowa and Missouri for going against Trump’s Big Lie.  This weekend, Mitt Romney, who voted to convict Trump at his impeachment trial, was booed at the Utah Republican Party organizing convention.  A vote to censure the state’s most famous Republican and senior senator lost narrowly, 711 to 798.  As accusations of “communist” and “traitor” were yelled from the audience, Romney responded by asking the unwoke crowd of, for now anyway, fellow party-mates, “Aren’t you embarrassed?”  Apparently not, because the boos continued unabated.

Liz Cheney, third highest ranking Republican in the House, is already facing a Trump-supporting primary challenger in Wyoming, as is Senator Lisa Murkowski in Alaska and Ohio Republican Anthony Gonzalez, all three of whom voted against Trump in his most recent impeachment.  Trump called for Republican governor Brian Kemp to resign and is backing right-wing Republican Jody Hice in a challenge against Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensberger.  Both Georgians angered Trump when they refused to challenge election results which went against him.

And then there are the eight senators and 139 members of the house who voted against certifying the electoral college votes of Arizona and Pennsylvania just hours after the Trump insurrection had driven them from both chambers of the congress.  On Saturday, CNN’s Pamela Brown asked Kansas Senator Roger Marshall if he had any regrets about voting to throw out millions of votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania and if he felt any responsibility for the fact that 70 percent of Republicans refuse to accept the legitimacy of Biden’s victory. 

Of course not, said the unwoke Republican from Kansas.  “Look, Pamela, it’s, we’re just so ready to move on. It’s time for this country to heal. It’s time for a spirit of forgiveness to be happening.”

That’s what being an unwoke Republican means today.  Forgive the Trump supporters who looted the Capitol and beat cops and caused multiple deaths.  Move on from all this negativity and concentrate on the “thousands of votes” they’re going to find in that pretend recount in Arizona.

Look over there!  Her emails! Lil Nas X’s devil sneakers!  1619 Project!  Transgender athletes!