The GOP’s Desperate Culture-War Hail Mary

For decades the GOP has used "god, guns and gays" to dupe their electorate into voting against their own economic and financial best interests, gays and the transgender being the favorite GOP bogeymen. With a month until the 2026 mid-term elections and the Felon's poll numbers completely in the toilet and the latest polling for Democrats in red states suggesting a number of formerly viewed "safe seats" for Republicans might potentially flipping to Democrats, Republicans are dragging out the same old made up bogeymen in the hope fear and/or bigotry will motivate voters to vote Republican even as the Felon and his GOP enablers have trashed the economy for millions of Americans. As noted and as was the case in 2024, the favored GOP bogeyman are transgendered Americans. Never mind that a review of sexual abuse cases reveals no drag queen or transgender perpetrators but plenty of GOP politicians and right wing clergy being indicted for sexual crimes.  The big questions is whether the GOP's disingenuous fearmongering will be enough for their sheep like base to ignore high gas prices, unprecedented corruption at the White House, rising interest rates and increased inflation.  A piece at The Atlantic looks at the desperate GOP messaging. Here are excerpts:

Last week, as the war with Iran dragged into its seventh month, gas prices shot up to an average of $4.50 a gallon, and polling showed President Trump about twice as far underwater with American voters as he was at this point in 2018, Republican senators determined that the time had come to discuss something else entirely: youth sports. “Girls’ sports are for girls. Boys’ sports are for boys,” Senator Marsha Blackburn said in a news conference.

With 32 days to go until the midterm elections, Republicans’ closing strategy is obvious: They’re going all-in on trans. . . . . In Texas, Republicans are running an unsettling AI-generated ad that shows the Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico dressed as Maria von Trapp and singing about girls with mustaches. A spot in Iowa accuses the Senate candidate Josh Turek of supporting “sex changes for kids.” On X, former Representative Matt Gaetz offered a tidy summary of his party’s agenda: “I hate the war too,” he told a concerned voter. “But the Democrats want to trans your kids.”

Partly, this is because Republicans don’t have much else to say. The administration’s immigration-enforcement strategy isn’t exactly popular. Voters have lost faith in the GOP on economic issues. Meanwhile, the president is obsessing over Corinthian columns. But Republicans also have some reason to believe that making trans happen is a useful strategy: It’s helped them before.

“They believe that it energizes the base and divides ours,” Lanae Erickson, a senior vice president at the center-left think tank Third Way, told me. “And they’re right about that.”

The most jaw-dropping attack on Talarico probably comes from the American Principles Project, which has released an ad that is essentially a modern version of Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Daisy,” a sinister spot about the threat of nuclear war. The ad opens with a little girl standing in a field, counting flower petals. Everything is gray. Suddenly, the scene shifts, and the girl is in a hospital bed wearing an oxygen mask. An AI-generated Talarico looms over her in a pair of scrubs. “Irreversible puberty blockers. Cross-sex hormones. Sex-change surgeries,” the vaguely southern narrator declares. “This November, stop them before it’s too late.” . . . . (Talarico, for his part, is running ads focused on funding schools and health care, and countering corruption in Washington.)

The [Felon] president is aligned on the persuasive power of the anti-trans message. At the GOP convention in Dallas last month, Trump said that he was “petrified” that Democrats might change their position on transgender athletes in sports. “That will really hurt us,” he said. “That’s one of our great sound bites of all time.”

Unfortunately for him, some Democrats are already doing just that. . . . Asked last month whether girls should play in boys’ sports, he [Talarico] answered: “As a former public-school teacher, I care a lot about our student athletes, I care a lot about our students. And so I will oppose trans athletes playing in girls’ sports if it risks safety or fairness.”

Two years ago, this might have gone differently; Talarico might not have responded to Republican attacks at all. . . . In the run-up to November, Erickson, who advises Democrats on how to talk about LGBTQ issues, has seen a sharp increase from candidates in requests for help. As GOP campaigns launch their last-minute trans-focused ads, Democrats want to know when to respond, what to say, and how to avoid offense. “They’re so scared they’re going to say the wrong thing,” she said.

Erickson, who declined to name the specific candidates she’s advising, offered some general advice. When answering questions about transgender players in sports, she argues, Democrats should embrace the sandwich method: Start with empathy, mention rules and fairness, and end with a little more empathy. Questions about health care for minors can be answered by reiterating that parents, not lawmakers, are the best decision makers for their own kids.

Gina Hinojosa, who is running to replace Texas Governor Greg Abbott, has said that she won’t take up legislation related to the “culture wars” as governor; in a new ad, she declares, “My pronouns are mom, Texan, and soon-to-be governor.” The Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown’s strategy is to point out the absurdity of focusing on trans issues at a time like this. “Here they go again, those same attacks against Sherrod Brown,” one voter says in a new Brown ad. “With everything going on, that’s what they’re talking about?” says another voter.

Republicans are hopeful that a dogged focus on trans issues in the final days of this election season can depress turnout among Democratic voters like Childrey just as much as it energizes their own base. Democrats will have to hope that, this time, the GOP’s gambit will fail.