If you are a modern American voter, you have probably heard the term “culture war” more often than you can count. This topical phrase can be defined as the ongoing battle between the progressive left and the new right regarding critical race theory, transgender/LGBTQ promotion, race pandering, and foreign policy virtue signaling regarding the Ukrainian/Russian conflict.
While Republicans might want to campaign on issues such as low taxes, spending, and other types of fiscal policy, it is not as attention-grabbing nor on voters’ minds as much as the ongoing culture wars are. The only policies that are the usual Republican campaign issues that are still prevalent may be immigration and the current inflation era, primarily due to the Biden Administration’s monumental failure to handle those two policy areas.
From the establishment conservative types, the ongoing culture war will be something they roll their eyes at while treating it as an unimportant losing strategy. Those such as Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, and other establishment pillars do not want to believe they must embrace issues that voters are concerned with to win. They want to think they can keep politicking on the same problems they have for decades and still pull out the majority control when it is all said and done.
However, most of the public overwhelmingly disagrees. The electorate continues to vote for Republicans based on their culture war fight and the opposition to progressivism infiltrating our schools, the media, and corporations against their will. Whether it is conservatives running for school board elections, Republicans such as Mayra Flores being elected into congress in a border district, or Glenn Youngkin winning the Virginia Governor’s race in an upset, the modern American voter continues to be passionate about fighting against progressive regression of The United States.
Traditionally, the Democratic Party and the left have used social and cultural issues so they can virtue signal toward the American electorate. Strategies such as pandering to minorities, the LGBTQ community, immigrants, and the disassociated working class voter are ways Democrats attempt to appeal to the American electorate. Not only do they work to ensure they have moral support on their side, but they paint any voter or politician that disagrees with them as morally inept and straight-out bigoted.
Democrats are the ones who started firing first in this war. For many years, they have made Republicans seem as if they are evil. For decades, especially on social and immigration issues, Democrats have made Republicans out to be nothing but old rich white men who want to promote sexism, racism, and classism through policy.
These strategies are slowly being rejected, however. The birth of the culture war stemmed from Americans getting tired of being called racists, homophobes, transphobes, and bigots. Democrats decided to shift their demonization to not only include Republicans, but anyone that disagrees with their viewpoint.
As a result, progressivism has been taken too far in the eyes of the American voter. Whether it was indoctrination in school systems, comedians such as Dave Chappelle being attacked on the stage, or Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh nearly being assassinated, Americans have finally realized the amount of cultural progression their country is being put through has become far too harmful.
It is not Republicans who have made this call that the cultural war needs to be fought, even if they are the only ones embracing the need to fight it. The people who made that call were the average, everyday Americans witnessing the destruction of an empire being put on a one-way trip to a guaranteed downfall if the same people being allowed to run the country are trying to destroy the American way.
Fighting the culture war does not mean that fiscal policy has to be thrown aside. Instead, the culture war is an avenue through which Republicans can apply conservative solutions to fix the problems Democrats have caused. To enact low taxes, anti-interventionist foreign policy, education reform, and cut spending, Republicans have to be willing to fight against progressivism in the trenches. Americans are putting the culture war at the forefront of their minds when they enter the voting booth in August and November.
To win elections and enact policy, Republicans must first win the culture war.