Why Republicans Are So Weirded Out at Being Called Weird

 

It appears the Republicans are totally weirded out over being called weird.  The obvious question is why.  After all, on the total scale of political invective, "You're weird" is about as mild as it gets. Republicans are used to being called racists and fascists and regularly call their opponents Communists, terrorists, radicals seeking to overturn our country and so forth.  What is the big deal about weird.

One part of it, no doubt, is that Republicans cannot invert the accusation.  If they try calling Democrats weird, Democrats will cheerfully own their weirdness and proudly flaunt any number of harmless eccentricities.  

But I don't think that is all of it. Some people have suggested that "weird" is code for "creepy." There may be something to that, but I don't that that is the main reason "weird" is drawing blood. David Frum suggests that:

"Weird" is code for "expresses obsessive hostility to women, including the women in his own personal life" - and because MAGA Republicans don't get the code, they don't understand why they are losing the argument.

I definitely don't think it is that.  I think that Republicans understand the code very well.  That is why they are so threatened by it.

Quite simply, "weird" is code for "doesn't share the values of ordinary Americans like you and me."  No wonder Republicans are so outraged by the accusation.  It comes right out of the Karl Rove playbook of hitting your opponents where they are strongest.  Because Republicans' great claim to legitimacy has always been that they speak for Authentic Real Americans everywhere, while their opponents are just A Handful of Out-of-Touch Elitists.

The assumption that liberals are, by definition an out of touch elite, has reached such levels that it is now Republican doctrine that one cannot be simultaneously conservative and part of the elite.  No matter how rich, educated, powerful, politically connected, and privileged a Republican, they can never be part of the elite because they speak for the values of ordinary Americans.  Tucker Carlson's father might be an ambassador, director of the Voice of America and CEO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; his stepmother might be an heiress to the Swanson fortune; he might have attended exclusive boarding schools and asked Hunter Biden to give his son a reference, but none of this makes him part of the elite because he is right-wing and therefore shares the values of ordinary Americans.  

Of course, at some level the Republican, um, intellectual leadership (mustn't call them elite) must have known that they do not, after all, speak with the values of ordinary Americans.  After all, they have long been committed -- on paper at least -- to rolling back the New Deal, a project that finds no support among the general public.  But Republican elites thought leaders could take comfort in the thought that the American people were poorly informed, and that if they only understood the peril that Social Security and Medicare were in, they would support, if not rolling them back altogether, at least plans to turn Social Security into a 401-k and voucherize Medicare.

Presumably the first clue that ordinary Americans did not necessarily agree with Republican elites activists must have come when the Supreme Court repealed its protection of abortion and turned the matter over to the states.  It soon became apparent that most Americans wanted abortion to remain legal. 

But Project 2025 has been devastating.  Most Americans may not know exactly what is in Project 2025, but they know it does not represent their values -- and the Republican elite leadership knows it too.

This is potentially a valuable moment for the Democratic Party.  Abortion won one election cycle (2022), but it can hardly be enough to sustain the Democrats for long.  But the discovery that out of touch elitism is not a liberal monopoly -- that there are conservative elites at the Heritage Foundation and elsewhere who do not share ordinary Americans' values -- can be the basis of Democrats' appeal for another generation.

PS:  Here is a clue.  Any political movement that uses "normie" as an insult clearly does not represent the values of, well, normies.  Sooner or later, someone was going to point that out.