For several months as Republican presidential candidates Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and tech bro Vivek Ramaswamy decried the “woke mind virus,” which DeSantis described as “a form of cultural Marxism.” That was largely an effort by two Trumpy candidates to rally voters to a novel-sounding conservative cause without attacking, and therefore alienating, Donald Trump himself.
It flopped. DeSantis and Ramaswamy failed to catch an updraft, and both have ended their presidential bids. The woke mind virus — if you believe it exists — is still going strong.
Trump, the likely Republican nominee for president after a comfortable win in the New Hampshire primary, is no softie on cultural issues. He opposes transgender medical care, calls Black activists thugs, and regularly bashes immigrants. A second Trump presidency could feature widespread intolerance of social justice protestors and gay service members, along with mass expulsions of migrants trying to make a better life for themselves in the United States.
Yet even Trump isn’t as anti-woke as the GOP’s most aggressive culture warriors. “I don’t like the term woke,” Trump said while campaigning last year. He explained, more or less accurately, that half the people who hear the term don’t even know what it means.
Wokeism conjures different things to different people, but it arose among Black Americans as a way of describing awareness of racial prejudice. To some it has a broader connotation, implying sensitivity to any form of prejudice. In a 2023 USA Today/Ipsos poll, 40% of respondents felt the word was an insult while 32% thought it was a compliment. Most Republicans view wokeism negatively, while nearly half of Democrats view it positively.
DeSantis has fashioned his entire political image around anti-wokeism. In 2022, he signed a Florida bill meant to give Floridians “tools to stand up against discrimination and woke indoctrination.” He routinely describes Florida as the state “where woke goes to die.”
His most notorious battle against wokeism is his effort to punish the Walt Disney Corp. for opposing a law DeSantis signed in 2022 limiting what schools can teach young kids about sex and gender issues. DeSantis retaliated by working with the state legislature to revoke Disney’s longstanding municipal autonomy near its Disney World complex in central Florida. But Disney outmaneuvered DeSantis and essentially regained its autonomy. The matter is now mired in litigation.
In the book DeSantis published just before launching his presidential bid, “The Courage to be Free,” he railed on “woke capitalism” and bragged that taking on Disney was “the shot heard ’round the world.” But that was before Disney seemed to outsmart the governor, and also before the entertainment giant canceled a $1 billion office complex in Orlando because of DeSantis’s meddling. Disney CEO Bob Iger has since called DeSantis “anti-business,” an awkward charge to defend for a politician who otherwise claims his state is one of the most business-friendly in the nation.
When DeSantis quit the presidential race on Jan. 21, polls showed him winning just 11% of the Republican vote, nearly 45 points behind Trump. Ramaswamy, who ran an “anti-woke” investing firm before running for president and called himself the “anti-woke CEO,” was running 50 points behind Trump when he dropped out on Jan. 15. If the war on woke fired up anybody, it clearly wasn’t enough to give either candidate any momentum.
Nikki Haley, Trump’s last remaining challenger for the GOP nomination, doesn’t really have an anti-woke platform. She stands for conservative principles, such as banning transgender students from competing in women’s sports, but is also running as more of a traditional Republican emphasizing a muscular US role in world affairs, cracking down on illegal immigration, and fixing the nation’s bloated national debt.
The anti-woke movement isn’t dead. Congressional Republicans make a show every now and then of flogging what used to be known as political correctness and holding hearings meant to embarrass its practitioners. And culture warmongering does seem to work in some conservative areas where voters are especially worried about the spread of liberal culture.
But any Republican running for national office might be smart to find something meatier to offer voters than a vague appeal to some kind of liberal bogeyman, especially when voters are worried about inflation, crime, healthcare, and other everyday issues.
A test will come as DeSantis, Ramaswamy, and other vanquished culture warriors plot their next moves. Like good Trumpers, DeSantis and Ramaswamy both endorsed the former president after ending their own presidential bids, which means they could materialize in a second Trump administration if Trump wins. DeSantis is only 45 and is widely viewed as likely to run for the White House again in 2028. Ramaswamy is only 38, plus he’s very wealthy and can fund his own way onto the national stage for years to come, even if he remains a political novice. Once Trump leaves the scene, maybe future Republicans will be able to run on issues more relevant to voters.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman.
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