I think the Democrats’ new “MAGA Republicans are weird” strategy is quite possibly the savviest political strategy I’ve seen in a very long time. First of all, it has a virtue that is vanishingly rare in political messaging: it is objectively true. As I pointed out long ago,
…the urge to censor is a mental illness. No normal person wants to control what other people think, and no sane person could believe that he can control what anyone else thinks. Only a psychotic believes that he can be directly affected by the thoughts inside another person’s brain…
The same could be said about the desire to control others’ private behavior, entertainment choices, or reproductive choices, yet authoritarians of all stripes are absolutely obsessed with controlling other people’s words, actions, and even thoughts. Of course, this applies equally to all authoritarians, regardless of which dogma they quote to justify sending armed thugs to brutalize everyone who disagrees with them. But even one who despises both sides of the duopoly must admit that since shortly after Trump’s election in 2016 (and especially since 2020), MAGA messaging has become increasingly detached from anything remotely resembling human decency or objective reality. Furthermore, while the modern Democratic party has opted for a “Big Tent” approach, pulling in more than a few people who don’t mind (or even embrace) being called strange, eccentric, or queer, modern Republicans have positioned themselves as the “normal” ones and their policies as those desired by the majority. As a result, being called “weird” upsets them far more than it would upset their opponents, and as the poster I quoted at the top points out, they keep flailing around, thus making them look even weirder. The only sure way for MAGAists to defeat the messaging is to stop being creepy freaks obsessed with other people’s genitalia, and judging by what I’ve seen from evangelical “Christians” over the past four decades, that is completely beyond their ability.
THESE GUYS ARE JUST WEIRD.
JD Vance and his Project 2025 weirdos want to control your bedroom. Will you let them? pic.twitter.com/JnNbuRzkAH
— Won’t PAC Down (@wontpacdown) July 29, 2024
