There are plenty of reasons to see the right as the underdog, the capture of the federal bureaucracy and the colleges were mentioned in the article, but it's absolutely true that excessive fatalism exists on the right where hope and determination ought to be
It’s worse than what you say. The people who lead the party think that only the ‘right people’ should win, not the party. So much in fighting between ‘the right people’ and the rest of us.
It’s so stupid, but that’s why you get jerks like Mitt and Liz who’d rather fight harder against other Republicans than against the Left. They think the victory is running the party, not winning elections.
I got sick of the elitism in the party, so I left. Mostly because it’s not rocket science to try to win over all voters, not just preferred groups. Putting a voter outreach center in Detroit shouldn’t be that controversial, but, alas, it was.
They scream about being a ‘big tent’, but the elites want to pick and choose who gets into the tent and who their voters should be. I just want Republicans to win elections.
There are very few Republicans I can actually vote for these days.
I’m really okay with the idea of just destroying this mess and replacing it with an organization that wants to fight Progressives. At the end of the day, if they think that fighting other Republicans should be a higher priority than defeating the kooky Left, then they aren’t fit for purpose.
You are okay with destroying the mess? Define mess. I hope you don't mean the Constitution. Look, you go to war with the army you have. Both parties have a little diversity remaining. You sound like the far-left Democrats talking about Sinema & Manchin. You say you just want to win elections, but there are very few on your side you can vote for? Sound like a circular firing squad. We need a battle plan, not a suicide pact.
Constitution = pro, Republican Party, con, must die. If the party actually lived up to its ideals, then I wouldn’t have a problem with them. Let me put it this way, if there were more Rand Pauls in the party and less Mitt Romneys I’d be happily paying my dues and volunteering and singing the praises of the GOP. That’s just not where we are at.
I realize I’m a walking contradiction. I’ve accepted that I’m a hot mess and Jesus has too! We all have our crosses to carry.
The thing is that I simply can’t bring myself to vote for bad candidates and bad ideas just because there’s an R by someone’s name. I do want to see the R’s win, but only if they actually want to be Republican, not Democrat light. Dem -light just isn’t just my brand of freedom. I want to live in a free society and I don’t see R’s actually fighting for that. They talk a good game and say the word ‘freedom’ a lot, but I don’t see how what they are advocating leads to more freedom in a lot of cases. I still wonder if a lot of them know what that actually means. So why should I vote for more of that?
In the end, I don’t see it as a contradiction to express a desire or a wish and, at the same time, to be realistic to know where you stand in regards to that wish actually coming true.
I’m not interested in suicide pacts, but I’m done with a lot of what’s being offered up by the party. I was up for a plan 10 years ago. Now, I just want the Party put down and reborn into something better that actually represents people.
I don’t have a problem with laws. I’m not an anarchist. But we aren’t as free as we think we are either.
I don’t buy that Homeland security makes us more free or safe. I don’t buy that regulating every aspect of our lives is freedom. As someone who lived in a state that loved ‘lockdowns’, I learned how far my government would go to restrict my freedom, down to telling me what sections of the grocery store I could shop in. There was literally police yellow tape marking off our supercenters at one point. The fact that people in my state leadership thought this was okay should bother more people than it actually did. And they just got re-elected! WTH?
In a lot of ways, I agree, we are ‘more free’ than other places around the world. But in someways, we’ve given up way too much of our individual power to bureaucracies and politicians that doesn’t have any stake in our local communities.
In the end, Too many people enjoy being the fascist when they get to be the fascist. That’s pretty much was what the past 2.5 years has been about. I love my country, but I haven’t recognized it since 9/11. And it’s only gotten worse because of the Covid/woke stuff.
I can only offer my perspective. I value the freedoms I do have and I’d like to keep the, but I haven’t seen much evidence that the Republicans will actually defend my culture when it comes down to it. They were huge fans of globalization and a lot of people in my area got screwed by it and most politicians just don’t give a damn one way or another. But hey - learn coding, but 10 years later we can’t even say that now.
This would've been a fascinating question even in 2019 for all the reasons lp2022 lists and more, but to still be genuinely wondering why some might "complain" about dissolving liberty in 2023 isn't fascinating. It's frightening.
Can't say I agree with this, as it seems to feed into the damaging 2-party duopoly (us vs them) mindset: D vs R, L vs R, Lib vs Con, etc. I've actually been applauding the GOP in-fighting because it shows they're no longer (at least for now) more concerned about absent-mindedly voting party-line in lock-step... unlike the Dems. That perhaps they are at last intent on focusing more on issues and the platforms of individual party members than starring in the meaningless D vs R kabuki theater. Call me crazy, but I think that's a good thing.
There’s nothing wrong with debate or passionate disagreement on issues. The problem is that parts of the party are in an overt civil war. (At least in some of our states)
Without unity, we can’t hope to defeat Leftists. It’s a fine line for sure, but in my state many donors and activists refused to rally behind our ticket last cycle and reused to support the ticket when it counted. Disunity simply doesn’t win elections.
I’m not willing to go back to the ‘sit down and shut up’ party of the early 2000’s/2010’s, so I’m with you when you say you enjoy the debate - I do too. I love it!
But it’s unrealistic to believe that at the end of the day die hard-core Never Trumpers are going to come around and vote for America first candidates just to win. And a lot of us just aren’t willing to sell our souls to go back to the way things used to be. Never Trump is the best label out there because it makes knowing who not to vote for super easy these days.
There’s simply a fine line between passionate discourse and debate with a semblance of unity and what we have now. (at least, in some of our states)
There is no unity in much of the party, nobody in leadership is particularly interested in unity - unless you support their version of what the party should be- but it’s really about which faction is going to control the party., long-term.
That’s a different goal than trying to build a coalition of voters to defeat Leftist candidates in an election.
At the end of the day, the NT’rs and the MAGA folks need to figure out how to fight Leftists together instead of going insane on each other. I’d love to see it happen, but I’m not that hopeful given the evidence shown since Trump went down that elevator. Trump broke a lot of people’s brains.
I just don’t see how the internationalist/business wing reunites with the America first wing in a way that’s meaningful enough for them to stop fighting each other and instead fight Leftists for a few months after a primary.
My state party is bitterly divided at the moment and a lot of people aren’t interested in helping candidates on the other side of the divide. That doesn’t bode well for future elections.
A lot of people are firm in their camp and aren’t interested in budging. (I mean, it’s in the Name for the Never Trumpers). Never. Kind of hard to miss.
There’s value in unity, even if it’s a fragile thing. But when unity doesn’t happen after a tough primary, well, we saw what happens in Michigan last cycle. I just don’t buy that the fractured pieces can heal and repair at this point.
I’m open to changing my mind, but ignoring reality isn’t going to win elections either. I’m not particularly interested in even more chaos, but looking at the behavior of many in leadership positions, they simply aren’t interested in changing the course they are on.
The funny thing is that a lot of this could have been avoided back in the day if the establishment class would have thrown a few bones to the grassroots class during Bush and Obama, But they couldn’t even do that, so here we are. And now they are still pissed that a lot of us chose Trump as our champion in 2016.
That doesn’t bode well for the future of the party.
This is a really insightful column. I have been involved on "the right" broadly speaking for most of my adult life. I can tell you that this syndrome is widespread. IT DRIVES ME CRAZY. We have so much to offer: why do we keep apologizing for ourselves and/or shooting ourselves in the foot?!?! thx for a great article.
Ali Alexander aka Ali Akbar is a scammer, and worse. I reported on him for years. I am probably the reason he changed his name. Right wing conservatives kept giving Ali money no matter how completely I exposed his fraud, and worse, because they liked his paranoid style.
Everything is an emergency all the time. Everything is a satanic conspiracy. Pay attention to all the things I scream about and not my grift.
Ali got lots of attention for his role in 1/6. Since then, left wing grifters like Seth Abramson have cribbed from my old work to hype him as a threat to democracy -- again, a paranoid style. Ali is no such thing. He is a bottom-dwelling catfish of a man, more a threat to vulnerable conservative boys than democracy.
As a conservative by shift (meaning I didn't move politically but the center was pulled so far left that I now look like an right-winger by comparison), I don't disagree with your assessment. But most of the conservatives I know aren't moping or hopeless. I and they are confounded by what is obvious absurdities and insanities being foisted on our collective society. But it's difficult to imagine how to persuade when the brightest minds on the right are shut down easily by a handful of loud-mouthed undergraduates or negative tweets by a dozen nobodies. What are some solid strategies for fighting the tsunami of the left coming from almost every government institution, every media outlet, every university, every professional organization and now every ESG-concerned corporation? How do you propose we fight? What words will persuade? As far as I can tell the only way to fight this in the present is in the courts and in the congresses. And the only way to fight it in the future is to purge schools of the activism and indoctrination and return to teaching the basics, civics, unbiased history, respect for our country, moral probity, ethical behaviors. Other than these, what can be done?
The right is the underdog, but underdogs will win on occasion.
We can win one person at a time, with the use of easily understandable logic, reason, and data. Sensible politicians like DeSantis, rather than mercurial and polarizing leaders like Trump, are the way forward. Very foolish economic policies from the left need to be called out, and clearly explained to the public.
This right's mission will become far easier as the left drifts farther and farther away from sanity. It's crazy to "affirm" sex changes for 15 year olds. It's crazy to defund or abolish the police. It's crazy to endorse socialism over the free market, and it's crazy to endorse censorship and authoritarianism.
Like Sarah Huckabee said, voters have a choice. We just need to make the consequences of those choices easier to understand.
The reason the right is so disorganized and discouraged is because the left aggressively deplatforms anyone on the right who becomes an effective leader. The only people left are either controlled opposition or are not effective.
Who are the future leaders of the right? You don't have a good answer, because anyone competent would get kicked off the Internet.
Mass public demonstration: in the seventies, 500,000 people in the streets of DC, legally, against Vietnam. We had organizers, leaders, not influencers. This happened often in those days. It ended the war. Our cause now is exponentially greater, greater than the cause of the founders. We don't need politicians. They can follow us.
That's interesting, would you say a lot of this behavior arises in online-based forums? I never really got into Twitter since it feels a lot like Orwell's "Two Minutes of Hate", more of a collective ritual than a vehicle for changing what we think is wrong in the world.
On the other hand, looking at what happened since I became politically aware in the 1990s, it's hard to see big policy wins for either the left or right, at least compared to their respective glory days earlier in the 20th century. So maybe both conservatives and progressives are lost in a "nothing changes" mentality. What's the biggest concrete win the left has had in the US since Clinton? Obamacare?
The left might be winning the popularity contest of ideas in some places, it definitely feels like that as a professional, although in the math and computer sciences it's not as bad as elsewhere. But when it comes to actual policy, most people are skeptical of big government, want to pay less taxes and be more free.
Been teaching colleges liberal (?) since the 80s. Not deeply Right-wing, more Isaiah Berlin-ish. Still, at times, more and more often, rage is the only fit response. There are (a few) like-feeling souls, but their boldest action is . . . staying out of it. Scattered, walking the dog, we hum along with Frank: "very glad to be unhappy." . . . I kind of miss Barry.
I don't see what you're seeing. Instead, I see people like DeSantis, Rand Paul, Jim Jordan, Ron Johnson, Jordan Peterson and many others stepping up and fighting the good fight. Also, since just regaining some of their power, the GOP-led House has hit the ground running with their investigative hearings on the TwitterFiles, shady Biden family dealings, and several other probes. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/30/house-gop-investigations-biden-mccarthy-00079695
Further, there are plenty of advocacy organizations filing lawsuits, lobbying Congress pushing back against all the woke nonsense. Taken together, all these actions don't seem very "underdoggy" to me.
If you identify yourself as the kind of person he's writing about, that's on you, isn't it? If you don't like it, change. And if you don't identify with it, what's the complaint? In that case, he's not talking about you.
Spot on
Thank you
There are plenty of reasons to see the right as the underdog, the capture of the federal bureaucracy and the colleges were mentioned in the article, but it's absolutely true that excessive fatalism exists on the right where hope and determination ought to be
It’s worse than what you say. The people who lead the party think that only the ‘right people’ should win, not the party. So much in fighting between ‘the right people’ and the rest of us.
It’s so stupid, but that’s why you get jerks like Mitt and Liz who’d rather fight harder against other Republicans than against the Left. They think the victory is running the party, not winning elections.
I got sick of the elitism in the party, so I left. Mostly because it’s not rocket science to try to win over all voters, not just preferred groups. Putting a voter outreach center in Detroit shouldn’t be that controversial, but, alas, it was.
They scream about being a ‘big tent’, but the elites want to pick and choose who gets into the tent and who their voters should be. I just want Republicans to win elections.
There are very few Republicans I can actually vote for these days.
I’m really okay with the idea of just destroying this mess and replacing it with an organization that wants to fight Progressives. At the end of the day, if they think that fighting other Republicans should be a higher priority than defeating the kooky Left, then they aren’t fit for purpose.
You are okay with destroying the mess? Define mess. I hope you don't mean the Constitution. Look, you go to war with the army you have. Both parties have a little diversity remaining. You sound like the far-left Democrats talking about Sinema & Manchin. You say you just want to win elections, but there are very few on your side you can vote for? Sound like a circular firing squad. We need a battle plan, not a suicide pact.
Constitution = pro, Republican Party, con, must die. If the party actually lived up to its ideals, then I wouldn’t have a problem with them. Let me put it this way, if there were more Rand Pauls in the party and less Mitt Romneys I’d be happily paying my dues and volunteering and singing the praises of the GOP. That’s just not where we are at.
I realize I’m a walking contradiction. I’ve accepted that I’m a hot mess and Jesus has too! We all have our crosses to carry.
The thing is that I simply can’t bring myself to vote for bad candidates and bad ideas just because there’s an R by someone’s name. I do want to see the R’s win, but only if they actually want to be Republican, not Democrat light. Dem -light just isn’t just my brand of freedom. I want to live in a free society and I don’t see R’s actually fighting for that. They talk a good game and say the word ‘freedom’ a lot, but I don’t see how what they are advocating leads to more freedom in a lot of cases. I still wonder if a lot of them know what that actually means. So why should I vote for more of that?
In the end, I don’t see it as a contradiction to express a desire or a wish and, at the same time, to be realistic to know where you stand in regards to that wish actually coming true.
I’m not interested in suicide pacts, but I’m done with a lot of what’s being offered up by the party. I was up for a plan 10 years ago. Now, I just want the Party put down and reborn into something better that actually represents people.
Can you explain how you’re not free? This country is the freest in the world, so what’s your complaint? Do you not like obeying laws? Please explain.
I don’t have a problem with laws. I’m not an anarchist. But we aren’t as free as we think we are either.
I don’t buy that Homeland security makes us more free or safe. I don’t buy that regulating every aspect of our lives is freedom. As someone who lived in a state that loved ‘lockdowns’, I learned how far my government would go to restrict my freedom, down to telling me what sections of the grocery store I could shop in. There was literally police yellow tape marking off our supercenters at one point. The fact that people in my state leadership thought this was okay should bother more people than it actually did. And they just got re-elected! WTH?
In a lot of ways, I agree, we are ‘more free’ than other places around the world. But in someways, we’ve given up way too much of our individual power to bureaucracies and politicians that doesn’t have any stake in our local communities.
In the end, Too many people enjoy being the fascist when they get to be the fascist. That’s pretty much was what the past 2.5 years has been about. I love my country, but I haven’t recognized it since 9/11. And it’s only gotten worse because of the Covid/woke stuff.
I can only offer my perspective. I value the freedoms I do have and I’d like to keep the, but I haven’t seen much evidence that the Republicans will actually defend my culture when it comes down to it. They were huge fans of globalization and a lot of people in my area got screwed by it and most politicians just don’t give a damn one way or another. But hey - learn coding, but 10 years later we can’t even say that now.
This would've been a fascinating question even in 2019 for all the reasons lp2022 lists and more, but to still be genuinely wondering why some might "complain" about dissolving liberty in 2023 isn't fascinating. It's frightening.
🤘🤘❤️
Can't say I agree with this, as it seems to feed into the damaging 2-party duopoly (us vs them) mindset: D vs R, L vs R, Lib vs Con, etc. I've actually been applauding the GOP in-fighting because it shows they're no longer (at least for now) more concerned about absent-mindedly voting party-line in lock-step... unlike the Dems. That perhaps they are at last intent on focusing more on issues and the platforms of individual party members than starring in the meaningless D vs R kabuki theater. Call me crazy, but I think that's a good thing.
There’s nothing wrong with debate or passionate disagreement on issues. The problem is that parts of the party are in an overt civil war. (At least in some of our states)
Without unity, we can’t hope to defeat Leftists. It’s a fine line for sure, but in my state many donors and activists refused to rally behind our ticket last cycle and reused to support the ticket when it counted. Disunity simply doesn’t win elections.
I’m not willing to go back to the ‘sit down and shut up’ party of the early 2000’s/2010’s, so I’m with you when you say you enjoy the debate - I do too. I love it!
But it’s unrealistic to believe that at the end of the day die hard-core Never Trumpers are going to come around and vote for America first candidates just to win. And a lot of us just aren’t willing to sell our souls to go back to the way things used to be. Never Trump is the best label out there because it makes knowing who not to vote for super easy these days.
There’s simply a fine line between passionate discourse and debate with a semblance of unity and what we have now. (at least, in some of our states)
There is no unity in much of the party, nobody in leadership is particularly interested in unity - unless you support their version of what the party should be- but it’s really about which faction is going to control the party., long-term.
That’s a different goal than trying to build a coalition of voters to defeat Leftist candidates in an election.
At the end of the day, the NT’rs and the MAGA folks need to figure out how to fight Leftists together instead of going insane on each other. I’d love to see it happen, but I’m not that hopeful given the evidence shown since Trump went down that elevator. Trump broke a lot of people’s brains.
I just don’t see how the internationalist/business wing reunites with the America first wing in a way that’s meaningful enough for them to stop fighting each other and instead fight Leftists for a few months after a primary.
My state party is bitterly divided at the moment and a lot of people aren’t interested in helping candidates on the other side of the divide. That doesn’t bode well for future elections.
A lot of people are firm in their camp and aren’t interested in budging. (I mean, it’s in the Name for the Never Trumpers). Never. Kind of hard to miss.
There’s value in unity, even if it’s a fragile thing. But when unity doesn’t happen after a tough primary, well, we saw what happens in Michigan last cycle. I just don’t buy that the fractured pieces can heal and repair at this point.
I’m open to changing my mind, but ignoring reality isn’t going to win elections either. I’m not particularly interested in even more chaos, but looking at the behavior of many in leadership positions, they simply aren’t interested in changing the course they are on.
The funny thing is that a lot of this could have been avoided back in the day if the establishment class would have thrown a few bones to the grassroots class during Bush and Obama, But they couldn’t even do that, so here we are. And now they are still pissed that a lot of us chose Trump as our champion in 2016.
That doesn’t bode well for the future of the party.
Yep. Both sides. Nasty stuff.
Yes!!! Thank you for saying this.
“The progressive Left has mastered this type of predatory relationship that strips people of their agency.”
BOOM. You nailed it my friend. The toxic duo.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Thank you!
This is a really insightful column. I have been involved on "the right" broadly speaking for most of my adult life. I can tell you that this syndrome is widespread. IT DRIVES ME CRAZY. We have so much to offer: why do we keep apologizing for ourselves and/or shooting ourselves in the foot?!?! thx for a great article.
My pleasure
This hit close to home. I had not considered myself wallowing in an underdog mindset, but that sounds 'bout right.
" Winners don’t ask themselves “Why bother?”; they ask themselves “Why not?” " PRECISELY!
Ali Alexander aka Ali Akbar is a scammer, and worse. I reported on him for years. I am probably the reason he changed his name. Right wing conservatives kept giving Ali money no matter how completely I exposed his fraud, and worse, because they liked his paranoid style.
Everything is an emergency all the time. Everything is a satanic conspiracy. Pay attention to all the things I scream about and not my grift.
Ali got lots of attention for his role in 1/6. Since then, left wing grifters like Seth Abramson have cribbed from my old work to hype him as a threat to democracy -- again, a paranoid style. Ali is no such thing. He is a bottom-dwelling catfish of a man, more a threat to vulnerable conservative boys than democracy.
As a conservative by shift (meaning I didn't move politically but the center was pulled so far left that I now look like an right-winger by comparison), I don't disagree with your assessment. But most of the conservatives I know aren't moping or hopeless. I and they are confounded by what is obvious absurdities and insanities being foisted on our collective society. But it's difficult to imagine how to persuade when the brightest minds on the right are shut down easily by a handful of loud-mouthed undergraduates or negative tweets by a dozen nobodies. What are some solid strategies for fighting the tsunami of the left coming from almost every government institution, every media outlet, every university, every professional organization and now every ESG-concerned corporation? How do you propose we fight? What words will persuade? As far as I can tell the only way to fight this in the present is in the courts and in the congresses. And the only way to fight it in the future is to purge schools of the activism and indoctrination and return to teaching the basics, civics, unbiased history, respect for our country, moral probity, ethical behaviors. Other than these, what can be done?
100% agree.
The right is the underdog, but underdogs will win on occasion.
We can win one person at a time, with the use of easily understandable logic, reason, and data. Sensible politicians like DeSantis, rather than mercurial and polarizing leaders like Trump, are the way forward. Very foolish economic policies from the left need to be called out, and clearly explained to the public.
This right's mission will become far easier as the left drifts farther and farther away from sanity. It's crazy to "affirm" sex changes for 15 year olds. It's crazy to defund or abolish the police. It's crazy to endorse socialism over the free market, and it's crazy to endorse censorship and authoritarianism.
Like Sarah Huckabee said, voters have a choice. We just need to make the consequences of those choices easier to understand.
The reason the right is so disorganized and discouraged is because the left aggressively deplatforms anyone on the right who becomes an effective leader. The only people left are either controlled opposition or are not effective.
Who are the future leaders of the right? You don't have a good answer, because anyone competent would get kicked off the Internet.
Mass public demonstration: in the seventies, 500,000 people in the streets of DC, legally, against Vietnam. We had organizers, leaders, not influencers. This happened often in those days. It ended the war. Our cause now is exponentially greater, greater than the cause of the founders. We don't need politicians. They can follow us.
That's interesting, would you say a lot of this behavior arises in online-based forums? I never really got into Twitter since it feels a lot like Orwell's "Two Minutes of Hate", more of a collective ritual than a vehicle for changing what we think is wrong in the world.
On the other hand, looking at what happened since I became politically aware in the 1990s, it's hard to see big policy wins for either the left or right, at least compared to their respective glory days earlier in the 20th century. So maybe both conservatives and progressives are lost in a "nothing changes" mentality. What's the biggest concrete win the left has had in the US since Clinton? Obamacare?
The left might be winning the popularity contest of ideas in some places, it definitely feels like that as a professional, although in the math and computer sciences it's not as bad as elsewhere. But when it comes to actual policy, most people are skeptical of big government, want to pay less taxes and be more free.
Been teaching colleges liberal (?) since the 80s. Not deeply Right-wing, more Isaiah Berlin-ish. Still, at times, more and more often, rage is the only fit response. There are (a few) like-feeling souls, but their boldest action is . . . staying out of it. Scattered, walking the dog, we hum along with Frank: "very glad to be unhappy." . . . I kind of miss Barry.
I don't see what you're seeing. Instead, I see people like DeSantis, Rand Paul, Jim Jordan, Ron Johnson, Jordan Peterson and many others stepping up and fighting the good fight. Also, since just regaining some of their power, the GOP-led House has hit the ground running with their investigative hearings on the TwitterFiles, shady Biden family dealings, and several other probes. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/30/house-gop-investigations-biden-mccarthy-00079695
Further, there are plenty of advocacy organizations filing lawsuits, lobbying Congress pushing back against all the woke nonsense. Taken together, all these actions don't seem very "underdoggy" to me.
I'm really glad to be able to read about myself. So many things that I didn't know. Carry on!
If you identify yourself as the kind of person he's writing about, that's on you, isn't it? If you don't like it, change. And if you don't identify with it, what's the complaint? In that case, he's not talking about you.
Feel better?
Should I? I felt fine before.