Republican lawmakers have dialed back their attacks on the economy under President Joe Biden despite the fact that polls show that anger over inflation is a top concern among voters.
According to a report from The New Republic's Alex Shephard, a major contributing factor is an obsession with "wokeness" as a hot-button issue that can lead to high-profile appearances on Fox News as well as being amplified online by conservative writers giving GOP lawmakers the attention they crave.
As Shephard writes, as it stands now, the current GOP doesn't have a coherent economic message at the moment, in part because of interference from Donald Trump who has been sniping from the sidelines, making it difficult for lawmakers to make public proposals out of fear of being attacked.
As the report points out, that has led to a change in messaging with complaints about everything being "woke" heading the list.
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"Railing against wokeness has become the last resort of a party that’s forgotten how to engage with the economy in any material way. The media environment also plays a role," the columnist wrote. "Anti-wokeness agitprop is what sells on Fox, so the network devotes hours of programming a day to whatever convoluted culture war story they can concoct that day. Republicans have realized that stoking a panic over culture will get them plenty of screen time. "
He added, "The result has been the creation of a closed loop in which pushing issues that don’t matter to most people—what bathroom people use, for instance—are leading the country’s most important right-wing news network and, as a result, seeding the discussions that the Republican Party has with itself and its base."
You can read more here.
