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The bigger problem is that gay and trans stuff is generally just not a good attack vector for the right. It's a red meat issue to fire up the activists, sure, which is also why the activists often concentrate on it, but insofar as I've observed the normie right-winger would just prefer to not think about LGBTQ-related matters at all, ever. Thus, if there are Pride parades or prominent trans celebs constantly on TV, or so on, it repels them, but if there are right-wing politicians constantly going on about trans or gay stuff it repels them, too, since it also forces them to think about things they would rather just not think about.
I could observe this very clearly about 10 years ago when the ex-leader of the local right-wing populist party, towards the end of his rule, really started banging on about anti-gay stuff all the time; eventually, the party's supporters started going "Uhm, why is this fatty so obsessed with the homos? Is he maybe a homo himself?", and others (probably correctly) clocked this as an issue he was trying to use as a deflection on his utter failure to limit immigration according to his previous promises.
Also, the "No, it's not us that are weird! YOU'RE weird!" attacks on Walz just look like the "Vance is weird" thing REALLY got under GOP's skin and that they're doing the thing that demonstrates an attack has been effective - mirroring the attack. This sort of mirroring rarely if ever works in doing anything more than just giving more strength to the original meme.
I cannot say I'm an expert on right-wing political strategy, but if I had to find an attack vector on Walz, I'd probably just hit him on 2020 and Floyd riots repeatedly. Potential pitfalls there, too, but less than with other stuff.
I'm fairly sure being against child transitioning has been a pretty winning tactic for the Right so far. Youngkin and DeSantis are both examples for statewide office at least.
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It’s ironic that the original “weird” meme could have been easily countered with either of the two classic responses: “I’m rubber, you're glue, anything you throw at me bounces off and sticks to you,” or “I know you are, but what am I?”
Make it clear they’re using playground insults, third-grade level at best, and don't deign to rise beyond that level of seriousness with a considered and unique response.
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Unfortunately the fact is that not ever even having to think about LGBTQ-related matters is a luxury not affordable to the rightist normalfag griller demographic in a society that bends to the will of the LGBTQ lobby every time. If they want to see pride parades discretely removed from Main street and trans celebs removed from prime-time TV, they'll have to politically act accordingly. I'll agree though that devoting too much time and energy to this issue isn't a good idea politically, but you can say the same thing about any other issue as well.
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Yeah it’s very obvious that the people doing/cheering on the “weird” counterattack have really bad intuitions about how ordinary people read situations like this. Like no you don’t beat weird accusations by posting a thousand anti-trans memes and calling Walz a cuck.
I've seen this claim a lot on Reddit, along with the celebration of Waltz's dig at the Vance couch rumors. I think it's either a disingenuous interpretation or a case of the Democrats getting high on their own supply. Here's how I interpret the Right's indignance at both of these attacks:
They are both completely manufactured by the powerful coordination of Democrat politicians, the media, and big tech. The individual claims are a trifle, but it's the ease by which both were able to propagate into culturally pervasive conventional wisdom in hours is pretty frightening. They're also completely transparent in their engineering, which goes like this: 1. Make some oddball claim that is either opinion or invented from whole cloth. 2. Follow quickly with a barrage stories about how wounding this claim has been to Republicans. It's dizzying. I would be that most Republicans hadn't even heard of these attacks until after the round of stories came out claiming how devastating these attacks have been.
It's also notable how inauthentic these two claims are in that the attacks therein are virtues within liberalism, where weirdness and sexual noncoformity are supposedly sacred. So it also exposes a deep hipocrisy within Democrats who will apparently say anything to win (I'm not exempting the GOP/Trumpism from this, BTW, just pointing out that the lack of concern for principles is rarely this brazen and happy to be this brazen).
I'm surrounded by Republicans who don't care about these attacks. They're laughable, absurd even. Except for how powerfully they've been executed.
This whole thing is very "fake it 'til you make it". It might even work, just like following the original saying often does, but I find it hard to believe anyone, especially on this site, actually believes the actual content of any of these claims.
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Neither. The claim that the attack worked really well is just the second prong of the attack. Vance himself seems to have moved on to attacking Walz.
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What it reflects is a radical moving on from focusing on existential fear for democracy to something much easier for those who struggle with abstracts to be a part of. Finally the Dems have realised that being self serious gives Trump an aura of incredible power that plays well for him. If he can genuinely threaten a hundreds-year old institution, there must be something formidable about him. Moving on from this rhetorical trap has obviously been hugely liberating for the Dems -- finally they can be the ones to mess around and enjoy making schoolyard attacks, Trump's domain for a decade.
Personally I think the new attacks represent something highly authentic though much like Trump's attacks are not to be taken literally.
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