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From the outside, the problem is all the supposedly "better" right-wing candidates fail more spectacularly, at least in the US in elections that aren't in blood-red areas.
Or at least ones that people of your political persuasion would agree with.
But J.D. Vance underran the entire Republican ticket in Ohio in 2022. Blake Masters lost a winnable Senate race. All of the other politicians somewhat friendly to your sort of arguments are in deep red seats a corpse could win reelection too. Hell, I wouldn't say Mark Robinson is on your side, but he's a populist right-winger of a sort and he's losing by 10 in North Carolina. Maybe I can give you DeSantis, but he fell on his face on the national stage.
Obviously, this would not be the real result, but they polled a Harris-Vance race, and it was 59-37 Harris. That's with the guy among current politicians, I'd argue, is the most normie-friendly of your set.
Trump's celebrity + Hillary running + COVID helping Trump like it did every other incumbent politician (only he was incompetent enough to blow the COVID boost basically all incumbents got worldwide) gave a sheen on Trump's political popularity that gave you guys the idea that people liked your ideas than they really did.
If the choice for the median voter is an HR lady stomping on their face forever telling them to put their gender in their bio and calling people by their chosen name or whatever you guys are selling, until you find somebody far better at selling yourself to normies, not online weirdos (I say this as an online weirdo of another political ideology), the HR ladies are going to keep winning, at least in the US.
Yes, with a dip in the economy, a Brian Kemp/Joni Ernest ticket in 2028 could totally win if Trump eats one too many Big Mac's, but that's not what the online right want
Blake Masters and JD Vance sound like fucking nerds. Masters especially looked and sounded like a geek who needed rectangle glasses and a job locked in the basement server room of a nondescript midwestern company.
The right desperately needs a handsome, happily married, tall, moderately successful 40-50 year old man who is very good at public speaking and who can persuasively impart a conservative populist message without scaring the hoes. Fifty such men surely aren’t impossible to find in a country of 330 million people. It’s an extraordinary failure that they can’t find them, which really means they just don’t care to look.
Is there that sort of person really, though?
Or, maybe to put it more accurately, is there anybody who can appease this website, the Daily Wire/Federalist/etc. types, and also not cause non-colleged educate pro-choice women in Wisconsin to get, 'ewww.' Like, it may be true there's not a majority of liberal wokeism, but there's even less of a majority of conservative populism. Especially among people under 50.
I know there's this view it's all about optics and charisma, but if you throw 1997 George Clooney up there and start talking about it's OK if states are banning abortions, you're going to have issues. Like, Obama rolled a natural 20 on charisma, but even he had issues in 2012 because things weren't great and the ACA wasn't popular yet. Hell, Reagan had a massive mid-term loss in 1982, and then had another in 1986 due to unpopularity.
I disagree. Some message discipline is necessary, but you put Trumpism in the body of 1997 Clooney and they’d steamroll this election.
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I’m glad you said this, because it confirms my perception that Masters has terrible physiognomy. To me he always seemed to have (as Shakespeare’s Caesar said of Cassius) “a lean and hungry look.” Very untrustworthy face. I say this as someone whose physiognomy would likely trigger mostly the same reaction in voters; at least I know I’m unelectable.
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The problem with this line of argument is that if you directly, anonymously ask normal people about their preferences, many of the answers are so far right that they couldn't be stated in polite society. Especially on the topic of enforcing borders or trans ideology. Compare to, say, libertarianism or any other possible political ideology, which are generally speaking not supported even when you ask people directly (which, I'm sad to say, includes many of my own preferences). So something else seems to be happening than just right-wing ideas being unpopular.
My impression is that if you're successful, it's just stupid to not make yourself part of the international elite. And that international elite has a particular set of values, which from the american perspective might as well be "agree on everything with the democrats". For a simple personal example, as an academic almost any enforcement of borders is a hassle to me, and living in the (expensive) university district myself, I'm fully insulated from perceiving any of the costs, at least in the short-term. Not only that, but many friends of mine are from across the world and they would suffer even more from the borders being enforced. So, from a purely egoistic perspective I should want the borders to be as open as possible. And this is the de-facto only acceptable position here; Being in favor of any border enforcement whatsoever puts you basically outside the overton window of the international elite.
So in turn any person in favor of these topics can't be part of the international elite, which means they're either not really all that successful, or stupid, or extremely disagreeable. So these are the people you're stuck with. Normies notice this, and the situation hasn't deteriorated enough yet in their perception that they're willing to vote for "this kind of person" just to get a change they desire. So they suck it up and consider it the cost of doing business.
This just isn't true, at least in the United States. Even in polling that shows support for harsh measures, there's also still strong support for amnesty for a number of current undocumented and stuff like the DREAM Act. On the transgender issue, the vast majority of people don't care, think it's at best an issue for their school boards or local government to deal with when it comes to kids, but there's the general American-speciifc libertarian view on it when it comes to adults.
If that was the message from the GOP, they could win on this, and indeed they did when that was the message combined with general worry over school closings. But, as we're seeing, even in places like Florida, the Mom's for Liberty types go off the rails and then lose elections, and when the GOP tries to run ads in abortion referendums about how this actually means something something transgenders will take your kids, they lose on that too.
Yes, the median American is to the right of the median Democrat politician on immigration and transgenderism. In both cases, they're to the left of the median Republican politician and they don't really care about the latter, so they find it, "weird", when GOP politicians and media obsess over it.
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