The Problem For Right-Wing Elites

Nothing about right-wing politics makes sense until you realize right-wing elites have very little in common with the masses they serve.

What does the Republican party have in common? Certainly not anything political—they’ve flipped on about half of major political issues without anyone batting an eye (I’m old enough to remember that before Trump the Republicans were the party of free trade and interventionism). When Jeb Bush accused Trump of being a chaos candidate, it was seen as an example of how naive and out of touch he was, even though the same accusation had been levied at Obama continuously for eight years. While the right is more traditional and religious, there are many non-religious Republicans and others who deviate in significant ways from tradition. What the right has in common is not liking the left.

There were some who had principles. It was mostly the elites who had those principles and a coherent political vision, just as having a coherent ranking of the star-wars movies is disproportionately concentrated among Star Wars fans. Romney, for instance, had principles. So did Kinzinger, Cheney, and many of the others decried as RINOs. They got pushed out.

The rise of Trump made it pretty clear that the Republican base didn’t care much about those supposedly cherished Republican principles. A new class of populist elites began to take over, those who either did not or pretended not to believe in the principles of Reagan and Bush. Tucker became the most beloved figure on the right, with the exception of Trump.

Democrats are disproportionately highly educated and urban. For them, talking like a college professor makes you part of their tribe, not some kind of weird alien. Democratic elites can be their real authentic selves, not pandering to the stupid. For Republicans, there is a much greater incentive to pander to the stupid because most of the Republican base is composed of those people.

If you just listened to, say, Adam Schiff talk, you’d know he was a Democrat, even if he didn’t talk about politics. Similarly, you’d know Lauren Boebert was a Republican just from listening to her. The Democrats are the party of the educated elites, the Republicans of the uneducated masses.

But any major figure in media is inevitably one of the elites. They will spend time schmoozing at New York cocktail parties. Fox, the most significant right-wing news organization, is located in New York. Ben Shapiro graduated from Harvard, Tucker comes from a very wealthy family. Ben Shapiro rose to prominence by winning debates with those on the left, making them look silly, thus shoring up his right-wing bona fides. And even he is looked down on by many on the right as being a bit of an out-of-touch nerd.

The most popular people on the right are those who are part of the elite but talk like they’re not. This was one of the things that made Rush Limbaugh so popular—he was good at debating while being very much like a typical right-wing dad. Trump has managed to do this quite well, convincing the masses of uneducated right-wingers that he’s their guy. Tucker did this very well, even though for him it was a farce.

The Right wing has a problem: their constituency is mostly made up of those who have disdain for their leaders. Their leaders are mostly elite high-IQ graduates from very good colleges. But the Republican masses mostly don’t know very much about politics and are motivated primarily by a dislike of left wing elites. In short, the Republican party is mostly united by their hatred of elites, but the only people eloquent and connected enough to make it in right-wing media are those elites that they hate. As a result, the right-wingers that reach the most prominence are the ones that despite clearly being elites, ooze disdain for the elites.

Many others on the right are unwilling to sell their soul. While Tucker is willing to lie and pander for money and fame, most people aren’t as conniving as he is. So for the rest of the right, unwilling to lie about their views, they must do something to appeal to those that would hate them if they saw who they spend time with. Nothing about the Republicans priorities make sense unless one realizes this.

One way to solve this problem for Republican elites is to spend a lot of time bashing wokeness. Now, I don’t want people to get the sense I’m against this. I’m very much in favor of bashing of the woke and have done it myself. I’m trying to explain the right, not say anything about whether it’s good or bad (but sometimes explaining some phenomenon has to grapple with the fact that many of its supporters are very stupid).

Republican elites and masses hate the woke. The woke are everywhere! They annoy everyone, even many on the left (myself included!!). When Ben Shapiro makes videos criticizing woke TikToks, they get many more views than his other videos, even the ones criticizing, for example, anti-American TikToks. Right-wing elites and masses have in common being annoyed and disgusted by the woke, so it represents a fertile area of common ground.

This also explains the fixation on trans people. Republican elites tend to have a problem with trans people because they think they go against the proper conception of what sex is. Republican masses don’t like them because they find them gross. It’s another area where the masses and elites are in agreement, so it’s become a prominent area of discussion among those on the right.

Ruffo, despite being by all accounts an elite, has become beloved on the right by declaring war on the woke. LibsOfTikTok, one of the most popular right-wing Twitter accounts, is run by an ordinary woman who doesn’t seem to know anything about politics. She’s ideal for appealing to the right-wing because she is very similar to the typical right-wing voter. Rufo would bore his Republican base if he had to talk about tax rates, so instead he bashes the woke.

Note, I don’t mean to suggest any of these people are insincere. Rufo probably does genuinely hate the woke. But if the thing he hated was, say, high tax rates, he wouldn’t be where he is today. As Chomsky said to a reporter “I’m sure you believe everything you’re saying. But what I’m saying is that if you believe something different, you wouldn’t be sitting where you’re sitting.”

Same thing with immigration. Republican elites tend to be more supportive of immigration—which is no surprise because they’re smarter and thus more likely to support good things like immigration—but many of them are still concerned. The masses are much more concerned because they don’t understand how economics works, and so buy the straightforward arguments about immigrants taking jobs. As a result, Republican elites who are anti-immigration make a big deal about that, and the ones who are pro-immigration make sure to talk a good deal about how bad the Democrats’ immigration policy is, even if their ideal immigration policy has more in common with the Democrats’ immigration policy than Trump’s.

There are, of course, many smart conservatives. Some people have made entire careers by appealing to them. Richard Hanania, for example, is mostly read by smart conservatives. It seems like most of the conservatives on substack are pandering to the smart conservatives. Yet this is a bit like trying to break into academia—you’re competing against other smart people for a limited number of jobs.

Hanania will never be half the size of Tucker. There just aren’t enough people in that small niche. Republican elites are slowly being displaced by bath salt conservatives like Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert. These people, while much less effective at running campaigns and governing, have a big advantage: they are not the elite. Mitt Romney is infinitely more intelligent than Boebert and infinitely better at every task in the world but would lose an election to her with a Republican base because he is a card-carrying elite swamp member.

For a while, the Republicans were able to get along by just being elites who did politics like the Democrats while saying bad things about Democrats sometimes. But as the Republican party became less highly educated and more populist, and as polarization grew, the traditional WASPS got replaced by populists who either believed the same thing as uneducated people in the middle of Kansas or pretended to. These people are less competent generally, so much of the Republican media ecosystem is just a bunch of WASPS trying to blend in. Those unwilling to sell out their political opinions to the idiotic views of the masses were thrown to the wolves.