Wokeness, RINOs, and truth in labeling
What the pet epithets of Trump and DeSantis tell us about their contest
I think we can glean much about the contest for the Republican nomination from the favorite epithets of the two leading candidates. “Wokeness” is DeSantis.’ It’s a radical, subversive movement, and thus poses a serious threat to America (although the candidate needs to do a better job of explaining why).
“RINO” is Trump’s epithet of choice. Even defined correctly, RINOs, though a pain-in-the-neck, pose no major threat to America. And, as I’ll argue below, the way Trump uses the term strips it of any real meaning.
Let’s start with “wokeness.” Ron DeSantis rarely misses an opportunity to tout his credentials as a successful fighter against it. Trump, whose credential pale in comparison, therefore feels compelled to dismiss the word. He did so this way:
I don't like the term 'woke,’ because I hear the term 'woke woke woke' -- it's just a term they use, half the people can't define it, they don't know what it is."
But Trump himself uses the term often enough. For example, he used it to describe Disney — managing, absurdly, to blame DeSantis for Disney’s wokeness.
Here’s another example of Trump using the term:
'Senator' Mike Rounds of the Great State of South Dakota just went woke on the Fraudulent Presidential Election of 2020 ... Is he crazy or just stupid?
What’s interesting about this statement isn’t that it shows the falsity of Trump’s claim that he doesn’t like the word “woke.” Trump’s disregard for the truth is old news.
What’s interesting about the attack on Rounds is that it supports Trump’s statement that many people who denounce “woke” don’t know what it is. Trump himself doesn’t appear to know.
The woke agenda is about many things — especially gender, race, crime, and climate. But it’s not about the election of 2020.
The woke agenda is forward looking. It seeks radically to transform America though DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion), ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) investing, cancel culture, and defunding the police, for example. It is not interested in relitigating past elections.
Trump might argue that relitigating the 2020 election is the key to preventing the radical transformation of America because stolen elections are the means through which wokeness will be imposed. But even if one takes this argument seriously — and skirts the question of how, if Trump allowed himself to be victimized by the “steal,” he can be trusted to prevent another one — denying that the 2020 election was stolen does not make one woke.
That Trump lost that election is the mainstream view in America. Fewer than one-third of Americans deny it. A majority of Republicans say Trump won (or would have won if the election had been fair), but 40 percent of Republicans don’t subscribe to that view.
Are most Americans and a substantial percentage of Republicans “woke”? I don’t think so.
As I argued here, the concept of wokeism posits an elite that’s awake to certain realities to which most Americans are oblivious — the incorrigibly racist nature of America, the existence of many genders (or more than two, anyway), the catastrophic climate change we’re supposedly experiencing, criminals as victims of society, etc.
The view that Joe Biden won the 2020 election is a mundane, sleepy, mainstream view. The woke don’t waste time discussing it. If anyone claims to be awake to a reality about this election that most people are missing, it’s those who say Trump was robbed.
Because Trump doesn’t really understand wokeness or fully appreciate the fight against it, he is not the right candidate to take it on. And, indeed, he took it on only intermittently and not very effectively as president.
Although Trump tosses the word “woke” around, it’s not his preferred epithet. That distinction goes to “RINO,” which stands (or is supposed to stand) for Republican In Name Only.
Trump’s indiscriminate use of “RINO” is yet another of his affronts to language — and therefore to truth. Among the many he has applied the label to are Lindsey Graham, Bill Barr, Brian Kemp, and (of course) Ron DeSantis.
I’m no fan of Graham’s. I’ve been criticizing him for almost as long as I’ve been blogging. But to claim he’s a Republican-in-name-only is ridiculous. He was Trump’s major ally in the Senate, including the confirmation wars. Trump’s victories in those wars are perhaps his greatest achievement.
The American Conservative Union gives Graham a lifetime voting rating of nearly 80 percent. That rating leaves something to be desired, but it shows him to be a Republican in more than just name.
Rich Lowry points out that “pretty much everyone [Trump] calls a RINO has devoted his or her adult life to the Republican Party.” Unlike Trump. That includes DeSantis, of whom Lowry says:
[The] Florida governor hasn’t departed from Republican orthodoxy in any significant way during his career (and, in fact, now he’s helping to define it); he’s loyally supported the party’s candidates across the spectrum, and, as his fame and power have grown, campaigned for them; and he’s been a determined party-builder in Florida.
Trump, by contrast, advised Georgia voters that hard-left Democrat Stacey Abrams might be a better choice for governor than Brian Kemp. Trump isn’t a RINO, but that’s something a RINO would do.
The bottom line is that DeSantis’ campaign centers around a worthy crusade to counter a movement that’s dangerous to America. The term “wokeness” is shorthand (at times, too short) for this movement.
Trump’s campaign centers around. . .what? “Making American great again,” I suppose. But what he’s obsessed with is striking back at his enemies, especially those within his party.
Speaking favorably about Stacey Abrams has nothing to do with American greatness. It has everything to do with settling scores. At the end of the day, that’s what Trump’s crusade is really about.
The sumptuous irony of Trump's contempt for RINOs is that a person might plausibly believe he is one: An energetic practitioner of reckless borrowing and spending that mainstream Republicans have opposed going back to at least Robert Taft; a criminal-hugging executive who backed the jailbreak First Step Act, which split Republicans but united Democrats (with Trump), all on the advice of that criminal law expert, Kim Kardashian; and a frequent and occasionally gushing fan of both Putin and Kim Jong Il, two of the most viciously anti-American dictators in the world -- dictators whose sometime appeasement by the Left was properly and robustly condemned by virtually every traditional Republican.
I would disagree on one point: Trump is a RINO. He has only his own bloated ego as his watchword and, you pointed out, if that doesn't fit with Republican interests he'll go the other way. I actually want to met the idiots that are still supporting this piece of dirt. They are RINOS too.