GOP focusing on dark, apocalyptic themes
Speaking in Calif. March 5, DeSantis said his state offered refuge from a Democratic-led ‘dystopia’
Speaking to conservative activists this month just outside of Washington, D.C., former President Donald Trump promised to be “your warrior” and “your justice,” vowing: “And to those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”
The same day, speaking to a group of conservative donors in Florida, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, warned, “Joe Biden and the Democrats are destroying our people’s patriotism and swapping it out for dangerous self-loathing.”
And speaking at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California on March 5, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, argued his state offered a refuge from a Democratic-led “dystopia, where people’s rights were curtailed, and their livelihoods were destroyed.”
The trio of comments from 2024 Republican presidential hopefuls — either declared or expected — underscore the dark undertones and apocalyptic rhetoric that have pervaded much of the Republican Party.
President Joe Biden and Democrats often engage in their own existential messaging, warning some Republicans — whom they deride as “extremists” — are out of step with most Americans, eager, for example, to cut programs like Medicare and Social Security.
Pointing to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, some Democrats and activists have also dismissed the former president as an autocrat and authoritarian who must be stopped at all costs.
But much of the rhetoric from the declared and potential Republican candidates so far is remarkable for its dystopian tone. In many high-profile moments, these Republicans portray the nation as locked in an existential battle, where the stark combat lines denote not just policy disagreements but warring camps of saviors versus villains and where political opponents are regularly demonized.
They warn Biden and a “radical,” “woke mob” of liberals are determined to “destroy” and “ruin” the nation.
Frank Luntz, a pollster and communication analyst who said he “came of age in the days of Ronald Reagan,” said in the current Republican Party, gone is the era of Reagan’s optimism.
“Trump has turned Republican politics on its head, “Luntz said. “We were so much more positive and hopeful, and it was Republicans who looked to the future with excitement and energy, but those days are long gone.”
Cliff Sims, a former Trump White House official, pushed back on the notion that only Republicans are using overheated language. He pointed to the recent comments by actor and liberal activist Jane Fonda on ABC’s The View, in which she suggested the “murder” of antiabortion politicians — she later said she was using hyperbole and had made the suggestion in jest — and what he called “the never-ending drumbeat of Democrats who call Trump ‘Insert Authoritarian Phrase Here.’ ”
“There’s no shortage of smoking hot rhetoric on either side,” he said.
While Trump is the undeniable champion of the vilify-your-opponent style of politics, he is hardly its only practitioner.
Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as White House press secretary under Trump, delivered the Republican response to Biden’s State of the Union speech last month and used the spotlight to portray “the radical left’s America” as descending into mayhem where the federal government “lights your hard-earned money on fire” and “children are taught to hate one another on account of their race.”
“The dividing line in America is no longer between right or left; the choice is between normal or crazy,” Sanders said, ominously warning “the Biden administration is doubling down on crazy.”
Alexa Henning, Sanders’ communications director, defended Sanders’ language in an emailed statement.
“The governor accurately described the Biden administration’s record of failure and woke policies that call for crazy things, such as banning gas stoves or being unable to define what a woman is,” Henning wrote. “In contrast she offered uplifting policies that defend our freedom and give everyone in our state access to a quality education and greater prosperity.”
In her 2024 presidential announcement speech last month, Haley warned that under the Biden administration, “a self-loathing has swept our country.”
“America is on a path of doubt, division and self-destruction,” said Haley, who earlier in her political career was known for a more moderate message.
A Haley spokeswoman noted that in the same speech, she also offered many optimistic and hopeful notes, recounting that her parents always taught her and her siblings “that even on our worst day, we are blessed to live in America.”