By all indications, the Republican establishment is headed for defeat in the midterms and its representatives are only adding fuel to the ever-growing fire. Following the Republican denunciation of Texas politician Bo French, GOP darling Sarah Sanders has now specifically targeted young White men in an anti-corruption, welfare advertisement posted to her YouTube page on Tuesday, September 29.
For reference, Sanders is the daughter of Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, 2016 Republican presidential candidate, and fanatical Protestant Zionist who is now the United State’s Ambassador to Israel. Huckabee recently agreed that he was “chosen by Hashem” for the role. In a February interview with Tucker Carlson, he endorsed the anti-christic Greater Israel project.
In her advertisement, Sanders introduces the viewer to “Brad” — a twenty-something year old White Arkansan — who has made “relaxing a full time profession.” Throughout the video, Brad lounges, plays video games, and engages in various slovenly behaviors, all while collecting welfare. Using him as the “poster boy” of systemic abuse, Sanders then announces the creation of a sensible measure to combat it, namely a welfare-to-work requirement.
The immediate problem with the advertisement is its novel depiction of an age-old political problem: the welfare queen. Rather than portray a Black woman, which would have accurately represented a demographic principally responsible for welfare abuse and often permanently tethered to the welfare state, the politically correct option was to show Brad, a young White man.
Mainstream conservative commentator Matt Walsh highlighted this pseudo-reality in his reaction on X. “This Republican ad calling out welfare leeches uses a young white male named ‘Brad’ as the villain. Meanwhile, back in reality, women are significantly more likely to be on welfare than men,” he said. “And black people are astronomically more likely to be on welfare than white people.”
Other online commentators made the same argument. X user Aesthetica remarked, “You’re only using young White men as a punching bag because you’re too afraid to depict who actually abuses welfare.” Sean Davis of The Federalist saw in Sanders “the audacity to dishonestly mock young white men as welfare queens.” Another user on X asked, “Are [Republicans] trying to lose?”
While the advertisement is an affront to statistical realities, it is even more offensive to the base of the GOP: White Americans, specifically men. Ostensibly, this is the very demographic the Republican Party is supposed to court, represent and defend. Not so. It would be akin to the Democratic Party going out of its way to alienate itself from female Black, Hispanic, or Asian voters, its most committed supporters during the lead up to an election they were poised to lose.
Undeterred by the response from some of the most prominent conservative voices in media, Sanders doubled down in another X post. She brushed off the firestorm and characterized it as, “Some critics online don’t like my welfare work requirement ad.”
Supposing for the sake of argument the demographic offended by the advertisement was Black Americans, it is nearly inconceivable that Sanders would say the same thing. If nothing else, it is bad politics. Jack Posobiec put it succinctly in his reflection on Wednesday: “Imagine thinking attacking young White men is the way to win them over a month before an election. Tone deaf GOP.”
The Dispatch
Perhaps this is why Pope Saint Pius X remarked in 1909 that “few women would ever desire to legislate, and those who did would only be classed as eccentrics.” 1
Selective outrage on identity politics
As the post-World War II ideological consensus is increasingly breaking down, particularly among younger Americans under the age of 35, more and more previously hidden presuppositions of the modern, individualist, and Liberal order are being reevaluated. This is something true for all races of Americans on the political right, Catholics being no exception.
One such principle is that identity politics is legitimate for every single group — save for White men. In fact, for White men to engage in identity politics it is necessarily motivated by unthinking hatred, irrationality, and blind prejudice, or so the argument goes. Whereas a Black Congressional Caucus, female leadership summit, or Hispanic business coalition is seen as normal and moral. In many cases, it is enthusiastically championed by GOP supporters seeking to prove their antiracist bona fides.
The primary vehicle for perpetuating this intolerable double-standard is the establishment wing of the GOP, ruthlessly enforcing individualism for White men and promoting and cultivating the identities of all other groups. Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamay illustrated this well at a recent campaign event, attending a “community forum with black leaders” in order to “[revive] the American Dream in every community in this state.”
To date, Ramaswamay has yet to acknowledge the White community as such or meet with their leaders, nor has he said anything positive about the majority racial group who will be voting for him.
However, the best and most authoritative example of this — what can only be seen as shameless contradiction — is President Donald Trump. During his first term, Trump signed an executive order on the “White House Hispanic Prosperity Initiative.” To even broach the idea of a “White House White Prosperity Initiative” would be beyond the pale for nearly all Republicans and their leadership. After all, it is racist and unthinkable.
The same President Trump gave a “Black Empowerment Speech” — consider him saying “White empowerment” — as recently as last year. In 2019, he organized a “Young Black Leadership Summit.” While these initiatives are entirely legitimate, moral, and make sense as an outreach to Black Americans, why are there none for White Americans? Could one ever conceive of the Republican party, and its head in Donald Trump no less, declaring that the “White American community is a treasure,” or does that only conspicuously apply to Hispanic Americans?
Unlike the one offered by the Republican Party at present, a true vision of American racial harmony organized according to Catholic principles would take into account the good of the whole, refusing to fixate on the protection of majority rights and interests at the expense of the majority. What is legitimate for Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans is no less legitimate for White Americans.
For interested readers, Integrity Magazine’s podcast titled “Texas GOP politician Bo French sparks national debate on immigration, race” is a good starting place to begin thinking more deeply about this issue.
- St. Pius X, Pope Pius Speaks on Rights of Women (April 24, 1909), as reported in: The Monitor, The Official Organ of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, (May 15, 1909). ↩︎
