Donald Trump had recently finished a familiar riff about banning gender transition surgery for children when the former president, speaking to an audience of Evangelical voters, moved on to something new: a policy that would affect transgender adults.
“I will ban all taxpayer funding for sex or gender transitions at any age,” said Trump, receiving thunderous applause at the Faith & Freedom Coalition conference in Washington last month. The Republican leader, who moments earlier had also pledged to reinstate a ban on transgender men and women serving in the military, paused for several seconds to soak in the crowd’s adulation.
It’s the kind of moment — and the type of policy — increasingly common on the GOP presidential campaign trail this year.
Not true, the most popular issues in politics (jobs, roads, economy) used to be the strongest in GOP messaging. This kind of culture war nonsense gets more views on news shows, but polling shows people care about money, healthcare, education, and security more than anything else when it comes to actually voting.
“Used to be” being the operative term. The GOP you speak of is dead, has been dead for many many many years, was dying for many years before it died, and will remain dead until the current party coalitions break down and we see a new alignment of the electorate.