‘21-19: Not All Republicans
I’ve been kicking around a lot of writing concepts in my head lately that I just can’t seem to pin down into something worthwhile. I was toying with some ideas about labels and how no one likes being labeled, at least not if we feel like that label is incorrect or an incomplete picture of ourselves.
So what do I go and do? I write this whole essay pigeon-holing all Republicans into five types (labels). I know. Here I am doing exactly what I just said people don’t like.
But what prompted me to go down this path was a TikTok video I saw recently where a woman reacted to another person who had joked about not wanting to be mistaken for a Republican if she stopped wearing her mask after being vaccinated. The Republican woman in the TikTok video was genuinely frustrated and hurt, saying that even though she’s a Republican, she has worn a mask the entire pandemic—in fact she has hand-made hundreds of masks that she’s given away to others—and that not all Republicans are irresponsible and anti-maskers.
It made me pause to think because I know exactly what that Democratic woman was joking about. Like all humor, it comes from a place of truth. But is it hurtful to think her joke was funny? That you don’t want to be perceived as being Republican? Does that promote an inaccurate description of Republicans?
But then, this is what I realized. When the Democratic woman says she doesn’t want to be mistaken for a Republican, she doesn’t mean by other Republicans. She means she doesn’t want like-minded liberals to look at her and think she’s something that she’s not. While the Republican woman was undoubtedly correct that not all Republicans are anti-maskers, the point I think she missed was that the opposite is probably quite true, and that most anti-maskers are likely Republican. The Democratic woman was more concerned about people misjudging her because of not wearing a mask—she wasn’t misjudging or labelling all Republicans.
You see, just as much as the Republican woman didn’t want to be misjudged and labeled, neither did the Democratic woman. It’s not easy to balance both women’s feelings. The Democratic woman’s humor—which I totally related to and found funny myself—was not meant for the Republican woman.
In any event, this is what launched me into thinking about different types of Republicans, because that Republican woman was right—they’re not all the same. So I took a stab at making a few categories.
I admit this is a dangerous task to take-on because pretty much everyone is going to look at this and think I did it wrong. Either leaving something out here, or mischaracterizing something there. I’m offending people all over the place, I’m sure. Look, there’s a million way to categorize things, and I’m not saying this is the ultimate, be-all end-all anything. This is just a glimpse into how my brain has lumped this group of people. How does your mind do it?
Let’s dive right in.
Indifferent Republicans
Indifferent Republicans are where I would place a very large section of the party. These are your every-day people who mostly don’t pay attention to politics or perhaps even the news in general. They identify as Republican because their parents/neighbors/coworkers do, more than anything else. It is likely that these people are less educated, but not necessarily.
Because they don’t really pay attention to politics, they don’t know what’s behind the positions of each party. So instead, they’ve made a lot of knee-jerk reactions to things based on very little understanding. They generally feel strongly about wanting low taxes, thinking that people should work hard and not “depend on the government,” and thinking that government is mostly inept and meddlesome. They care a lot about fairness, but judge fairness from a pretty gut-reaction type level.
They have an almost spiritual relationship with the concept of freedom. They are extremely sentimental and patriotic towards the concept of being American. They have strong feelings about “supporting our troops,” and “backing the blue,” because they respect those people that risk their lives to make us safe and free, which is a laudable position. However, they don’t have a firm or nuanced conception of what freedom even is, or how our freedom compares to the rest of the world. They have a vague perception that ours is better, but don’t know the details.
These people may or may not be extremely Christian. They “don’t have a racist bone in their body,” as they’ll gladly tell you. They think racism probably happens both ways. They don’t really see racism in their lives at all, and think the national discussion of it is blown out of proportion. They think that rioting doesn’t help the cause. They think it’s more about socioeconomics than race.
Abortion is typically a big issue for these people, because it makes them sad to think of killing babies, and they’ve never had to look at it in a more complex way. These people are well-intentioned, but suffer from a serious lack of understanding of the complexities of politics and the world. These people don’t benefit from Republican policies, but they don’t realize this. They voted for the previous president because they could just never vote for a Democrat. You also may hear them say that they really dislike the former president’s demeanor, but they do agree with his policies.
Examples of the Indifferent Republican: Your neighbor down the street. Your sister. Your school teacher.
Mitt Romney Republicans
The Mitt Romney Republicans, or the Chamber of Commerce Republicans, are a dying breed. There are very few left, it seems. These folks are educated, thoughtful, and principled. They actually have nuanced thoughts about their desire for limited government. They are probably nerdy and wonky. In current times, they are seen as RINOs (Republicans in name only) by their own party.
Sometimes they are willing to stand up for their beliefs against members of their own party. But other times, they will side with the more extreme faction of their party, frustrating liberals, who were just starting to kind of like them. They have humongous blinders on as relates to the racist, conspiracy-loving, culty faction of their party.
Examples of the Mitt Romney Republican: Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) (duh). Representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) (? I actually don’t know enough about her but her recent spate of standing up against her party and the Big Lie makes me think maybe). Utah Governor Spencer Cox (my husband disagrees and thinks he’s more devious than he puts on). Those guys I went to law school with.
Extreme Republicans
The Extreme Republicans are similar to the Indifferent Republicans, but then throw in a much bigger dash of guns, racism (maybe of the less overt type), and hatred of change away from the “traditional.” These are the “fuck-your-feelings” Republicans. These folks L-O-V-E the former president and are the flag bearing types that attend his rallies.
These people are literally grossed out by the thought of LGBTQ people (except for maybe in the context of lesbian porn). They love ethnic jokes, crass jokes, sexist jokes, and anything in general that is not “politically correct.”
These are the folks that tend to fall for the conspiracy theories, big time. Unlike the Indifferent Republicans, these people actually pay attention to politics, but are huge consumers of Fox News, OANN, Breitbart, Limbaugh, and random conservative Internet sites. They are highly likely to be anti-mask and anti-vax, because of either conspiracy theories or because of an unwillingness to agree with Democrats on anything. Everything they don’t like is unconstitutional. If they do get vaccinated, they won’t tell people about it. These people definitely got caught up in Q-Anon and the 1/6 insurrection.
Some in this group may try to fool you, with their college degrees from Harvard and apparent professionalism. But they harbor extreme views. These people really believe the outrageous nonsense they profess, which I can’t necessarily say about the next group.
Examples of the Extreme Republicans: Your crazy uncle. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Former press secretary Kayleigh McEnany (an example of the Harvard educated Extreme Republican).
Devious Power Hungry Republicans
The Devious Power-Hungry Republicans are the Mitch McConnells of the world—rich and powerful elected officials, as well as their high ranked cronies that serve them in various fashion. They are rich, and in power, and they want more riches and more power.
They don’t care as much about morality or religion or helping the American people as they may let on. You may find a lot of sexual assault, money fraud, and other corruption in this group.
They will 100% use those popular moral concepts, though, in order to pander to their voters who do care a lot about those things. They’re often corrupt, abuse their positions of power, and can be extraordinarily hypocritical. For example, they have no issues with arguing fervently for something when it benefits them (i.e. the Benghazi investigation, and refusing Merrick Garland’s nomination), but then they argue just as fervently against it when the exact same thing is being done by the other side (i.e. opposing forming a 1/6 Commission, and pushing through Amy Coney Barrett’s Supreme Court nomination).
I suspect these people don’t believe a lot of the ideas they promote and pretend to care about (such as the concept that Biden didn’t legitimately win), but they have o qualms with saying anything that helps their position—true or not.
Tax cuts for the rich, power, and prestige are the primary things they care about. They may have some pet projects and interests, but mostly not. They’ll use the voters and what those voters supposedly care about as a method to manipulate those people into voting for them. Meaning, they’ll spend a lot of time on issues like, for instance, abortion, trans rights, critical race theory, and “cancelling” Dr. Seuss, but they don’t actually care too much about those things personally.
On the other hand, if they can’t get enough people behind their fake issues and fear mongering, they’ll also just change the rules and procedures if that’s what it takes to keep getting their votes. This includes gerrymandering, voter suppression laws, and false claims of election fraud.
Basically, these folks just suck.
Examples of the Devious Power Hungry Republicans: Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY). The previous president. Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Full Blown White Supremacist Republicans
The Full Blown White Supremacist Republicans get their own category because, while each and every other category has serious problems with racism, this is the category where the people’s entire identity is based on that racism, and they are far, far more overt about it.
Their number one issue is white supremacy, whether they fully realize it or not, and they’ve aligned with the Republicans as the most likely group to help them reach their goals. The Republicans in charge may or may not agree with these extreme racist folk, but they let them be so long as they get their votes.
Examples of Full Blown White Supremacist Republicans: The actual KKK. Proud Boys. White supremacists/white nationalists—however they’re labeled.
Honorable Mentions
The one-issue anti-abortion folks who agree with Democrats on almost everything except abortion, and simply cannot, and never will get past that.
The one-issue gun rights people. For the most part, the gun rights folks will fit into one of the above categories, but I do mention it here as being a major defining factor for some Republicans.
The extreme Christians. Again, I struggled with whether to include the Religious Right as its own category or not, because really this just permeates all the categories to varying degrees. Suffice it to say, themes of Christianity, particularly modern American versions of Christianity, run through the party.
The mixed bag. Some people seem to fit multiple categories, in different ways. This isn’t a precise science, okay?
So what’s the point of this exercise of categorizing people? Contrary to what you may expect, I think it actually helps me in not painting people with too broad of a brush. Not every Republican is a raging, blatant racist. Not everyone is corrupt and devious.
At its core, I have serious disagreements with the outlook and favored policies of Republicans of all stripes. But, undoubtedly, some are worse people than others. So when we talk about Republicans being this or that, I understand why that upsets some of the Indifferent Republicans, for instance.
However, here’s my big problem that I have a harder time getting past. Understanding that not every Republican is “bad,” I am still very disturbed (1) by how many are bad people, though, and (2) with how so many otherwise good and nice people are so willing to overlook the hugely prevalent depraved streak of their own party. Their silence as to these members of their own party feels like complicity to many of us Democrats. What I’ve come to believe more and more is that many Republicans aren’t just putting-up with these extreme beliefs—they actually agree with them.
I’ve said it before—I feel like I used to be much more naïve about the inherent “goodness” of people, because it is apparent that ignorance and selfishness is a driving force in this party. They’d hate me for saying that, I know. But it is what it is, at this point. As I just said, they’re either part of it, or not speaking out against it, and both positions are disappointing. The Republican Party is clearly going through some serious turmoil right now. I would love to see them get their crap in order, and for fairer heads to prevail, but I’m not optimistic.
Like what you’ve read? Please subscribe to get this type of FREE content delivered to your inbox once a week. I appreciate you more than you know!
This is accurate, and therefore SO depressing! I have to think about this a lot. I don't disagree with your categories, but I think some of them are additive ... eg power-hungry are also the extremists, but devious enough, lucky enough, to have manipulated themselves into positions of power. Do you really think that MTG is not a power-hungry R? I think any PHR politician is also an extremist. I think I would add a group I would label Fomenters, because their mission is spreading disinformation, creating and preying on fear. I think there is a lot of crossover, as you indicate. Romney, Cheney, Kitzinger & a few others should be trying to pull together a coalition, because there are others out there (Curtis & Moore both voted for the 1/6 Commission), but 1) I am not optimistic either and 2) I can't get past the rotten ones to appreciate the good ones ... because of the complicity issue. You can't pick and choose what moral/social values to overlook.