“The Republican Party is obsessed with culture war issues. It is weird and it is bizarre.”

These words were delivered in solemn fashion by transgender representative Sarah McBride during a press conference at the Capitol last week, to golf applause and sniggers from his colleagues, who evidently thought the statement was nothing short of a brilliant witticism from which the Republican Party might only hope to recover. 

For the last several decades, the modus operandi of the Democratic Party and the left has been to corrupt our culture thoroughly and quickly and in ways that directly and disproportionately targets children, and then to turn around and tell us that we are weird to notice or care. This argument is as shameless as it is untrue.

In part it is untrue because the Republican Party is actually contemptuously ineffective and timid when it comes to culture war issues. The GOP only bothers to deal with them when they need some red meat to throw to their evangelical voter base by “taking a stand” and opposing, for instance, men in women’s sports, an issue that grassroot activists—not the party—have done most of the tough work to make it easy to take the right stand on it. Indeed, it’s so easy to be right about that issue now that even Gavin Newsom openly agrees with the GOP take on it.  

McBride, for his part, has made much of the fact that his GOP colleague Rep. Nancy Mace has tried to bar him from entering women’s bathrooms on the Hill, saying his personal identity lives “rent free” in her and other Republicans’ minds. Yet the more obvious question is why he is living a life that necessitates the invasion of sensitive female spaces in the first place. It’s far “weirder” for folks like McBride to demand that women sacrifice our own social mores for their sexual comfort. 

At this point, the right is used to accusations of “weirdness.” JD Vance, a Catholic Midwest dad, parlayed such characterizations shortly after he was announced as President Donald Trump’s running mate last year. A stellar debate performance against Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and some impressive messaging from the GOP showcasing the psychotic weirdness of the Democratic Party put this name-calling to rest a few weeks before the election. 

Nevertheless, the bullying tactic itself is still alive and well in the Democratic Party with McBride’s recent accusation being just the latest example. After Samuel Brinton, the notorious bald man in lipstick and false eyelashes who served in the Biden administration’s Department of Energy and spent his free time participating in an anti-Catholic drag queen troupe (when he wasn’t stealing luggage) Democrats should have understood that their accusations of weirdness fall pretty flat. But the less flamboyant McBride, they must reason, is a little easier to digest—especially  after society’s collective consciousness has been assaulted with such absurd levels of sexual degeneracy. McBride has glasses, wears minimal makeup, sports a conservative haircut, and dresses like his other professional female colleagues. If it weren’t for his deep voice and prodigious Adam’s apple, a society so used to androgynous displays might even let him pass as female. 

But Republicans should not let up. The party that condones McBride also condones Rachel Levine, and drag queen story hour, and male predators in women’s prisons, and the complete overhaul of “gender” medicine at the expense of both healthcare and children. These may seem like beltway issues to those in the beltway, but transgender surgeries on minors occur across the country, drag queen story hours sexualize children even in red states, and teachers secretly socially transition your children in the schools your tax dollars fund. The messaging of the next four years will either acknowledge this or cede the entire battle to the Democrats.