Cut Twice

The presidential campaign of Governor Ron DeSantis is said to have put out a video attacking former President Donald Trump for previously voicing support for LGBT Americans in the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting. I looked for the video, to see it for myself, but it seems to have disappeared from Twitter, along with tweets from DeSantis campaign staffers defending it. In any event, fellow psuedo-candidate for the Republican nomination Chris Christie, said: "They’re trying to divide us further. And it’s wrong. It’s absolutely wrong."

Calling out other people as "divisive," or noting that "they're trying to divide Americans" has become a common line of attack in American politics. Which, given the nature of American politics, makes about as much sense as criticizing scissors for cutting things.

The entire structure of the two-party system divides the voting populace of the United States into factional camps. And the parties themselves put a great deal of time and effort into recruiting for their factional camp by demonizing the other factional camp. And given a contested primary election for the Republican nomination, the candidates are going to be looking for voters to support their camp, to the exclusion of the other camps. Even the Log Cabin Republicans, who were among those calling out the DeSantis campaign as "divisive," said: "Ron DeSantis and his team can’t tell the difference between commonsense gays and the radical Left gays." That sounds like attempting to make a pretty stark division to me... (I would also note that the DeSantis War Room calling a recent Supreme Court ruling  a "Sad day for affirmative-action advocates," didn't warrant the same reaction from other Republicans. Likely because they don't care for affirmative action advocates, either.)

The public, generally speaking, is on board with this approach. Not only do political constituencies expect to be told that they're on the side of right and justice, but also that those people support rival candidates are some combination of irrational, gullible or deliberately unethical. There's nothing unifying about leaning into the politics of grievance when the objects of people's rage, anxiety, ignorance and distrust are their fellow countrymen.

And that's, broadly speaking, what the DeSantis campaign was doing. It was leaning into the resentments and fears that conservative Republicans have towards the LGBT community. The Log Cabin Republicans might think that it's only queer people who lean Left who are "pushing their radical sex and gender policies on children," but I'm pretty sure that the DeSantis campaign understands that for most Republican primary voters, if someone's LGBT, they're likely a Democrat. And they were using that in an attempt to paint Donald Trump as someone who supported people they disliked.

Republican intra-party complaining about divisiveness will, for the most, go away once the nomination has been decided, and the attacks are all aimed at President Biden, other Democratic politicians and Democratic voters as a group; mainly because Republicans are nearly entirely unified in their anger and prejudices. There won't be any upside, therefore, in bucking the trend. Knowing this, the complaining about it now seems disingenuous. But it has been some time since American politics was not defined by disingenuity, and it will be a long time before it stops being so.