DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS?

 

“DO YOU KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS? — This week, Republican leaders — in Washington running the House and in Iowa running for president — were again caught off guard by the strain of right-wing populism animating the grassroots.

“In Congress, the formerly sacrosanct Pentagon bill became the target of culture-war amendments on abortion, diversity, and gender that could scuttle its passage. House Speaker KEVIN McCARTHY was forced to accept the far-right rebellion against the Defense budget bill and push it through without the usual widespread bipartisan support.

“Yesterday in Des Moines, the major Republican presidential candidates (minus DONALD TRUMP) attended the Family Leadership Summit, which chose TUCKER CARLSON to act as the event’s host and moderator. Normally, these cattle calls feature a friendly questioner who allows the candidates time to deliver their stump lines and outline some differences with their rivals. That was not Carlson’s approach. Instead, the former Fox News host interrogated the Republicans for being insufficiently Carlsonesque on the war in Ukraine, immigration, Jan. 6, Covid vaccines and transgender rights.

“The candidates who fared best either wholly embraced the Carlson view of the world (VIVEK RAMASWAMY), dodged and weaved enough to skate by (RON DeSANTIS), or got an easier grilling (TIM SCOTT and NIKKI HALEY). The candidates who left stage humiliated by Carlson were the ones who stuck to their beliefs despite probing and sometimes mocking questioning, including MIKE PENCE (Ukraine; Jan. 6) and ASA HUTCHINSON (health care for transgender people; Covid vaccines).

“The House Republicans’ attack on the NDAA and the Carlson attack on several GOP presidential candidates are animated by a strain of populism in the GOP that separates leaders into two camps: those who ‘know what time it is’ and those who don’t. That’s the catchphrase on the right that has become increasingly important to the most disruptive wing of the party.

“As KEVIN ROBERTS, the president of the Heritage Foundation, a key institution of this new ideological strain, told RCP’s Philip Wegmann this week, Carlson understands ‘fissures in the economic consensus, fissures in foreign policy, and most important to me, as some conservatives like to say, «what time it is.»’

“Wegmann added: ‘That aphorism refers to an emerging sense of urgency and appetite for sweeping action, not dragging and dull academic debates, among more populist-minded conservatives. From his primetime slot, Carlson pioneered much of that effort.’

“There are two things that characterize the what-time-it-is Right.

— The first is about tactics. The premise of the movement is that the struggle against left-wing cultural power is existential, and extreme tactics that would shock an older generation of conservatives need to be the norm. In fact, if a leader is not shocking in his conduct and proposals, he or she probably doesn’t know what time it is. So, yes, threatening the NDAA — which elicited howls of protest from elites — is embraced.

— The second key feature of this us-against-them mentality is that any policy consensus is, by definition, suspicious and an ideal target of attack. When you realize this, what looks at first like a hodgepodge of different ideas seems more unified. Covid health policy, disgust about Jan. 6, the Pentagon budget, immigration, support for Ukraine, promoting racial diversity, trans rights — these are all issues that enjoy a measure of elite bipartisan consensus. But for the Tucker Carlson wing, Republicans who embrace these things don’t know what time it is.

“The WSJ digs into aspects of this debate this morning with a big feature: ‘The 2024 Election Is a Fight Over America’s Way of Life: GOP voters see a country corrupted by liberal ideals.’ Aaron Zitner and Simon J. Levien write:

«The animating force in the Republican presidential primary, many voters and policy leaders say, is a feeling that American society — the government, the media, Hollywood, academia and big business — has been corrupted by liberal ideas about race, gender and other social matters. Democrats, in turn, feel that conservatives have used their political power in red states and in building a Supreme Court majority to undermine abortion rights and threaten decades of work to broaden equal rights for minority groups.

«That has turned the next race for the White House into an existential election, with voters on both sides fearing not just a loss of political influence but also the destruction of their way of life.»’”

— Político Playbook Blog, 7/15/2023. Capitalization in original.