In an ideal world, a political party's platform would be based on unchanging principles. Principles like abiding by constitutional restrictions on government, principles like liberty and property, individual rights, freedom of expression, conscience, association - and disassociation. And, of course, the right to bear arms in defense of self, home, property, and community.
But all too often, political party platforms are based on expediency. Both of America's major parties have fallen into this trap at times, but for some time now, it has been standard operating procedure for Democrats. It's all about The Side, and if adopting any position helps them garner votes, then they'll adopt it, and principles can go out the window.
For the last couple of cycles, one of those expedient positions has been the support for "gender theory" and "transgender" ideology. And now, finally, the GOP is finding their feet on this issue, and it's going to end up costing the Democrats, Rich Lowry wrote in a new op-ed for the NY Post:
There used to be a time when Republican elected officials and candidates shied away from talking about trans issues.
They didn’t want to appear extreme or intolerant. Why bother wading in to a fraught cultural issue when there were so many other things to talk about? Deferring to “medical professionals” or “the experts” seemed the easy way out.
Now, though, Republicans have emphatically found their voice.
Across the political landscape, GOP Senate candidates are hitting their Democratic opponents on their trans radicalism and have them on the run, while the Trump campaign is pounding Kamala Harris on the issue with perhaps the most prominent ad of this election cycle.
The chickens have come home to roost, and they are apparently all cis-gender.
Republicans are increasingly hitting the Democrats as radicals on this issue, and that's not without reason. It's a trifle baffling why so many Democrats are choosing this hill to (metaphorically) die on, as the GOP can so easily paint this as a radical issue because it is a radical issue. There are, yes, people who genuinely suffer from gender dysphoria. It's unfortunate, it has been known to be a condition for many years, and it has historically been treated with therapy - not hormones and surgery. But the current social contagion that is "gender theory" has spun completely out of control, and now the GOP is finally calling the Democrats out on their support for an issue that advocates life-changing hormone therapies and surgeries - on minors, to boot.
See Related: The Transgender Movement Is on Life Support at This Point
And this issue is going to be a transient one. Social contagions always are, and they are never rational. Some of us are old enough to remember the tragic death of the lovely and talented Karen Carpenter to anorexia nervosa, and the attention her high-profile death put on that mental illness - and the possible increase in cases after her death. That was a social contagion, spread by newsprint and television; today's highly connected, information-age world allows social contagions like this to spread more quickly.
Democrats are banking on this social contagion lasting. That's not a safe bet.
Particularly galling to many people is the transgender athlete issue; namely, allowing men who cosplay as women to compete on women's sports teams. On Wednesday, Fox News host Harris Faulkner, no liberal herself, was surprised by the vehement opposition to this practice when it came up during her town hall meeting with former President Trump:
“How many of you are worried about biological men and boys competing against women and girls in sports?” Faulkner asked the audience. “That’s almost – that is the entire room.”
A different shot showed virtually every woman in the audience within the camera’s field of view raising their hands.
“We stop it. We stop it. We absolutely stop it. You can’t have it. It’s a man playing in the game,” Trump said after being asked a question on the topic by a woman whose granddaughters are involved in sports. “I mean, physically from a muscular standpoint. Even if it was a little bit less, maybe they do all sorts of tests and drugs and everything else. Look at what’s happened in swimming. Look at the records that are being broken.”
Read related: Fox News' 'The Faulkner Focus' Hosts a Women-Only Trump Town Hall in Battleground Georgia
This is the problem when a political party bases its platform on principals, not principles. What's more, one of the reasons Democrats have miscalculated so badly on this issue is that many of their traditional constituencies, such as Hispanics and young black men, are of a conservative mind when it comes to sexual and gender issues, and aren't inclined to support candidates who are so ambivalent about these basic attributes of humanity; not to mention having a Supreme Court nominee evade a question about identifying what a woman is by proclaiming, "I'm not a biologist."
You don't have to be a biologist to know that, Justice Jackson.
What remains to be seen is whether Democrats learn anything from this issue. Sooner or later this issue, like most social contagions, will fade away, leaving the few people who genuinely suffer from gender dysphoria - and who by and large don't seek publicity over their conditions. And then, the Democrats will find another social contagion to latch onto, anything that they think will gain votes for their candidates.
Principals. Not principles.
