Is fighting woke America still important to Republicans?

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis built his entire pitch for president around that idea the United States needed a strong leader to fight the 'woke mind virus'. But all of DeSantis' efforts didn't help him stay in the GOP primary race after he lost to Donald Trump in Iowa.

What happened to DeSantis has led many to ask if woke politics are still important to Republicans. It's a difficult question to answer but not one that isn't without some evidence that suggests Republicans wanted their political candidates to focus on other issues.

For example, polling from the New York Times and Siena College conducted in late July 2023 of 1329 registered voters nationwide, including 818 registered Republicans, showed most GOP voters weren’t as interested in defeating woke ideology as they were in restoring law and order. 

Potential Republican voters were asked a series of questions which included who they would choose between two hypothetical candidates running for the GOP presidential nomination. 

Republicans were asked to choose between a candidate that promised to defeat woke left ideology in “schools, media, and culture” or a candidate focused on “restoring law and order in our streets and at the border.”

An overwhelming majority of voters (65%) preferred the hypothetical candidate focused on law and order while 24% of people chose the candidate focused on defeating woke left ideology and 11% said they didn’t know or refused to answer. 

The results appeared as if they indicated that the idea of defeating woke ideology was dead among all but the most extreme Republican base, and additional results from the poll supported such an argument. 

When likely Republican voters were asked if they’d support a candidate who promised to fight corporations promoting woke left ideology or a candidate who said they would stay out of what corporations could support, 52% said they’d support the latter candidate. 

Only 38% of respondents said they would support the candidate who promised to fight corporations that promoted woke left ideology, a result that was certainly important for any candidate looking to unseat Donald Trump as the GOP frontrunner at that time. 

Ron DeSantis was Trump’s closest runner-up at that time with 17% of the vote according to a separate July 31st New York Times and Siena College poll. It was an interesting statistic based on the Florida Governor’s position in the GOP presidential nomination race as its biggest warrior against woke ideology. 

DeSantis made his many battles against woke ideology in Florida the centerpiece of his campaign but it didn't propel him into the top spot for the Republican nomination, a fact the New York Times’ Jonathan Weisman noted might have been explained by the news outlet's July poll that explored Republican thoughts on anti-woke candidates.

“The findings hint why Mr. DeSantis, who has made his battles with 'woke' schools and corporations central to his campaign, is struggling,” Weisman wrote. 

Weisman spoke to one Republican voter who said that she didn’t like woke ideology but that it wasn't the main driver of her political decisions: “If you don’t like what Disney is doing, don’t go. That’s not the government’s responsibility,” said Christy Boyd.

However, there have been more recent indications that fighting 'woke-ism' wasn't as powerful a political tool as it had been in 2020 according to The Guardian's David Smith, who wrote in the wake of DeSantis' departure from the GOP Primary that culture war issues were waning.  

"His timing was off. Culture war issues had been all the rage during the coronavirus pandemic – masks, vaccines, school closures – then morphed into a parents’ rights movement around book bans, critical race theory, and transgender children’s access to bathrooms and sports," Smith explained. 

"By the time the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary came around, the pandemic had faded and masks were rarely seen. DeSantis’s accusations that Trump palled around with Dr Anthony Fauci and forced national lockdowns, while Florida stayed open had lost their resonance," Smith continued. 

Smith added that the limitations of fighting the woke were exposed when groups like Moms for Liberty, an organization focused on keeping perceived left-wing issues out of school curriculum, didn't do well in November 2023 school board elections in states where it was believed they would do well. 

How DeSantis' war of woke played out has now become clear. His approach to the primary and casting himself as the Republican warrior against woke made little difference in the primary. But one question remains: Will Republicans continue to fight the war on woke, or will it fade into political obscurity?

In June 2023. Trump criticized the use of the word woke while campaigning in Iowa, saying: “I don’t like the term ‘woke’ because I hear, ‘Woke, woke, woke.’ It’s just a term they use, half the people can’t even define it, they don’t know what it is.”