How Republicans Can Exploit Democrats’ Intersectional Obsession To Peel Muslim Voters Away
The Democrat Party’s great firewall is the intersectional coalition’s alliance with its hard-left base. Various ethnic and sexual identitarian groups, along with these hardline leftists, have found common cause in their opposition to Republicans and, as such, overwhelmingly throw their support behind Democrats.
But this opposition to Republicans is about all that unites them politically. Far more divides them culturally, and as a diverse coalition with a multitude of interests, they view the Democrat Party as a means to wildly different ends. This causes friction along fault lines that, if Republican operatives were intelligent, they would exploit with gusto.
Take, for instance, Islam’s opposition to one of Democrats’ most important stances: emboldening homosexuality and transgenderism.
This past weekend, after arguing with parental rights activist BillBoard Chris about transitioning children at the London Palestine protest, a black bloc Antifa member clashed with three Muslim women over whether children could be transgender.
“[In] the three Abrahamic religions, LGBTQ is forbidden,” one of the women said. “In some religions, they accept [transgenderism], but in our religion, you can’t do that,” said another before the exasperated Antifa member stormed off.
Similarly, in October 2022, Muslim parents in Dearborn, Michigan, gathered en masse to protest the inclusion of gender ideology in public school curricula.
Further, this past June, in Hamtramck, Michigan, a Muslim-majority city council voted to ban LGBT pride flags from city property. In response, the city’s Democrat mayor said she felt a “sense of betrayal.”
Islam is a socially conservative religion, and in years past, Muslims were strong supporters of Republicans. Seventy percent of Muslim voters supported George Bush in the 2000 election but have since soured on the GOP, with a majority now supporting Democrats.
To regain ground with Muslims, the GOP would need to drastically alter several policy approaches that it and its constituencies care deeply about — such as immigration and support of Israel — while attempting to chip away at the intersectional coalition. Making concessions to excite voter turnout in one overwhelmingly unaligned demographic is not an effective use of time or resources, so why not just make it harder for Democrats to get those votes?
It’s clear that Democrat stances are falling out of favor with large swaths of Muslim voters. Whether it’s compulsory support for transgenderism or the Biden administration’s response to the Israel-Hamas war, Muslims are unhappy.
[READ: What I Saw At The ‘Free Palestine’ March In D.C.]
Republicans should capitalize upon this and run ads in cities with considerable Muslim populations — like Dearborn, Michigan; Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Cleveland, Ohio — reminding them that President Biden and the Democrats have failed them.
The Democrats’ identitarian caucus, initially assembled by Barack Obama to propel him into the White House, is a cynical arrangement that has done nothing but erode American civic identity and make it easier for people to resent their neighbors. Exploiting its fault lines and tearing it apart would be a net positive.
Samuel Mangold-Lenett is a staff editor at The Federalist. His writing has been featured in the Daily Wire, Townhall, The American Spectator, and other outlets. He is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @smlenett.
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