'A bit cringe': These young Republicans think their older counterparts are saying 'woke' too much

07 March 2023

In right-wing media and the MAGA movement, the most overused word of 2023 is, according to critics, "woke." It's a word that MAGA Republicans and talk radio pundits will use indiscriminately to attack anything they dislike, whether it's abortion rights, drag queens, Democratic tax policy, Obamacare or environmental regulations.

Some non-Republicans also use the term "woke" in a negative way, including political comedian and “Real Time” host Bill Maher and veteran Democratic strategist James Carville. But Maher and Carville have very specific ideas about what they consider "wokeness" run amok.

Maher and Carville view "wokeness" as political correctness carried to an extreme and a departure from traditional liberalism. Maher's problem with wokeness is that he believes it isn’t liberalism.

The word "woke" was heard repeatedly at the recent 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where GOP presidential hopeful Nikki Haley attacked "wokeness" as a "virus more dangerous than any pandemic." Haley's critics slammed her rhetoric as ludicrous, pointing out how many people COVID-19 has killed. Figures from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore show that COVID-19’s global death toll is more than 6.8 million, including over 1.1 million fatalities in the United States.

According to Rolling Stone's Kara Voght, Republicans are hurting their cause with younger conservative voters because "woke" isn't a term they use.

Voght, in an article published on March 5, explains, "To attend the Conservative Political Action Conference is to find oneself on the front lines of the war against woke…. Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) argued Americans ought not to be governed by 'deeply weird, nauseously woke people who hate George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Seuss, and Mr. Potato Head.' Ron DeSantis, grand poobah of the anti-woke, wasn't there, but Moms for Liberty, the DeSantis-championing 'parents' rights' group, was, its members milling outside the main hall in navy 'STOP WOKE' t-shirts. To the young Republicans in attendance, the vernacular feels a bit cringe."

Rolling Stone interviewed some of the younger Republicans who attended CPAC 2023 and believe that conservatives in their forties, fifties or older are using the term "woke" way too much.

Evan Masse, a CPAC attendee who goes to the Community College of Rhode Island, said of voters his age, "We don’t really use 'woke' as our term."

Chris Johnson, who serves as managing director of Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends, told Rolling Stone, "I think a lot of older folks use it if they don’t really know what they’re referring to. It's a catchall colloquialism."

Another young conservative attending CPAC 2023, Brigham Young University student Quincy Azimi-Tabrizi, believes that overusing "woke" is a turnoff to Generation Z voters and college students.

Azimi-Tabrizi, who would like to see DeSantis as the Republican Party's 2024 presidential nominee, told Rolling Stone, "I think that a lot of young people — when older conservative say 'woke' — they feel very attacked. You're turning off a younger movement of the party by labeling all young people as 'woke.' So absolutely, I would very much discourage that."

Read Rolling Stone's full report at this link (subscription required).

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