Young Republicans are begging uncool, out of touch party elders to stop saying "woke"

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD. —
During her speech on Friday, 2024 hopeful Nikki Haley deemed “wokeness” a “virus more dangerous than any pandemic.” 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. “We don’t really use ‘woke’ as our term,” says Evan Masse, a student at the Community College of Rhode Island. Chris Johnson, the managing director of Young Conservatives for Carbon Dividends, likened its use to how an out-of-touch uncle might search for the words to describe a nephew at the Thanksgiving table. “I think a lot of older folks use it if they don’t really know what they’re referring to,” he says. “It’s a catchall colloquialism.”

Several young conservatives I spoke with at CPAC echoed some version of that criticism of party elders. Some worry that going so hard on “woke” — a term now used almost entirely derogatorily by Republican detractors — will turn off upcoming generations of voters already disinclined to support the GOP. Others simply said it had lost its meaning, as many once-favored slang terms do, when the septuagenarians in Congress started punctuating their Fox News hits with it. This next generation of GOP activists nevertheless support the principles behind the “woke” wars — the market basket of education- and gender-related policies being passed in red states across the country. They just really wish the Olds would stop saying “woke.”

Not once did the panelists utter Fox News’ favorite word. Why not? Azimi-Tabrizi says it contradicts her party’s need to expand its narrow hold on socially liberal Gen Z. “I think that a lot of young people — when older conservative say ‘woke’ — they feel very attacked,” she explains. “You’re turning off a younger movement of the party by labeling all young people as ‘woke.’ So absolutely, I would very much disencourage that.” Hochman noted he’d written an essay declaring his intention to abandon the term “woke” — one that describes a “pang of embarrassment” he felt whenever “boomer-friendly media presents wokeness in ‘will-you-get-a-load-of-this-s***’ segments,” he wrote.

Young Republicans Are Begging Party Elders To Stop Saying ‘Woke’



It was only a matter of time before youngsters got tired of the old fogies ruining the word. I've seen a couple of righty nutcases refer to a damn alligator as "woke" (Louisiana Republicans are a special breed). They're trying so hard to be witty and hip, but just end up looking ridiculous. These people call Democrats sheep, yet they're the ones following the herd, especially with that one word in particular.

 

Sounds like a certain contingent on Too Hot