Inflation keeps taking a toll on paychecks, the war with Iran continues with no end in sight, and the president and his family continue to shamelessly line their pockets. So what do Republicans think the voters want to hear?

Attacks on trans rights. 

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In a fit of desperation, Republicans are back to claiming that Democrats are virtually mandating sex-reassignment surgeries for young children in hopes of distracting voters from – well, everything bad that they are experiencing, thanks to the president and his party.

Unfortunately for Republicans, the gambit isn’t working. In fact, there’s a question as to whether it ever did.

The perfect example of just how badly the effort is failing is in Texas. If any state would seem amenable to a message trashing trans people, it would be Texas. The state has long been controlled by Republicans who have made attacking trans rights (and LGBTQ+ rights generally) a trademark of their policy. The state has banned trans athletes from competing in sports. It has blocked trans people from changing the sex marker on their birth certificates. The state has not only banned health care for trans youth, but it has gone after providers outside the state seeking personal medical records. The state even tried to investigate the parents of trans youth for child abuse before it was stopped by a court. The list goes on and on.

The personification of this anti-trans policy is the GOP’s Senate nominee, Ken Paxton. As Texas attorney general, Paxton went out of his way to wage war against trans Texans. And yet Paxton is lagging in the polls behind Democratic nominee James Talarico in a race that is far closer than anyone thought possible.

Some of that is due to Paxton himself, a particularly noxious choice as a candidate, even for Republicans. He’s been indicted for securities fraud, admitted to an adulterous affair, and trailed a string of scandals that would fit right in at the Trump White House. In a sign of just how dreadful he is, his soon-to-be ex-wife cut an ad for him that essentially said that he’s a dirtbag, but vote for him anyway. She couldn’t bring herself to even mention his name.

But being an awful person hasn’t been a barrier to success in the past. Sen. Ted Cruz doesn’t have flamboyant scandals to his name the way Paxton does, but he is widely disliked, even by fellow Republicans. Texas voters have elected Cruz to the Senate three times.

The problem isn’t just Paxton. The real problem is that Donald Trump is toxic. Voters are fed up with the direction of the country and rightly lay their dissatisfaction at the Republican Party’s feet.

Given everything going wrong, what other card do Republicans have to play? The only thing they have is culture war issues, and even there, just one: trans rights. (The White House has made an explicit effort to avoid mentioning abortion until after November.) Yet, as Erin in the Morning has reported, even American Principles Project, which has bankrolled a lot of attacks on trans rights, acknowledged last month that the attack ads “may not be sufficient” to overcome voters’ disdain for the GOP.

However, if Republicans can’t hold back the tide of fury directed at them, they can put Democrats on the defensive. Sadly, Democrats keep rising to the bait. Candidates like Rep. Marcy Kaptur in Ohio think that punching down is the way to victory. By accepting the framing that Republicans have about trans rights, Democrats provide credibility to the bigotry.

Does anyone really think that a voter who is adamantly opposed to trans rights is going to be the kind of voter who will ever vote for a Democrat? The real issue is that Democrats don’t want to look too “extremist” to the average voter. 

Democrats could reframe the issues themselves. In an essay saying that the phrase “culture wars” should be discarded, The New Republic’s Perry Bacon hits the nail on the head. “The reality is that there are no silly culture wars happening in America,” he wrote. “There are equality wars and justice wars and fairness wars. Democrats should try to win those wars—and the elections that involve them.”

Moreover, at a time when voters are longing for authenticity from candidates, being forthright about their beliefs is a big plus, instead of coming across as poll-testing every statement. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who has called anti-trans ads “gross” and “cruel,” has been blunt about not making trans people a political punching bag.

“We don’t throw anybody under the bus. That is not the party that we are, we start as a party of compassion and empathy,” he said last week. Beshear, a Democrat in Mitch McConnell’s home state, remains popular with voters.

Finally, the biggest irony may be that, for all the Republicans’ desperation and Democrats’ fears, the effect of anti-trans ads may be exaggerated.

“It’s very clear Republicans think this works, and even when you listen to political pundits talk about this on CNN or elsewhere, they seem to have accepted this idea,” Don Haider-Markel, a professor at the University of Kansas who has studied the links between public opinion and policy for 25 years, told Assigned Media. “But as a social scientist, I can say there aren’t any studies to say this worked in 2024. And the evidence from special elections and off-cycle elections in 2025 suggests that it didn’t help Republicans at all.”

We will know more in just four weeks. In the meantime, perhaps Republicans should realize that they can’t scaremonger their way out of a mess of their own making.