The GOP Blew It By Calling Everything ‘Woke’
You know what they say about lies, damn lies, and statistics. If the findings of a new USA TODAY/Ipsos poll are correct, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis might want to find a term other than “woke” to define the enemy of his culture war.
But a deeper dive shows the debate is more complicated than most headlines might indicate.
According to the survey, a majority (56 percent) think “woke” means “to be informed, educated on, and aware of social injustices,” while 39 percent believe it means “to be overly politically correct and police others’ words.” At a minimum, this suggests culture warriors on the right have failed to make the term woke an effective political pejorative, the way that the word “liberal” became a drag on Democrats beginning in the 1980s.