Republicans are convinced that transphobia is the way to win election in 2024

At last week’s Republican presidential candidate debate, the majority of the seven participants made it clear that they agree on one thing: they hate trans people.

Given a chance to talk about education policy, former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy all saw it as a chance to slam trans people.

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Haley used the dog whistle of “parents’ rights,” while Ramaswamy decided to embrace the bigotry full-on.  “Transgenderism, especially in kids, is a mental health disorder,” he declared, defying medical authorities.

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As tempting as it is to dismiss the rhetoric on the stage as the sputterings from single-digit losers, the fact is the attacks are a preview of what’s to come in the 2024 campaign.

The GOP hardly has any stand on anything anymore. Its 2020 party platform was literally the 2016 party platform, which was noteworthy for the vehemence of its anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. But when it comes to trans issues, the party has staked its electoral hopes on being as vicious as it can possibly be.

A lot of the appeal of DeSantis, the supposed Trump slayer, was that he was able to do things that Donald Trump only talked about. Chief among these was DeSantis’ attacks on trans rights. Florida may have passed a measure nicknamed the Don’t Say Gay law, but DeSantis clearly sees the measure as targeting trans people.

“In the state of Florida, we are not going to allow them to inject transgenderism into kindergarten,” DeSantis said. (No one was doing that, of course.) “First graders shouldn’t have woke gender ideology in their curriculums. And that’s what we’re standing for.”

DeSantis is dropping like a rock in the polls, so his national aspirations are virtually dead at this point. But his campaign strategy, such as it is, is to appeal to conservative evangelicals in hopes of peeling support away from Trump.

But why vote for the imitation when you can have the real thing? The only thing that DeSantis has right is identifying the issue that Republicans will rely upon in 2024 to drive turnout among their base.

Just as the GOP used anti-marriage ballot initiatives in 2004 to boost turnout for George W. Bush, Republicans seem to believe that hammering on trans issues will help them drive voters to the polls next year.

The presumptive nominee, Donald Trump, has been amping up his own anti-trans rhetoric on the campaign trail. Last week in California, he said that children were being whisked away from their parents and subjected to “sexual mutilation.” In remarks at a Moms for Liberty summit, he has promised to ban federal agencies from supporting gender-affirming care not only for trans youth but for trans people of any age.

There is a risk that the rhetoric will backfire. Polls consistently find that a majority of Americans disapprove of anti-trans laws. A CBS poll found that more than 80 percent of Republicans thought efforts to promote trans rights were going too far. That’s the audience that Trump and other GOP candidates are targeting.

In short, the party resides within its own bubble. Previously, candidates would appeal to their base during the primary and then swing to the middle during the general campaign to win over other voters. With Republicans, only other Republicans matter. That means bashing trans people over and over again. It may not be a recipe for electoral success, but that doesn’t lessen the damage it will cause in the meantime.