There’s a trending piece on Politico titled, “How Republicans Became the ‘Barstool’ Party”. In part a profile of podcaster Dave Portnoy and his “Barstool Sports” empire-ette, the author, Derek Robertson, writes, ” … the Barstool Republican now largely defines the Republican coalition because of his willingness to dispense with his party’s conventional policy wisdom on anything — the social safety net, drug laws, abortion access — as long as it means one thing: he doesn’t have to vote for some snooty Democrat, and, by proxy, the caste of lousy deans that props up the left’s politically-correct cultural regime.”
I think of myself as a connoisseur of barstool conversations. It’s an acquired taste to be sure. But from the Florida Keys to Forks, Washington and various rural outposts in between there’s something to be gleaned from what (mostly) men and women talk about over cheap beer in familiar hang-outs.
As presently populated, the Republican party is, as we all know, chockful of serious crazy. From sanctimonious evangelicals who have no problem cheering on a flagrantly unethical, thrice-married, porn-star-banging philanderer, to shameless racists and anti-Semites toting rifles and torches through American streets in the name of protecting northern European purity … as God intended it.
But, IMHO, the conceit of “Barstool Republican” injects something just as if not more useful than mere delusional religiosity and racism into attempts at understanding conservative politics, circa 2021.
On this side of the yawning chasm the realization settled in quite some time ago that the average Trumper doesn’t give two Lite damns about tax policy, or NATO or whether their obese, Depends-wearing, spray-tanned leader is really just a middle-man money launderer for Russian gangsters as long as he helps them “own the libs.”
The phenotype, “Barstool Republican” builds a handy definitional corral around pretty much every imaginable conservative sub-group. (The term “phenotype” refers to the observable physical properties of an organism; these include the organism’s appearance, development, and behavior.)
Portnoy’s appeal is a natural, direct line outgrowth of morning drive radio, as heard in virtually every large city in the USA. Think Tom Barnard here in the Twin Cities, or Howard Stern nationally. The ingredients of the appeal — to 18-54 year-old blue collar males primarily — are porn-y vulgarity, regular assertions of hard-won street wisdom and persistent criticism and attacks on the “over-protected”, which as practiced in morning drive usually means racial minorities and women too uptight to shake their booty for a cold beer.
I’m sorry I don’t have any numbers, but this is a crowd I see a lot of “out there” in Sarah Palin’s “Real America”, and one I dare anyone to tell me is smaller than mega-church zealots.
These folks, nursing their $3 tap brew at Middlegate Station in central Nevada or the No Name Pub on Big Pine Key, claim to “hate all politicians”, never suggest any interest in religion, share endless stories of the “assholes and idiots” who commanded them if they were in the military and belly ache constantly about the boss they have today … if they’re currently employed. Then you get to the wildly suspect information they trade about liberal “giveaways”, regulations and “la la land bullshit” about cleaning up the planet.
But as bad as all that is, nothing gets them singing the same chorus as when talk turns to “limp dick” liberals, their “bitch/bull dyke” women, and all the “asinine” rules “those morons” are trying to “shove down our throats.” Much as they hate politics, anyone who takes a slap at that crowd gets their vote … if they’re not busy hunting on election day.
There’s a reason “nihilism” is routinely bandied about when this type of value-free Republican is mentioned. But the thing is they do have values, just not much in the way of standing up for basic rights for … well, you know, the whole liberal litany of the oppressed. And that’s because they see themselves as the oppressed. Primarily by anyone in authority over them.
They are the hard-working/hard-playing straight guys who just want to be left alone to make whatever jokes they want about women, gays, Jews, blacks, Mexicans, Asians and whoever else is getting “special treatment” and who make them feel uncomfortable any time they’re around.
As I say, my suspicion is that Barstool Republicans, whether knocking them back in Oklahoma or out the 494 Strip, represent a far larger bloc of reliable Republican voter than the classic science-and-fact averse evangelical, the focus of so much liberal angst.
They are a crowd some Democrat somewhere, somehow, has to pull over to the light.
Unfortunately, lacking any pastor-like figures other than crude, in-it-for-the-money shock jocks, the Barstool kids might be even less reachable than the moony-eyed parishioners staring up from the pews at your local Abundant Life Dollars-for-Jesus palace.