The Republican Samson Option

In a podcast with my good friend Stormy Waters, we explored my hunch that there is a deliberate attempt to blame the so-called “Woke Right” for a fracturing Republican base and poor performance in upcoming elections.

I contend that this strategy, which involves deliberately harming the party in the short term to provide ammunition for their attack, is comparable to a murder suicide. Just like the modern nation of Israel, the Neo-conservatives are willing to kill the GOP, or the nominal right, rather than allow it to move under the control of ideological enemies. This is the Republican Samson Option.

For context, the Samson Option is Israel’s deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons as a “last resort” to an overwhelming military defeat. Speculation that the pariah state has nukes aimed at erstwhile allies to punish them for allowing the Middle Eastern Democracy to fall is rampant.

The name is a reference to the biblical figure of Samson, who, in the book of Judges, pushed apart the pillars of a Philistine temple, bringing down the roof and killing himself alongside thousands of enemies who had imprisoned him. In popular culture, the term has become a byword for a murder-suicide relationship where one party will doom themselves to ensure the destruction of the other.

The plan is essentially to allow or engineer electoral losses and blame the “woke right” for being “too extreme,” for alienating women, minorities, and suburban voters. After the defeat, the neo-conservatives will mirror Bill Buckley and purge anyone who can be defamed as “woke.” In their place, industry plants, with clear loyalties, will step in as gatekeepers.

A battle is raging within the GOP among several factions. The Neocons and the establishment Republicans who enjoyed complete control of the party pre-MAGA want to regain their hegemony after Trump retires from politics. They fear the nascent nationalist/tech-elite wing represented by JD Vance and other figures connected to Peter Thiel.

First, the blame, which is perhaps the easiest element to identify. As conservative visionary Brilyn Hollyhand wrote in “👀 The ‘Woke Right’ Is the Left’s Mistake Repeated.”

If we sit on our hands and allow the mainstreaming of people fantasizing rape, idolizing Stalin, and proudly saying they’re “team Hitler,” we don’t just lose every election going forward by legitimizing the Left’s lie that we’re Hitler juniors — we lose the moral war that conservatives are supposed to uphold.

If we keep excusing this crowd in the name of “unity” or “winning,” we’ll lose something far greater than an election — we’ll lose our credibility.

The argument is that if we “allow the mainstreaming” of specific figures, electoral disaster is sure to follow. This is clearly a call for cancellation. There is an additional layer of conservative moral posturing that will likely intensify as GOP defeats mount.

Others, such as Rod Dreher, have used the term Groyper in a similar context to signal that specific figures are beyond the pale and have no place in allowable discourse. Quoting a “MAGA Zoomer, a policy wonk who is a person of color,” Dreher noted:

“These idiots don’t understand that they can’t win an election on a whites-only platform,” he said. “They’re delusional. There are a lot of immigrants and native-born members of ethnic groups who are natural Republicans, and whom Donald Trump won in 2024. Take Indians, for example — if you think they are going to stick with a movement whose leader [Fuentes] denounces Usha Vance as a ‘jeet,’ you’re crazy. But that’s how they think.”

Setting aside the fact that 58% of ethnic Indians voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, the argument is the same as Hollyhand’s. Genuine right-wing values are non-viable, and the conservative movement must discard these heretics.

It bears mention that there is a desire to extend the purge to both media figures like Tucker Carlson and Vice President JD Vance. These dishonest actors seek to draw a line that connects controversial figures such as Nick Fuentes, obliquely mentioned in both quotes, to a broader woke right that includes Vance and the former Fox News host.

These calls have even extended into government. James Lindsay, whom I refer to all too often, recently attempted to cancel a Trump Administration figure for being a part of the shadowy woke right.

The younger men who run the social media accounts for Department of Labor (don’t know who it is) and Department of Homeland Security (very likely Micah Bock, recent Claremont Lincoln Fellow) are Woke Right, if not Groypers, if not neo-Nazis, and should be fired immediately.

As I understand it, these dishonorable actors are telling the conservative base that the woke right has corrupted the youth through figures like Funtes, and that a large part of the nominal right has fallen to the “Woke Mind-Virus.” The term groyper, again used cynically and tactically, is a hallmark of this strategy.

Assuming that the desire to blame a sectarian woke right is coming from Neo-conservatives, or their ideological successors, where is the evidence of a deliberate attempt to crash the party?

Perhaps the best example of a deliberately poor candidate is Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy, who is running for Ohio governor. Despite Trump handily winning the state by over 10 points, Vivek is trailing in the most recent polls. According to my research, Vivek is down by one point to a thoroughly unimpressive Democrat.

As evidenced by his recent remarks at AmFest, Mr. Ramaswamy holds a thoroughly liberal, mystical view of American identity. In addition to denouncing the concept of a Heritage American, he blasted many of the anti-immigration attitudes that motivate the MAGA movement.

I don’t mean to overstate my point. Clearly, Vivek and his friends at the GOP would be pleased to have a Republican governor in Columbus, but the groundwork has already been laid to blame a defeat on the so-called “Woke Right” and to clean house afterwards. The race in Ohio is entirely winnable, as the 2024 election results show, but that would require a better candidate.

Others have noted this trend. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced her intention to leave her seat. While many have criticised her for her move, she appears to have identified the threat and chosen to step back from the field. How can the woke right be blamed when the woke right isn’t here anymore?

Many cultural figures have picked up on the Neco-con scheme and put themselves forward as hall monitors-in-waiting. Take, for example, Bari Weiss, who has suggested that her role is to define the “40 yards of acceptable discourse” and explicitly plans to replace hated figures like Tucker Carlson with noted massage enthusiast Alan Dershowitz. Lindsay seems to be playing the same game.

Initially, I was confused by the rise of the term “Woke-Right.” As I wrote last week, the term seemed like a cheap attempt by aging centerist liberals to continue cashing in on anti-woke content by extending the same business model to the emergent right.

While financial motivations are clearly a significant part of the grift, there is much more at play here. The “Woke-Right” and other slurs are part of a coordinated push to return the American Right to its previous status as a jobs program for the failed sons of the political class and as an advocate for foreign interests. Even if this neutered party fails in elections, its true purpose, as controlled opposition that ultimately prevents any real break from neoconservative foreign policy, will be secure.

There is no reason this plan should go unopposed. Clearly, the recent attempts at cancelling have failed. Nor does the battle mean that Vance is our friend, simply that the Israel lobby and their pet conservatives want to see him sidelined.