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Former President Donald Trump appears to be in real trouble in New York and Georgia as investigations into his business practices and in his efforts to bully Georgia elections officials seem to have prosecutors on the brink of filing criminal charges against him.

Trump was already walking on thin ice within the Republican Party due to the fiasco of the mid-term elections that most certainly didnt go the way Republican officials had hoped. He has borne much of the blame for that poor performance and now, with revelations from the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit against Fox News, it is apparent even the hosts on that network knew he was lying about the election.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appears to be gaining an edge on Trump, assuming he declares for the presidency. The question Republican voters must confront is if the man who is at the forefront of the culture war is the right man to lead the party.

DeSantis recent push in Florida to ban books in schools, control school curriculums, and push for restrictions on health care for people with sexual identity issues might at first seem like a winning strategy with conservative voters. If you look beyond the surface, problems become quickly visible.

The problem for Republicans is that DeSantis message is playing to a diminishing segment of the population, that being older, very conservative voters, many of whom have deeply held religious beliefs. That is a core demographic of the conservative party and DeSantis is not wrong to play to that group. It is his choice of issues that needs questioning.

The danger in this strategy lies in the fact that this voting group cant elect him president. He will need moderately conservative voters and not a few of those all-important swing voters who do not identify as either conservative or liberal. They are the ones he must convince that he is the man for the job.

This leaves one wondering if the strategy of belligerence he is pursuing in Florida is going to play well nationally and particularly with that group of voters. The whole issue of transgender and gender identity issues is a relatively small issue, but it carries with it large ramifications.

Only a tiny percentage of the population has gender identity issues. This means the DeSantis is making a mountain out of a molehill for potential political gain. The same thing goes with the attempt to ban books in the public schools. I believe many of the books targeted deal with sexual identity issues. Again, we are talking about a tiny percentage of the books in the school libraries and a tiny percentage of people who might read them.

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This is purely opinion, but I think that conservative parents who back this sort of book-banning fear that their child might read the books and then develop a desire to become homosexual or transgender or have some kind of sexual identity crisis. That is an unrealistic fear, but it is a fear that DeSantis is leveraging for political gain.

Think about it for a moment. I dont like the first-person shooter games that most kids play online. Nevertheless, though it might desensitize them to violence, simply playing a video game or reading a book about guns doesnt transform kids into mass murderers. In like manner, the likelihood of kids reading books about trans people isnt going to produce a tidal wave of sex changes in Floridas youth.

These issues are but a microcosm of the overall culture war that is being fought on Americas airwaves and on the internet all the time. Fears of transgender people somehow mucking up the system are mostly just that; fear. It is largely a non-issue that is being turned into an issue because media providers know controversy sells and this is an excellent controversy to stir up because it hits at parents fears.

The culture war is mostly about fear-mongering to begin with. If you dont recognize that, you have lost the battle. Do you remember the transgender bathroom issue that was raised during the last few years of Barack Obamas presidency? Yeah, how many trans people have you run across in public bathrooms? It wasnt a problem then and it isnt a problem now. In fact, if you have been in a public restroom with a trans person, you likely didnt even know it.

The problem with the conservative approach to the culture wars is that we are pushing away the next generation of voters to play to the fears of older voters today. The older voters wont be around in a few years, but those who are young today will be in the arms of the Democrats and will be essentially a lost generation to Republicans. Short-sighted politicians of today are losing tomorrows elections. Since the culture war is mostly about political posturing rather than true conviction, it seems to me that it makes a great deal of sense to position conservatism to make future gains rather than give up the future over what is essentially a non-issue.

Gary Cosby Jr. is the photo editor of The Tuscaloosa News. Readers can email him at gary.cosby@tuscaloosanews.com.

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Fighting the culture war for political gain | GARY COSBY JR. - Tuscaloosa Magazine