Being Called 'Weird' Is Only Making Republicans Weirder

Republicans are weird. There’s no reason in the world for anyone to know this much about the birth rate, or for anyone to write bill after bill about children’s genitals and school locker rooms. And after years of terrorizing the populace with their policymaking rooted in this fundamental weirdness, it turns out the GOP really doesn’t like being called “weird.” But first, let’s rewind to how we got here. There’s been something of a political vibe shift since President Joe Biden stepped down from his reelection bid and passed the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris. A big part of that vibe shift has been her campaign’s willingness to embrace the absurd and get a little silly with it (ie. Kamala HQ’s brat-styled header image). Enter Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D), a frontrunner in Harris’ veepstakes and, as of last week, a rising progressive darling. On MSNBC, Walz read the Republican Party’s whole thing for filth: "These are weird people on the other side. They want to take books away. They want to be in your exam room," he said. "That's what it comes down to. And don't, you know, get sugarcoating this. These are weird ideas." He’s only doubled down, quote-tweeting clips of Trump speeches, “Say it with me: Weird.”  Say it with me: Weird. https://t.co/3V8Zx3nUYI — Tim Walz (@Tim_Walz) July 25, 2024 The Harris campaign has since adopted this ethos, particularly zooming in on GOP vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance’s obsession with “childless” people: “JD Vance is weird,” reads one Friday press release from the campaign, which then quotes Vance's offensive conspiracy theory from 2021 that overturning Roe v. Wade would lead to Democratic donors flying out "Black women to get them to go have abortions in California." Meanwhile Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D)—another veepstakes contestant—has gone all in on some of the most absurd, weird-coded headlines about Vance: "There are a lot of weird, strange things coming out of both the Republican nominee and the vice-presidential nominee ... Donald Trump's fear of sharks ... talk about couches and dolphins,” he said in a Monday press conference. On the “White Dudes for Harris” call (which, lol) that same evening, Pritzker concluded by telling attendees he’d next see them on the "Couches Against Trump” Zoom. In other words, Democrats seem to have thrown eight years of "when they go low, we go high" to the wind—Republicans are weird and it's time to tell voters this. IL Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) on the bizarre past few days for the Trump-Vance ticket: "There are a lot of weird, strange things coming out of both the Republican nominee and the vice-presidential nominee ... Donald Trump's fear of sharks ... talk about couches and dolphins..." pic.twitter.com/lRtXfpC3Jn — Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) July 29, 2024 Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has tried to “I know you are but what am I???” his party out of this mess, sharing a five-year-old opinion column about Harris from a right-wing writer who alleged Harris avoided eye contact with junior staffers: "This is... weird," Cruz wrote. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) has responded to the "weird" attack by invoking a pitiful personal anecdote: “They called us weird so I’ll call them weirder. That’s what I used to do back in high school," he told reporters on Tuesday. Vance, too, recently shared a video of Harris, gasp!, sharing her pronouns, tweeting, “JD Vance is weird.” As anyone with an elementary grasp of how the internet works would’ve predicted, Twitter users seized on his tweet, and screenshots of Vance tweeting “JD Vance is weird” are currently making a killing on the website.  "JD Vance…