The Republican Party increasingly depends on young men for political relevancy and should stay in their good graces if it wants to survive beyond 2030.
Instead, mainstream Republicans continue to express outright disdain for young men, exemplified by a new ad from Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR). The spot touts her state’s efforts to comply with new welfare work requirements from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed last year.
The advertisement depicts “Brad,” a young man who refuses to work and has devoted his life to playing video games and eating junk food. Sanders’s narration reminds her audience that they must be aggrieved by Brad’s choices because “you actually work hard. You pay taxes to cover welfare for guys like Brad, who just choose not to work.”
The message concludes with Brad ditching his degenerate ways, putting on a tie, and going out to work, thanks, of course, to Sanders’s efforts to keep leeches like him off the government dole.
The problem is not that men like Brad exist. They do. The problem is choosing Brad as the representative young man belies a reality far more complicated than Sanders’s ad.
Brad probably has a job, but Uncle Sam takes a quarter of his paycheck for welfare payments to the large illegal immigrant family across the street that came here during the Biden years. As a resident of Arkansas, he has a slightly better shot at owning a home one day than his college friends living in urban areas across the South.
But Brad is not doing great, and this ad doesn’t make things better.
Young men consistently rank economic issues as their top political concern. These concerns are exacerbated by unaffordable housing, a rough job market made all the worse by several decades of female-biased discrimination, and the encroaching consequences of mass migration.
And what do politicians like Sanders tell them when they raise these concerns? Stop playing video games and get a life. That message is unlikely to help in the midterm elections.
The GOP, currently in a much worse position with young women and minority voters, must rely on consistent support from young men to achieve electoral success. Young men present a more reliable and consistent voting bloc than any group Republican consultants have stalked over the past several decades.
Thus, spurning them comes with deep political consequences.
Supporters of Sanders’s ad have accused critics of adopting the Left’s racial grievance politics. They argue that casting Brad as the face of welfare abuse in Arkansas was a colorblind decision rooted in the state’s demographic reality. Arkansas is majority white, and in a random sampling of welfare recipients, Brad is the least sympathetic figure.
Therein lies the problem.
Demographic accuracy only runs one way in modern media. Public service displays never include accurate depictions of the vagrants most likely to disturb the peace, while media giants go to great lengths to ensure that women and minority groups are never portrayed in an overly negative light.
Moviegoers are expected to suspend disbelief when the 5’1 girlboss takes down an army of broad-shouldered thugs, and fictional characters are frequently race-swapped with complete disregard for the characters’ historical description.
THE ONE WORD THAT LETS POLITICIANS GET AWAY WITH HAVING NO PLAN
Thus, Brad becomes a politically convenient punching bag — the sole option in a tumultuous sea of demographics. Is the average welfare scammer a 20-something gaming in his basement, Cheeto dust coating his fingers, and old Mountain Dew bottles littering his floor? No. But all the other options risk offending a protected group, so into the proverbial wood chipper Brad goes.
The choice to depict the slovenly Brad as the face of welfare fraud comes at the expense of a reliably Republican demographic growing disillusioned with politics, who have been told their entire lives they are the only group that does not get to respond when vilified. No one opposed to work requirements will be won over by that ad, but it very well could alienate young men inclined to vote Republican.
Chip Wyatt is government relations Director at Heritage Action.