The GOP risks blowing its 2024 chances by enlisting fringe pols and pushing issues normal voters don't care about

• The New York Times reported Trump wanted to hire far-right xenophone Laura Loomer to his campaign.
• The potential hire shows how far the Republican Party has moved from the median voter.

On Friday, the New York Times reported that former President Donald Trump told his aides to hire far-right xenophobic activist Laura Loomer to his campaign. It's just another example of how out of touch the Republican Party has become with the average voter.

Loomer, who Trump ultimately did not choose to hire, has an extensive history of hateful, Islamophobic speech. As the Times' piece points out, she previously called the religion of Islam a "cancer" and would tweet using the hashtag "proudislamophobe" before she was banned in 2018 for violating Twitter's hateful conduct policy.

Following Loomer's ban, she handcuffed herself to the doors of Twitter's New York headquarters while wearing a yellow "Star of David," a reference to what Jews in Germany were forced to wear under Nazi rule. She's since been reinstated on the platform after Elon Musk purchased it.

Voters really do not care about these fringe GOP issues

The possibility Trump will add Loomer to the staff of the campaign shows how far removed Trump's Republican Party has become from the median voter, whom the party desperately needs to attract if it has any chance of winning future presidential elections.

Just as Trump is potentially looking to hire Loomer, his rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has gotten into a dense legal battle with Disney, one of the nation's most beloved media companies.

DeSantis has championed countless controversial laws, such as ones that restrict students from accessing certain books, a decision that doesn't sit well with independents. He's also begun picking fights with businesses hosting drag shows, which has become another growing issue amongst many local GOP leaders, but not necessarily a whole lot of voters.

And Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate at the moment, has been a wild card on the campaign trail.

Following his arraignment in Manhattan, he flew back to his residence at Mar-A-Lago in Florida and, in a speech designed to argue his prosecution in New York was improper, instead meandered through a litany of right-wing talking points anyone not steeped in right-wing grievance culture likely wouldn't understand, including the "Hunter Biden laptop from hell," the military going "woke," and the allegation that George Soros is personally backing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.

Independent and moderate voters simply don't seem to care for "culture war" issues, like banning or restricting books —YouGov polling shows that only 40% of independents feel there's ever a time to ban a book or novel from a public school classroom or library. Additionally, nearly two-thirds of all respondents in a Data for Progress survey said they thought there was too much legislation across the country aimed at limiting the rights of transgender and gay people.

At the same time, having access to abortion has polled very well among Americans, the majority of whom disapproved of the Supreme Court's decision in mid-2022 to overturn the protections granted by Roe v. Wade.

Republicans are pursuing unpopular and controversial social policies

Trump and DeSantis aside, many Republican-led state legislatures in the country appear to have shifted their focus to issues like restricting transgender women from playing sports, making it a felony for transgender people to use a public bathroom at the same time as a minor, and seriously curtailing people's ability to easily access abortion services.

While supporting firearm owners has been on the Republican platform for decades, recent laws, such as one enacted by DeSantis that allows for permitless concealed carrying, poll horrifically among actual voters.

Republican-led state legislatures have also made it incredibly difficult to voice any displeasure with how easy it is to access guns. After three Tennessee state representatives (two who are Black, one who is white) recently led a protest to call for gun law reform after a shooter killed six at a private elementary school just days prior, the state legislature made headlines by only expelling the two Black representatives, Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, but not state Rep. Gloria Johnson. Pearson and Jones were the third and fourth legislators to be expelled from the Tennessee House in 157 years.

Meanwhile, Democrats are winning just by supporting the the fairly popular right to abortion

While Republicans keep platforming divisive people and issues, many in the Democratic Party have just been campaigning — and winning — by speaking out about the right to an abortion.

Supporting access to abortion is an easy win for Democrats, as a majority of Americans, according to a 2022 Pew poll, said that abortion should be legal in most or all cases.

By campaigning on access to abortion, the Democratic Party far exceeded expectations in the 2022 midterm elections, maintaining control of the Senate via a runoff win in Georgia and just barely losing control of the House. Democrats were elated just this past Tuesday when progressive candidate Janet Protasiewicz handily won her election to the state supreme court, where she's expected to rule on several abortion-related cases.

The Republican Party has yet to win the popular vote in presidential elections since 2004. Should the party keep hiring oddballs and pursuing culture war issues while failing to address substantive issues affecting the country, it's unclear that will change.