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The GOP didnt start the culture wars, Sen. Tom Cotton told The Daily Caller News Foundation, but they owe it to normal Americans to stand up and fight back.

The liberals have been waging a culture war on normal Americans for a very long time now, and its well past time now for all Republicans to join it, fight it, and win it, Cotton, R-Ark., told The Daily Caller News Foundation during a June 29 interview in Sioux Center, Iowa.

Republican Study Committee Chairman Jim Banks, R-Ind.,sent an internal memo June 24urging his colleagues to fight back against the ideology of critical race theory and the racial essentialism that it teaches.

Heres the good news, Banks told Republicans, we are winning.

My encouragement to you islean into it, Banks added.

Cotton emphasized that Republicans did not start the culture wars, noting that even during former President Barack Obamas administration, Democrats were persecuting Catholic nuns, trying to force them to pay for birth control.

Cotton said, Fifteen to 20 years before that, no Democrat would have supported something like that, but the partys become so radical on some of these issues that they are far beyond asking for toleration for different ways of life, different viewpoints.

Democrats dont just want acceptance on political and religious matters, Cotton said, they want to enforce celebration and use the punitive power of the law and of the federal government to enforce their far-left worldview.

Its not even popular, not even with their own voters, certainly not with independents and Republicans, the Arkansas senator said. I think its important that Republicans realize normal Americans expect us to stand up and fight back, oftentimes in the name of common sense.

Cotton mentioned several areas where conservatives should push back against progressive agendas on commonsense grounds:

Of course, you should not have boys competing in girls sports, how is it fair to those girls? Of course, we should not teach our children the lie that America is fundamentally flawed or systematically racist, that you should be ashamed to live in America. We should teach them to be proud to live in the freest and greatest country in our history. We should teach them times weve failed to live up to our high ideals, but also teach them all the times weve made progress towards those ideals as well.

These are basic concepts, Cotton said, but liberal elites in Washington caught in their own bubble simply dont see this.

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Left Started Culture Wars, Sen. Tom Cotton Says, and 'Normal Americans Expect Us to Stand Up - Daily Signal

In the 1960s and 70s, conservatives were waging a war against what they considered an existential threat infiltrating Americas public schools. Pamphlets were circulated by the John Birch Society, a right-wing extremist group, declaring it a filthy Communist plot. And then-Governor Ronald Reagan of California decried it as a moral crisis that needed to be eradicated. What was poisoning the minds of Americas youth? Sex education.

These days, sex ed is more widely accepted, especially following the HIV/AIDS epidemic (though conservatives have still managed to beat back more progressive school curricula when it comes to sexual health), but the Republican Partys habit of identifying a bogeyman in Americas education system hasnt wavered.

Then it was sex ed. Now, its critical race theory.

Critical race theory is a legal scholarship framework that has been around in academia for four decades and asserts that racism is systemic and embedded in many American institutions. But over the past few months, the term has been co-opted by Republicans as a catch-all buzzword to signify the perceived threat of anti-white indoctrination in American schools. This has motivated a slate of proposed legislation outlawing a wide range of teachings. Since the start of this year, at least six states have enacted bans on the teaching of critical race theory or discussions of racism in the classrooms, according to a Brookings Institute analysis, while almost 20 other states have introduced similar bills. Moreover, a handful of states, like Florida and Texas, have also successfully banned the teaching of the New York Timess 1619 Project curriculum, which explores the central role of slavery in the development of the U.S. The project has been harshly criticized by conservatives who have accused its writers of recasting history through a racial lens. To be sure, the bills vary. Some bills mention critical race theory directly, while others only reference bans on divisive concepts or any teachings that imply one race or sex is inherently superior. But this concerted effort to limit what can be taught in our schools isnt new its the latest chapter in the GOPs long-standing push to target curricula that goes against its political ideology.

Republican attacks on cultural issues within Americas public schools follow a familiar pattern. First, theyre usually in response to a vague idea of what might happen that is, teaching sexual health might lead to more school-aged teenagers having sex (although theres actually been a decline in the percentage of American high schoolers having sex since the early 1990s). Second, when there is a debate over teaching often taboo, complex social issues, like racism, evolution and sex, elected school board members can exert an outsized amount of control. Considering school board members are more likely to be white and are often partisan, Republicans political agenda can get a disproportionate amount of weight in school board decisions. And if the contemporary Republican Party has taught us anything as of late, its that anti-wokeness is political catnip for its base, so its unlikely that this crusade goes away any time soon. In fact, because critical race theory deals so explicitly with racism and discrimination, it has arguably animated the GOP base in a way that previous education battles havent.

One of the oldest education battles revolves around the teaching of evolution. Its one that until recently didnt have clearly drawn partisan lines. After all, the most famous example of a legislative attempt to prohibit teaching evolution in schools was actually introduced by a Democrat: a 1925 Tennessee state law to ban teaching evolution in schools. That law was later challenged in a showy court case (complete with chimpanzees) that same year, where it was upheld, and ultimately not repealed until 1967. (It was also a Democrat who introduced a 1981 bill in Louisianas state legislature that mandated the teaching of creation science which presents religious beliefs as alternative scientific theories whenever evolution was taught. The Supreme Court has since banned states from requiring creation science to be taught, but it has remained a popular conservative cultural flashpoint.)

In the last two decades, Republicans at the state level have introduced over 100 bills aimed at undermining evolution, through tactics such as allowing teachers to question established scientific concepts. Most of these bills never go anywhere a 2016 study found just six anti-evolution bills out of 110 introduced between 2000 and 2012 were enacted into law but the fact that legislatures keep proposing them means one of the U.S. public education systems oldest bogeyman is still alive and well.

Similarly, sex education in public schools has long been a target of Republicans, although once it became clear that sex education programs actually help reduce the risk of teen pregnancy and STIs and delay the age when teens become sexually active, sex ed became more socially accepted. This means that Republicans opposed to sex ed have had to change their strategy to curtailing whats taught. Sixteen states, for instance, require educators to stress abstinence education and do not require anything be taught about contraception, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that advances sexual and reproductive health and rights. Another popular strategy is giving parents the right to opt their child out of sex ed, or making sex ed opt-in to begin with.

And more recently, beginning in the late 2000s, a culture war clash emerged following the adoption of the Common Core State Standards Initiative a set of K-12 academic standards that was aggressively pushed by the federal government. While the initiative was designed to promote a good education by giving students specific guidelines about what they should know, grade by grade, in subjects like math and English language arts, it faced fierce opposition from Republicans and Democrats alike.

But around 2015, the Core standards became especially politicized by politicians on the right who thought curriculum standards should be left to local officials. For instance, when Donald Trump ran for the White House in 2016, his early ads argued that education has to be at a local level. And in 2018, Trumps former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos falsely declared the Common Core was dead even though its up to individual states, and not the federal government, whether to ditch the Core standards.

Its clear culture war issues have always had a place in how Republicans think about education, but as Terry Moe, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank, told us, Republicans also used to advocate for more policy-focused solutions. He pointed to Republican-led initiatives like the No Child Left Behind Act, which, in part, sought to use standardized testing to help improve student achievement. These kinds of initiatives have since received their own criticism, but they represent a very different strategy than the one that currently dominates the Republican Party.

The Republican Party has really gotten further and further away from being a party of ideas about how to solve social problems one of them being an education system that does not perform very well and becoming a party of anger and resentment. Thats what they specialize in now, Moe said. They are, for the most part, fighting a culture war against the Democrats and trying to pander to their base.

In that sense, critical race theory fits perfectly into the Republicans agenda, as its a cultural bugbear that conservatives have co-opted to encompass a range of trends they think are unpopular with Americans. (One of the lead architects pushing the anti-critical race theory backlash, Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, has said as much.) This is particularly true for topics centered specifically around race.

Theyre worried about what happens when a reckoning takes hold in their kids schools where their kids might learn some things about American history or about themselves or people like them that are uncomfortable truths, said Hakeem Jefferson, a FiveThirtyEight contributor and professor of political science at Stanford University. This is merely another example of white Americans using schools as sites of their racial political projects, which set out to maintain dominance and do so by way of not telling the full truth of American history.

Many Americans still dont know what the debate over critical race theory is really about at this point. Just 24 percent have heard a lot about it, 25 percent know some and 51 percent know little or nothing at all, according to a June Morning Consult/Politico poll. But tellingly, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to have seen, heard or read a lot about critical race theory, 30 percent versus 21 percent. Whats more, those Republicans familiar with critical race theory overwhelmingly dislike it 78 percent have a negative opinion of it compared to 7 percent of Democrats. When asked to describe critical race theory in that same survey, one Republican respondent called critical race theory a farce, while another said it was a Marxist proposal.

Considering how much more exposure Republicans have had to it a Media Matters analysis shows Fox News has mentioned critical race theory 1,300 times in less than four months, and a query of data on the social media tool CrowdTangle from researchers at Miami University and Wright State University found that the share of posts that mention critical race theory on the Facebook pages of local Republican parties has risen exponentially the blowback among members of the GOP is not entirely surprising. Its also not just the volume of coverage: The conservative medias coverage of critical race theory is overwhelmingly negative, too, as its decried by some on the right as anti-white.

Republicans have long fought specters within education that they claim threaten the American way of life. The current blowback against critical race theory follows in that tradition, but it also represents a broader transformation of the GOP into a populist party focused on waging culture wars. Though it may seem like a misguided crusade-du-jour, the tumult around critical race theory is both a reflection of the Republican Partys past and a glimpse at its future.

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First It Was Sex Ed. Now Its Critical Race Theory. - FiveThirtyEight

Boris Johnson and other top Tories were branded "total hypocrites" and "arsonists complaining about a fire" after England players were bombarded with a torrent of racist abuse in the wake of England's defeat.

Labour's Angela Rayner and Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi hit out at the Prime Minister and Home Secretary Priti Patel, accusing ministers of stoking divisive culture wars over Gareth Southgate's players taking the knee to protest racial injustice.

The PM refused to condemn those who booed the gesture and Ms Patel defended those who booed, saying they had a right to express themselves over what she called "gesture politics".

After the nation's heartbreaking defeat to Italy at Wembley on Sunday, however, penalty-takers Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho were targeted with racist bile online.

Ms Patel took to Twitter to say she was "disgusted that England players who have given so much for our country this summer have been subject to vile racist abuse on social media".

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner hit back, saying: "Let me be clear. The Prime Minister and the Home Secretary gave license to the racists who booed the England players and are now racially abusing England players.

"Boris Johnson and Priti Patel are like arsonists complaining about a fire they poured petrol on. Total hypocrites."

Baroness Warsi also tweeted in response to Ms Patel: "Priti -we as govt, as Conservatives need to think about our role in feeding this culture in our country If we 'whistle' & the 'dog' reacts we cant be shocked if it barks and bites.

"Its time to stop the culture wars that are feeding division. Dog whistles win votes but destroy nations.

"As a proud centre right politician, as a proud part of a diverse vibrant nation that produced a football team that spoke to and represented England in all its modern diverse glory -it shames me that in 2021 some in politics are still playing fast & loose with issues of race."

Football legend Gary Neville was also among those who accused Mr Johnson's administration of a failure of leadership over the players' stance against racism, saying signals should "come from the top".

He hit out at the Prime Minister's previous racism, including when, in article before he was PM, Mr Johnson compared Muslim women to "letterboxes".

"I'm just reading the breaking news, it says the PM condemns racist abuse of England players. Southgate and the players a few weeks ago, five days on the trot, told us they were taking the knee to promote equality and it was against racism," Mr Neville told Sky News.

"The Prime Minister said it was ok for the population of this country to boo those players who were promoting equality and fighting against racism."

Labour leader Keir Starmer added: "Its appalling. Its absolutely appalling and it has to be called out in the strongest possible terms and condemned.

This is about leadership, and Im afraid the Prime Minister has failed the test of leadership because whatever he says today about racism he had a simple choice at the beginning of this tournament in relation to the booing of those who were taking the knee.

The Prime Minister failed to call that out and the actions and inactions of leaders have consequences, so Im afraid the Prime Ministers words today ring hollow.

Shadow culture secretary Jo Stevens said if she was the prime minister or the home secretary she would be embarrassed and probably ashamed at the words they used and their conduct at the start of the Euro 2020 tournament surrounding players taking the knee.

When asked if she believed the Prime Minister was responsible for the action undertaken by some England fans on Sunday night, she told the BBCs World at One programme: I think that his words and his lack of action send a message to people who feel its okay to be racist.

You can argue about whether theres a direct causal link between the two but all of us in what we do, what we say, what we dont do, there are consequences to that, particularly if youre the prime minister and youre in a position of such responsibility and leadership in the country.

Downing Street rejected Gary Nevilles accusation that Boris Johnson promoted racism, however.

The Prime Ministers official spokesman said: I would utterly reject that claim. The Prime Minister set out this morning his response to some of the awful comments that weve seen.

Asked about the former England footballers allegation that Mr Johnson and other ministers suggested it was fine to boo players taking the knee, the spokesman said claimed it was "not accurate".

The spokesman said: The Prime Minister was clear that he wanted to see everyone getting behind the team to cheer them on. He made that clear on the 11th, before Englands first game.

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Boris Johnson and Priti Patel branded 'arsonists' whose culture wars gave nod to racism - The Mirror

Boris Johnson has summoned tech companies to Downing Street to order them to do more to tackle online abuse, amid mounting criticism of the government after black England players were deluged with racist posts in the aftermath of their Euro 2020 defeat.

The England footballer Tyrone Mings has criticised the home secretary, Priti Patel, for her condemnation of the racist abuse faced by his teammates, after she called players taking the knee gesture politics.

He said Patel did not get to stoke the fire ahead of the tournament and then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing were campaigning against, happens.

Sign up to TechScape, Alex Herns weekly tech newsletter, starting Wednesday 14 July.

Johnson will meet executives from the social media firms in person, and will ask them to hand over the details of those who posted racist content online to the police.

His official spokesperson said Johnson would reiterate the urgent need for action ahead of tougher laws coming into force in the online harms bill and that there was no question that abuse was upsetting, unfair and must be stamped out.

Asked whether No 10 agreed with a government source who said the perpetrators should have their details handed over so that they can be made an example of, they said: Yes, we expect social media companies to do everything they can to identify these people.

The police already have a range of powers to identify and pursue those who use anonymity to spread hatred, but we have committed to strengthening the criminal law in this area.

Concern is growing among some Conservative advisers and MPs that the strategy of pivoting towards the culture wars was backfiring.

One senior Tory called the situation embarrassing and highlighted the Conservative MP Lee Anderson who said he would not watch the team because they took the knee. It was absolutely tragic, its a laughing stock, they said.

I think there needs to be a serious realisation soon in government that people simply dont care about the culture war crap. They care about the cost of living, NHS and crime. They dont want to see us starting fights with Marcus Rashford.

The former Conservative minister, Johnny Mercer, tweeted of Mings: The painful truth is that this guy is completely right.

Mercer said more of his Conservative colleagues should speak out. We have some great colleagues in the party who reflect this I am in no way alone. But more must have the courage to speak up, instead of remaining silent in some weird attempt to curry favour.

Ged Grebby, the chief executive of Show Racism the Red Card, applauded Mings for highlighting the hypocrisy of some politicians and government ministers.

Tyrone hit the nail on the head, he said. When the players made a stand against racism by taking the knee at the beginning of the tournament, government ministers like Boris Johnson and Priti Patel did not support their stance and in fact they spoke against it, he added.

It is no good condemning racism after it has happened when you did not support the players at the beginning it is now a case of jumping on the bandwagon, he continued.

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Tech chiefs called in to No 10 over racist posts to England players - The Guardian

The Republican faithful flocked to Dallas for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) over the weekend as the GOP strategizes ahead of the 2022 and 2024 election cycles.

The confab marked an opportunity for the grassroots to rub shoulders with leaders of the GOP, including former President TrumpDonald TrumpOvernight Defense: Top US commander in Afghanistan departs | US sends delegation to Haiti after request for troops | Senate Dems propose .3B for Pentagon in Capitol security bill Fauci and Birx warned Scott Atlas was 'dangerous' Report: RNC chief counsel called 2020 Trump legal efforts 'a joke' MORE, who are jockeying for position with activists and voters ahead of reelection bids next year as well as potential presidential campaigns three years from now.

The bash also highlighted the issues that are currently animating the party's base six months into the Biden administration, including gripes over the 2020 election, critical race theory and more.

Hereare five takeaways from the weekends conference.

Trumps popularity remains strong

Trumps popularity among the GOP base was proven again during CPACs straw poll taken of its attendees, underscoring his ongoing role as the de facto head of the party.

Trumpled the straw pollof potential 2024 contenders, with 70 percent of respondents saying they would vote for him in the Republican primary if it were held today. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantisRon DeSantisPompeo on 2024: 'I want to continue to have an impact' Five takeaways from the CPAC conference in Dallas Noem hits fellow GOP governors over COVID-19 mandates MORE (R) came in second with 21 percent, while no other candidate polled above 1 percent.

The showing marked a jump from the 55 percent support he enjoyed in the same type of straw poll at CPAC Orlando in late February.

"I want to personally thank each and every one of you for your incredible support," Trump said during a speech at the conference shortly after the results were announced.

The result was particularly promising for Trump after a straw poll at the Western Conservative Summit in Denver last month showed DeSantiswith a slight edge.

Last weekends survey was in line with several other public polls showing Trump with substantial sway among GOP voters.

The former president has forecast that he will use his influence to play the role of Republican kingmaker, doling out endorsements for candidates and campaigning across the country heading into the 2022 midterms, including in some instances against incumbent Republicans he views as insufficiently loyal to him and his agenda.

Conspiracy theories linger among the base

Conspiracy theories around the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 insurrection abounded at the conference, underscoring the depths to which the base has internalized Trumps unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

Attendees chanted four more years while the former president was on stage, and Trump repeated the allegation that widespread fraud and other irregularities swayed the November contest away from him and toward President BidenJoe BidenPoll: Biden approval on coronavirus slips 2 percentage points Overnight Defense: Top US commander in Afghanistan departs | US sends delegation to Haiti after request for troops | Senate Dems propose .3B for Pentagon in Capitol security bill Protests escalate US-Cuba tensions MORE an assertion for which hes provided no substantive evidence.

This must never happen to another partys presidential candidate again, it can never happen. We are a laughingstock all over the world, a laughingstock, he said.

Trump also took aim at media outlets that point out that he has not presented evidence, claiming to applause the instances of fraud are out there for supporters to see.

Every time the media references the election hoax, they say the fraud is 'Unproven! And while there is no evidence ...' No evidence? No evidence? There's so much evidence, he said.

Elsewhere at CPAC, merchandise was being sold topromote the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, which posits that Trump will oversee a military takeover to oust from power a cabal of satanic child sex traffickers.

Recent polls have shown the extent to which conspiracy theories surrounding the election and other issues have seeped into the Republican mainstream.

A Morning Consult-Politico poll released last month showed that a slim majority of Republican voters believe that state-level reviews of the 2020 presidential election will reveal new information and reverse the outcome of the contest.

Noem comes out swinging

While much of the attention centered around Trump at the weekend conference, South Dakota Gov. Kristi NoemKristi Lynn NoemLawyers group criticizes Noem, Abbot on National Guard to border Five takeaways from the CPAC conference in Dallas Noem hits fellow GOP governors over COVID-19 mandates MORE (R), another potential 2024 contender, also drew headlines over her remarks about other states restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic.

Noem specifically took aim at other Republican governors for putting in place what she suggested were overly harsh measures aimed at combating the spread of the virus.

We've got Republican governors across this country pretending they didn't shut down their states; that they didn't close their regions; that they didn't mandate masks. ... Now I'm not picking fights with Republican governors. All I'm saying is that we need leaders with grit. That their first instinct is the right instinct, she said during her speech.

Noem has leaned into her approach to handling the pandemic to bolster her conservative bona fides, repeatedly highlighting in recent months her refusal to impose a mask mandate in South Dakota, among other things.

The buzz around her policies has put her name in the conversation of potential 2024 contenders. However, she still faces headwinds in a potentially crowded field, netting only 1 percent support in CPACs straw poll.

Culture war issues dominate

The CPAC conference underscored just how animated the GOP base is by a handful of culture issues, including claims equating Democrats to socialists, immigration, the debate over critical race theory and so-called cancel culture.

Trump made sure to hit on several of those issues during his speech, ensuring they will remain front-of-mind for GOP voters moving forward.

This is a very, very special place and were going to keep it the way it is, he said. With the help of everyone here today, we will defeat the radical left, the socialist, Marxist and the critical race theorists.

We will secure our borders, we will stop left-wing cancel culture, we will restore free speech and fair elections, and we will make American great again, he said.

The remarks come as Republicans rail against Bidens decision to remove Trump-era immigration restrictions, claiming the presidents policies are leading to a spike in attempted border crossings, and ongoing recriminations over the 2020 race.

However, it is critical race theory, which posits that racism is deep-seated in the history of the United States and its current laws, that has become the leading front in the culture wars.

The issue has roiled school boards across the country and led Republican governors to sign laws banning the teaching of it in public schools, even though schools in those states were not teaching it.

COVID-19 plays outsized role

The conference also put partisan divides over the coronavirus pandemic and vaccination efforts into stark relief.

Surveys and research have already shown that Democrats are more likely than Republicans to get vaccinated and that counties that supported Trump in 2020 are lagging behind their Biden-backing counterparts in their vaccination efforts.

The refusal by swaths of the Republican base to get vaccinated was accentuated by applause at the conference in response to a comment about the governments headwinds toward expanding vaccinations among the public.

The government was hoping that they could sort of sucker 90 percent of the population into getting vaccinated. And it isnt happening, conservative author Alex Berenson said over the weekend, sparking applause from the audience.

The trend undercuts a key Democratic argument heading into the midterms, which is that voters will be grateful to the Biden administration for its efforts to put the pandemic in the rearview mirror and back Democrats in 2022.

But more than that, health officials warned, it could prolong the fight against the virus and lead to more infections, variants and deaths.

Its horrifying. I mean, they are cheering about someone saying that its a good thing for people not to try and save their lives. I mean, if you just unpack that for a second, Jake, its almost frightening to say, Hey, guess what, we dont want you to do something to save your life. Yay! Everybody starts screaming and clapping, Anthony FauciAnthony FauciFlorida county mayor asks residents to wear masks regardless of vaccination Fauci and Birx warned Scott Atlas was 'dangerous' Overnight Health Care: FDA adds new warning to J&J COVID-19 vaccine | WHO chief pushes back on Pfizer booster shot | Fauci defends Biden's support for recommending vaccines 'one on one' MORE, the governments leading infectious diseases expert, told CNN host Jake TapperJacob (Jake) Paul TapperFive takeaways from the CPAC conference in Dallas Eric Adams to meet with Biden on curbing gun violence Israel offering third Pfizer dose to adults with weak immune systems MORE over the weekend. I just dont get that, and I dont think that anybody whos thinking clearly can get that. What is that all about? I dont understand that, Jake.

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Five takeaways from the CPAC conference in Dallas | TheHill - The Hill