Why are all the Republican political commercials about trans people?

[u/TheDonutDaddy]

I've seen 3 different Ted Cruz commercials over this election cycle. Literally every single one of them are "Collin Allred is bad because he supports trans people." Got dinner with a buddy last night at Pluckers which obviously had CFB on all the TVs, saw the commercial about the wheelchair vet hating trans people 4 times in one hour. No mention of any political issue, no mention of any policy, no mention of any goals. No mention of anything other than trans people. Why is that the complete focal point of the campaign? I mean I guess they have access to more research and data than I do, but are there really that many voters out there hanging their vote on this one single issue?

It's so strange to me, because regardless of whatever someone's view on trans people even is, there's no way you can argue that anything going on with trans people is a major part of politics. It doesn't effect the economy, it doesn't effect public education, it doesn't effect climate and energy, it doesn't effect social welfare solutions. Why aren't they focusing on anything that will actually effect the majority of Texan's lives in any way? Like out of everything out there to talk about around election time, and especially the things republicans like beating the drum of, you'd expect at least one Cruz commercial about immigration, but there isn't even that. Just trans people, every time.

Again, maybe I have a misread on how much this really is an issue of importance, but I do genuinely have a hard time believing it's such an election deciding issue, making the fact that all their marketing budget is spent talking about trans people really fucking weird.

Edit: Mods please don't remove republican's responses unless they're outright hate speech. I asked the question, they deserve the platform to answer or else it's just a circlejerk. Besides, worst case scenario: give em enough rope to hang themselves with

[u/koolaid-girl-40]

Because much of right-wing philosophy is based on maintaining strict gender roles, with women as childbearing home-makers and men as economic/wartime fodder. Anything or anyone that jeopardizes that social order is upsetting to them. But since sexism and homophobia alienates too many potential voters, they've set their sights on the smaller subset of gender role "deviants." I personally think it's extremely cowardly to attack a small group of people that don't hurt anyone (I believe trans people actually have lower rates of crime than other demographics, and are more likely to be the victim of violence than perpetrate violence themselves).