WASP

White Supremacy Scrabble.

The WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, or White And Sexy People) caucus was a very short-lived Republican Party group set up to promote a radical right political agenda. It was supposed to be a counter to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her four women of the Democratic Party apocalypse. Known officially as America First Caucus, the group included Republican Congresswomen Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Other members of this new caucus originally included Congressman Matt Gaetz until he was disinvited and Senator Ted Cruz who the founders decided didn't fit in with anything resembling an Anglo-Saxon.

Like a meteorite heading for Earth, the AFC lit up the political sky over Washington D.C. before it crashed into the Potamac. This short lived Caucus lasted barely a weekend from 17th-18th April 2021, that it got any notice at all was that it was lead by 'Bonkers' Boebert and 'Grisly' Greene. The group has received backing from Fox TV host Tucker Carlson and Mike Lindell.

Purpose

With their spiritual leader President Donald Trump on a permanent twitter ban, the new group had hoped to be the noisy wing of the MAGA movement. However, when its manifesto was eventually published, the AFC blamed everyone who came to America after 1965 via immigration (legal or illegal) as an enemy to be opposed. Since this included a lot of Republican voters and appeared to be suggesting...what turning back the clock literally?, expelling millions of people??, the group's proposals seemed quite mad. So much so that the Republican Party leader in Congress Kevin McCarthy called them Know Nothings, an American party from the 1850s who were opposed to Irish Catholics and green beer but were agnostic towards slavery.

Up they went, down they came

The election of Boebert and Greene to Congress in November 2020 as QAnon flavoured representatives was the kick start to the creation of this new caucus. Trump's long term supporter and political advisor Stephen Miller had already urged that a fierce anti-immigration stance, mixed with paranoia would be a vote winner. Keen to curry favour with Trump, they supported all the claims of a 'fraud' election (which had also voted them into office) and were supportive of those involved in the 6th January 2021 attack on the Capitol.

The demographic supporters of WASP.

Once all threats of Trump making another comeback, press attention switched to Boebert and Greene. Since were both Freshmen (and never Freshwomen), their powers in Congress looked very limited. That both women were still saying and doing idiotic things was enough for them to get burned by the Washington Post / New York Times. They were Trump substitutes. It must have been around this time that Greene worked on her idea of a new Republican Caucus to keep (in her mind) the Republican leaders in Congress in line with Trump. So arrived the 'America First Caucus', a loud echo of the American First Committee from the 1930s/1940s as lead by Charles Lindbergh. This was Lindbergh in his post Spirit of St. Louis and Jimmy Stewart film version phase. By the start of World War Two Lindbergh was distinctly pro-German and advocating the USA stay out and stay home.

Lindebergh's use of 'America First' was one of the first slogans by Trump in 2015-2016 as he prepared his political campaign to become the USA president. However this message later tended to be 'further down the bill' and play second fiddle to the later Make America Great Again messaging.

Saying the secret part openly

Until Trump the Republicans had officially been internationalist and Free Trade. At least since the days of Dwight Eisenhower. However now the ultra populist wing became ascendant. It was that a new an America First Caucus an enemy to easily identify. Anyone who didn't subscribe to Anglo-Saxon attitudes. What ever they were, considering 'Anglo-Saxons' were therefore twice over immigrants. First from Germany to England and then from the British Empire to North America.

These political dog whistles were then amplified by the unsubtle Boebert and Greene. They replaced the whistles with bullhorns. What you said in private, you can say out loud. So was published in April 2021 what this new 'Anglo-Saxon' culture meant, even though the expression had first been used by French president and war hero Charles DeGaulle. It also meshed with the right wing militias and their hostility to what they saw was the 'blacking, browning and yellowing' of America. The new 'America First' committee was going to be the rally point.

Going underground

Thanks to the publicity around Boebert and Greene, their America First committee found little favour amongst Republicans in Congress. It was just too openly Klanish in sentiment, especially with the WASPy messaging. Where did this leave the Cuban Americans like Senator Marco Rubio? It was also implicity hostile to Jews too, especially with the talk of 'Globalist cabals' and Greene's fear of 'Jewish' lasers based in California causing fires. Though the group survived, its overt paranoia was just too much on the nose for those who were otherwise inclined to support it. Only Tucker Carlson remained on their side, willing to give them a sympathetic ear (and arm, and leg) on his tv show.

Future

That the old WASP sentiments were so easily revived from decades of nominal dormancy suggests the Boebert-Greene axis could still end up with the levers of power. If Trump could do it, why not them?