The Rise of the Dale Gribble Voter

Can RFK Win the 2028 Republican Nomination?

With RFK suspending his campaign Friday, the sad and strange tale of his 2024 presidential run has come to an end. He’d been polling around 5% nationally, which could have been enough to potentially swing the election. The evidence mostly suggests that the lion’s share of his support is likely to go to Trump, and with RFK (sort of) endorsing the former president, that seems to be a certainty.

Despite how things ended, I’m convinced that the RFK phenomenon represents something important. While the Kennedy campaign didn’t go anywhere in the end, polling at 5% this close to a presidential election is something of an accomplishment. And, despite a lot of weirdness and incompetence, I believe he could’ve done better had one of the two major party candidates not been Donald Trump, who appeals to the same kind of voter.

As I write this, the top two podcasts in the country on Spotify are The Joe Rogan Experience and The Tucker Carlson Show. We can consider both figures and their fans part of the RFK phenomenon. Rogan recently praised Kennedy as the candidate he liked best, before denying that he had officially endorsed him due to a backlash from Trump supporters. Nicole Shanahan, RFK’s running mate, has said that she and Tucker are “on the same page in every single way.” The former Fox host was reportedly working behind the scenes to get RFK to drop out and endorse Trump.

Conventionally, Rogan is thought to be on the left, or at least identified as such until recently, and Tucker on the right, but they’re united in preferring either Trump or RFK to the Democrats. I suspect that if the GOP nominee were Nikki Haley, both would have been completely in the RFK camp, either from conviction or due to audience pressure. What exactly is this political orientation that appeals to a huge number of voters but cannot be placed on the conventional political spectrum? And what is its future in American politics?

Understanding Dale Gribble Voters

Once in a while, a new phrase takes off to describe an intellectual or political movement. In 2014, Scott Alexander coined “grey tribe” to refer to libertarian-leaning Silicon Valley types, which sounds a lot like rationalism. Bari Weiss famously introduced NYT readers to the “Intellectual Dark Web” a few years later. The phenomenon itself generally precedes its naming, and I find it surprising that no one has yet found a term to describe a group that includes Tucker, Rogan, Alex Jones, RFK, Bret Weinstein, Russell Brand, Tim Pool, and other figures who all get along and have massive audiences but seem to be a mishmash from across the political spectrum.

Pro-Trump figures in tech like Elon Musk and David Sacks have praised Kennedy, while Vivek Ramaswamy suggested he might have a role in a future Republican administration even before the Trump endorsement. Part of this was surely strategic. Sean Hannity started out boosting RFK before the Democratic primaries started, giving him a one-hour interview in July of last year. Unsurprisingly, after Kennedy announced he was running as an independent and it looked like he might hurt Trump’s chances, the tone of the coverage changed. I think Trump supporters fundamentally misunderstood the Democratic Party by thinking that RFK could ever gain traction within it. As I predicted at the time, he would’ve probably taken more votes from Trump as a third-party candidate, but it looks like with him dropping out and endorsing the Republican nominee they averted stepping on the rake.

So while support for RFK among some right-wing celebrities and influencers may have started out as strategic, when they gave the man an audience many on their own side ended up liking what they saw. As of July, approval for Kennedy among Republicans was +11, compared to -37 among Democrats.

So who exactly are Kennedy supporters, and what do they have in common? Allow me to suggest the term Gribble voters, named after the King of the Hill character known for his elaborate conspiracy theories and construction of bizarre fantasy worlds in which he is a hero oppressed by and occasionally doing battle with the forces of darkness. Granted, Dale Gribble was more clearly right-coded than what I’m going for here, and he likely would’ve been suspicious of someone like Rogan on cultural grounds. But given that, as I argue below, conspiracy theorists are consolidating on the right, we should expect this demographic to move in that direction.

Gribbles are united less by consistent ideological commitments than a skepticism towards mainstream institutions and a belief that the world is run by shadowy forces. They have no particular attachment to either of the two political parties, but latch on to figures who appear to be on the fringes. Although practically all forms of distant authority are bad, this group particularly doesn’t like public health and the American national security establishment. Gribbles love speculating about UFOs, religion, Jeffrey Epstein, ancient texts, lost forms of technology, and the lost city of Atlantis, believing that they’ve uncovered hidden secrets about some or all of these topics.

If Gribbles distrust authority in general, why so much specific focus on medicine and the foreign policy establishment? I think that, if you’re prone to see conspiracy theories and suspect that a group of elites is secretly running the world, then the US Deep State is the most plausible candidate. The US has military bases on every inhabited continent, and powerful intelligence services that have fomented revolutions abroad and overthrown foreign governments. International organizations to a large extent take their cues from Washington. Gribbles often dislike large corporations too, but some of them are more libertarian and don’t necessarily see private business as that bad. But they are united in their hostility towards the Pentagon, CIA, FBI, and NSA. Trump’s battles with the American security establishment endears him to this demographic.

As for public health, this is one area in life where regular citizens may feel particularly micromanaged, lectured to, and controlled. Everyone thinks about diet, exercise, and nutrition, and it’s not unusual for normal people to dissent from expert consensus on some questions. Covid of course took this to an extreme level, and, to give Gribbles their due, they can claim a bit of vindication in the authoritarian methods recommended and implemented by scientists and public health officials. Unfortunately, Gribbles are more upset about the approval of life-saving vaccines than any other aspect of the pandemic response, showing that podcasts and a community of paranoid individuals all doing their own research is not an acceptable replacement for medical experts. Anger about the covid vaccines appears to reflect a great deal of pent-up, long simmering anger about vaccines more generally, ushering into the mainstream of our politics a movement that had been long suppressed by both sides treating them like cranks. The coronavirus pandemic and the right becoming the place where low human capital consolidated created an opening, however, and finding an ambitious Republican who speaks positively about vaccines is becoming almost as rare as finding one who says nice things about immigration.

In judging political figures, Gribbles are much more into vibes than policy, and practically everything except a conspiratorial outlook and hostility to foreign policy elites, the medical establishment, the mainstream media, and the Democratic Party is negotiable or not that important. If you look at the congressional voting records of Ron Paul and Tulsi Gabbard, they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but both are popular among Gribbles for being anti-interventionist and standing in opposition to the political establishment.

Michael Tracey loves to jump up and down about how stupid anti-war Trump supporters are for not caring about what the man actually did in office, or how he recently used his influence to get aid for Ukraine passed. Yet this never seems to convince Trump supporters. For the Gribble faction, even on substantive issues they supposedly care about like foreign policy, his vibes as an outsider and the hatred he inspires among elites are enough to make Trump a hero, or at least not that bad. And while not all Gribbles are into Trump’s specific conspiracy theories, the fact that he gives lip service to some conspiracy theories, even if they’re ones where the point is that Trump himself is being targeted, makes them recognize him as a kindred spirit.

Can Gribbles actually influence American politics? This group has a great deal of reach in terms of social media, podcasts, and internet culture, but very little representation in legacy media or academia. They’re not producing reports for the American Enterprise Institute or the Brookings Institution – though, as will be discussed below, their influence is now being felt at the Heritage Foundation and some of the more MAGAfied parts of the conservative movement. Bret Weinstein may have a million Twitter followers and Rogan the most popular podcast in the country, but this doesn’t mean that their fans are going to be writing legislation, drafting opinions for Supreme Court justices, or even working as low level staff in government bureaucracies.

While Gribbles have always been Trump friendly, note that it was conventional Republican elites who gained power under his presidency, not Joe Rogan fans. Groups can have a large cultural effect while having little impact on policy or American governance for a very long time. That said, I think that Gribbles are poised to play a major role in the future of the Republican Party. They may not become right-wing wonks, but those seeking to win office will increasingly pander to them, and this will potentially influence the kind of person who goes into politics and ultimately how Republicans govern. We can see the beginnings of this shift already.

Trump as a Cause and Symptom of Changes on the Right

There were many things that were shocking about the rise of Trump, but one that is easy to forget today is how much he broke with Republican orthodoxy. This came on the heels of the Tea Party movement, a period from about 2009-2014 when Republican politicians would get primaried and see their political careers ended due to insufficient fealty to conservative principles. The conventional wisdom at the time was that the Republican party was divided by moderates and extremists.

Trump sort of scrambled those categories, as here was a guy who inspired fanatical loyalty among the base and walked to the nomination while saying nice things about Planned Parenthood, talking about taxing the rich, and blaming George W. Bush for 9/11. In the years since, we’ve become used to the idea that Republican voters don’t care that much about policy, except maybe immigration, and are prone to forming cults of personality held together by a conspiratorial mindset and hostility towards elites. But this was something of a revelation at the time, and the party has become more Trumpist in the years since.

The Republican intelligentsia of course opposed Trump in 2016. Eventually, he made peace with the vast majority of conservative elites, and, with a few eccentricities, mostly governed like a typical Republican, just with more hostility towards immigration and trade. Even these positions reflected a strand of conservatism, albeit one that had been underrepresented in previous administrations. Trump delivered tax cuts, was hawkish on foreign policy, and named judges and regulators who could’ve been appointed by Ted Cruz or Jeb Bush.

In the end, Trump as always did what was in his own best interests. Republican elites care about policy, while his voters just care about rhetoric and vibes. The ideal approach, then, has been to let more ideological conservatives govern and please big money donors while continuing to talk and behave like the Trump of the 2016 campaign. This means publicly defending Putin at a joint press conference, but also expanding NATO and providing lethal arms to Ukraine.

Trump both reflects and has been a catalyst for education polarization and what is sometimes called the “trust gap.” There have always been less educated and more paranoid voters, but before 2016 they were somewhat divided across the political spectrum, with many checked out of politics all together. Some, like anti-vaxxers in Hollywood and anti-war activists, were left-coded, and you had those worried about Bill Gates microchipping everyone and such on the right. These people tended not to have strong partisan attachments. They weren’t comfortable with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, nor George Bush and Mitt Romney. Then Trump came along, and they finally had someone who was identifiably their kind of guy. Democrats have responded to Trump by rallying around the idea of expertise, while coming to more explicitly identify their party with the political establishment, thus becoming unwelcoming to conspiracy theorists and mavericks of all types.

At the same time, the rise of alternative media has allowed new public figures to provide these people with the kind of content they crave. Bret Weinstein wouldn’t be able to spread his crazy ideas in the NYT or with a major book publisher, but through podcasts and his Twitter account he can reach as many people as mainstream institutions do.

The two graphs below demonstrate the increasing partisan trust gap. Republicans were already more skeptical of the press in the 1990s, but the parties have diverged even more in recent years.

When it comes to trust in the scientific community, two decades ago there was practically no partisan difference. That started to change around 2008, and the gap has risen in the era of Trump and covid.

Conservatives who believed that RFK could potentially challenge Biden showed that they fundamentally didn’t understand this shift. Democrats may be too trusting of experts, but they at least now have antibodies against Trump and RFK type figures. Upon announcing his exit from the race, Kennedy complained that Kamala Harris wouldn’t even meet with him. I’m not sure if this is smart strategy when considered in isolation, because she may have been able to keep him from endorsing Trump by throwing him a bone and showing a bit of respect. But given where the Democrats now are, they are simply repulsed by Gribbles, and parties and political figures will sometimes forgo opportunities to advance their own interests if doing so requires taking an action they see as incongruent with their self-image. RFK is a uniquely sinister figure in American life, and I see Harris not meeting with him as reflecting very well on the Democratic Party.

Those who dislike foreign wars, vaccines, colleges and universities, the media, and major NGOs are now the same people. We can see this in data on who shares more conspiracy theories on social media, where conservative voters dominate, just as it is clear from paying attention to the political discourse. Every once in a while, Republicans try to meme a Gribble mascot supposedly on the left like Tulsi Gabbard or RFK into becoming a force in Democratic politics, and they keep failing, with such figures always ending up more comfortable in pro-Trump circles.

Gribblism After Trump

The question is what happens once Trump is gone. While one may think that Gribbles have only now become empowered due to him becoming a political force, he came to dominate the Republican Party for a reason. Despite Trump’s association with the Gribbles, I think they might be even more politically important once he’s out of the picture, as I suspect that he in fact sucks up a lot of their energy and channels it into supporting conventional GOP candidates and policy positions.

At the very least, Trump prevents Gribbles from consolidating around any other candidate for president. Prominent Gribbles are all either pro-Trump, or consider him clearly the lesser evil in the upcoming election. The backlash to Rogan appearing to endorse RFK demonstrates this point. Bret Weinstein encourages unity in order to defeat the Democrats, who he assures us have a secret purpose behind their party that they refuse to tell anyone about.

Trump’s main challengers in the 2024 primaries were two politicians who stood as avatars for legitimate branches of the party: Nikki Haley as the candidate of returning to normalcy, and DeSantis as the representative of the Republican intelligentsia. These were relatively small factions compared to the pro-Trump wing, which is a combination of Gribbles and adherents to his cult of personality.

We can already see Republican candidates and institutions shifting over to Gribble messaging. The Heritage Foundation, once believed to represent elite conservative thought, goes to Twitter and implies that the Secret Service tried to assassinate Trump. JD Vance has praised Alex Jones as a truth teller. Meanwhile, Ted Cruz and Vivek Ramaswamy went around earlier this year predicting that the Democrats would make Michelle Obama their presidential nominee. Recall that Trump’s original rise to prominence within Republican politics was through his embrace of Birtherism.

I think we’re seeing a division among Republican figures, where state and local officials are relatively normal, and MAGAs and Gribbles have more influence when it comes to races that get the most media attention. Thus, we could see Gribbles being important in presidential primaries but relatively few other places. Yet presidential primaries are obviously a big deal and they may also get a few senate candidates and congressmen. See Minnesota Republicans recently nominating Royce White for senate, a former NBA player and BLM activist who now posts maps of drinking fountains thinking they are crime maps and rants about Jewish elites and women being too mouthy.

I’ve always said that if Trump loses this election, he’s got a very good chance of being the 2028 Republican nominee. But if he’s not in the running for whatever reason, then the Gribbles will be up for grabs. They won’t get anywhere in a Democratic primary given that the party is now composed of more educated and high trust voters. But on the Republican side, a candidate who consolidates Joe Rogan and Tucker types can be a force in a divided primary where it may take no more than a third of the vote to win. He may not be a conventional conservative, but it would be fitting if the Trump era culminated in Republicans becoming more moderate on policy while getting crazier and more paranoid.

Could this figure be RFK himself? Note that the Low Human Capital types who make up the Republican base love celebrities. There’s a reason that some conservative papers that sometimes do serious journalism like The Daily Mail and The New York Post double as gossip mags. The Kennedy family itself has a large role to play in QAnon cosmology. RFK has a history of holding liberal positions, but Trump showed that one can easily flip-flop, and even if you don’t, Republican voters can be very forgiving if you’re a celebrity who hates elites enough and endorses conspiracy theories. Kennedy has already started walking back some of his prior beliefs, like his previous views on gun control, that would be unpalatable to a conservative electorate.

There are many reasons why Kennedy might not want to run as a Republican, including pressure from family and friends. Regardless of whether he does or not, the Gribbles are not going away. It was probably inevitable that the rise of alternative media would give them more of a voice in our politics. As the aggressively paranoid and uneducated consolidate into one party, there is reason to believe that the human capital problem on the right will get much worse before it gets better.