The Woke Right’s War on Conservatism

After witnessing the YR chat scandal from the inside, former Secretary Kayla Saunders exposes how cruelty and cowardice have replaced principle in Republican politics.

Conservatism is being hollowed out from within because a growing faction has replaced principle with performance. The “new right,” sometimes called the “woke right,” thrives on humiliation, moral inversion, and digital chaos.

Independent research from Graphika, Clemson’s Media Forensics Hub, and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue shows that roughly forty percent of antisemitic and racist posts on X come from bot or inauthentic accounts pretending to be conservatives. These fake “patriots” flood social media with outrage, causing extremism to appear mainstream. Algorithms reward hate because hate keeps people engaged, and that incentive system has created an ecosystem of digital arsonists. The Groypers, Christian nationalists, and “woke-right” pundits have turned online outrage into a political machine.

Their goal is not governance. It is attention. They offer no policy solutions for the economy, no sustainable vision for education, and no plans to improve anyone’s life. Their entire politics revolve around a single belief: the left is evil, and anyone unwilling to join their purge must be too.

The recent leak of nearly three thousand pages of messages from the Young Republican National Federation revealed the depth of this decay. The chats contained slurs, rape fantasies, and open talk about putting opponents “in gas chambers.” Idaho resident Kayla Saunders, who served as the YRNF Secretary, reviewed every line and said:

“The statements made in the chat were not out of context. The context makes it worse. The slurs used are nothing compared to the endless fantasizing about bullying people into suicide and plotting to destroy their lives and political careers.”

She dismissed the defense that these were immature “college kids.” “They are political operatives across the country,” she explained. “Some are married. Some have kids.” The individuals responsible were adults who should have understood the implications of their actions.

Saunders has been warning about the “No Enemies to the Right” mindset, calling it “moral cowardice and a transparent tribalistic grift.” She noted that grace is never afforded to moderates while extremists are protected because their cruelty serves political convenience.

This inversion of Ronald Reagan’s 80 percent rule explains much of the current decline. Reagan built coalitions by addition. He believed that allies who agreed most of the time were friends, not heretics. The woke right’s insistence on total agreement has turned purity into a weapon of control. That obsession with control produces a shrinking tent driven by fear and grievance.

Ben Shapiro summarized the danger on The Daily Wire:

“You don’t get to come over to dinner at my house. You don’t get to marry my kids. We all have social lines we draw all the time… there are social consequences to people who say things that you believe are terrible.”

“It is not sufficient to proclaim that you’re not going to condemn these people and instead just project to the other side. That’s how your party ends up being taken over by the ambulatory psychotics.”

“Forgiveness ought to be easily obtained, but if you want forgiveness, you ought to ask for it.”

Shapiro’s warning reflects what Kayla and many conservatives have said for years: refusing to confront extremists does not unite the Republican party; it infects it. “If you lose your systemic immunity,” he said, “the crazy tends to be really, really, really infectious.”

The Groypers understand that infection. Their digital strategy follows the logic of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals: accuse your opponent of the behavior you are guilty of, repeat the accusation until the public accepts it, and use conflict to exhaust truth. They rely on bullying, doxxing, and deception to create chaos, then claim victimhood when challenged. This maniacal hypocrisy has become a form of gaslighting aimed at voters and Republican loyalists whose feeds are shaped by conflict entrepreneurs.

That same pattern now dominates Idaho’s far-right ecosystem. The Kootenai County Republican Central Committee (KCRCC), the Idaho Freedom Foundation, and their partners, including Citizens Alliance of Idaho, Stop Idaho RINOs, and Gem State Chronicle, all employ identical digital smear tactics. They manufacture outrage to control narratives, pressure legislators, and smear mainstream Republicans as traitors. They call decent people “RINOs” to create division, which allows them to elect loyalists whose only allegiance is to their outrage network.

In past Political Potatoes reporting, I’ve documented how these actors push responsible conservatives out of the party. Those targeted are often people who want to govern effectively, limit government overreach, balance budgets, and protect personal freedom. The tactic never changes: dehumanize, label, and repeat until the lie becomes accepted truth. They then accuse their victims of “mudslinging” or “contention” to convince voters to withdraw support. Because social media algorithms reward absolutist rage rather than nuance, the distortion spreads faster than the correction.

Saunders saw this tactic unfold in real time:

“Their primary strategy was to paint the Grow Slate as bullies engaged in negative campaigning, while they did all of their dirty work behind the scenes. And they beguiled nearly half of the entire Young Republican National Federation into believing them.”

The result is psychological warfare inside a party that once prided itself on moral clarity.

The inevitable outcome of such moral decay is self-destruction. The Idaho Freedom Foundation’s LDS donors now clash with its Christian-nationalist allies. Idaho GOP Chairwoman Dorothy Moon faces rebellion from the same hardliners she empowered. Movements built on hate cannot sustain loyalty because hatred always demands a new target.

Shapiro warned that this same refusal to denounce radicals destroyed the moral integrity of the left. “They decided that the nutjobs and the radicals in their own party could not be condemned under any circumstances,” he said. “The alligator ate them first, not last.” Idaho Republicans who think appeasement ensures safety are walking into the same trap.

Seth Dillon of The Babylon Bee has identified the same rot spreading through the right. “Bad ideas are like cancer,” he wrote. “If you don’t deal with them quickly and decisively, they spread.” By refusing to call out extremism, conservatives are “repeating the left’s biggest mistake.” Dillon traced the “No Enemies to the Right” slogan to the French Revolution, where “no enemies to the left” became a license for radicals to dominate their allies. The same logic now poisons the Republican movement.

“In what sense are we winning if we’re giving up our principles and tolerating evil in our own ranks? How does that advance our cause?” Dillon asked. “The slogan ‘no enemies to the right’ isn’t a strategy for defeating the left. It’s suicide.”

His conclusion matches the evidence. Every major conservative victory—defending free speech, restoring parental rights, and reaffirming constitutional limits—came from conviction, not cruelty. Abandoning those principles to chase power signals that we never believed in them at all.

Kayla Saunders refuses to surrender her integrity:

“I am simply not willing to be bullied into cowardice, nor am I willing to be ‘managed’ into making some inauthentic PR-styled statement. My friends were victimized and hardly anyone is defending them. The least they are owed is honesty, integrity, and people willing to stand up for them.”

Her statement defines the standard that the Republican Party must now reclaim.

A movement that excuses dehumanization cannot defend liberty because liberty is built on recognizing the dignity of others. When self-proclaimed conservatives attack that dignity, they betray the core belief that all people are endowed with the right to live, speak, and pursue happiness.

Rejecting those who trade in hate does not betray conservatism; it restores it. The future of the movement depends on leaders who still believe Reagan was right: victory comes through addition, not submission, and through courage, not cowardice.

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About the Author

Gregory Graf is the creator of Political Potatoes and a lifelong conservative Republican who lives in Star, Idaho.

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