HuffPost reports:

Jill Connell is sick of hearing the word “woke.”

The 66-year-old from Kansas is an undecided Republican voter with a host of concerns about the country, and she knows for sure what doesn’t top that list.

“To me, wokeness is, ‘Hey, I woke up this morning,’” Connell said, employing the most literal definition of a word the right uses to describe what it sees as left-wing ideas and political correctness. “I call it goofy — it’s ridiculous. I’m a person who believes you should love everybody. I’m a person of faith.”

Connell isn’t alone. After almost two years as a conservative rallying cry, Republicans may finally be over the war on woke.

Last week at the Iowa State Fair, the Republican presidential candidates who had relentlessly decried wokeness in the weeks and months prior barely mentioned it by name. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has called wokeness a virus more dangerous than COVID, didn’t talk about it at all. Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech entrepreneur who wrote a manifesto against wokeness in corporate America, used it only a few times in front of crowds.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the emperor of the state where woke goes to die, downplayed his offensive against Disney, his woke foil, mentioning the company only once in a stump speech. As recently as June, he used “woke” seven times in a mere 26 seconds.

And Donald Trump, who complained that no one could define “woke,” was more focused on bashing DeSantis with a snarky message in the sky than pointing out that woke doesn’t sell, an idea that recent polling bears out: For all the attention heaped on bathrooms and hormone replacements, Republican voters consistently respond better to bread-and-butter issues — tax cuts and lowering crime — than calls to ban abortion, outlaw gender therapy for minors and restrict classroom discussion on race, gender and sexuality. [Continue reading…]