At this years Conservative Political Action Conference, the culture war reigned supreme.

When our schools teach kids to be ashamed of America, when they teach the 1619 Project instead of our founding, were at risk, said former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a potential 2024 presidential candidate.

All this woke, transgender athletes, CRT, 1619, they dont teach reading, writing or arithmetic, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said, perhaps less artfully.

Gender-related care for minors is a demonic assault on the innocence of our children, according to Tom Fitton, the head of the right-wing group Judicial Watch.

The most incendiary comments came from Daily Wire podcast host Michael Knowles, who called for transgenderism to be eradicated from public life entirely.

The list of terrors did not end there. Speakers warned of gay and transgender groomers preying on children to recruit them for sexual acts or to increase their own ranks. According to various presenters, men are terrorizing women in the bathroom by pretending to be women themselves; the very concept of the family is being upended as children change their gender behind their parents backs; and social unrest is brewing because some history teachers dont emphasize patriotism to the exclusion of everything else.

The GOP appears to be pinning its hopes for the next election on this new culture war. But theres nothing new about the fears theyre expressing, or the dire outcomes they claim are imminent.

Beginning in the 1970s, conservatives also organized a new political coalition following a wave of social and cultural change that saw successes for the civil rights and womens and gay rights movements. Black people were finally to be treated as equal citizens with protections in elections, employment and housing. Women were moving out of the home and into the workplace. And gays and lesbians were asserting their right to exist in the public sphere.

Traditional hierarchies of power were being upset, and men particularly white men were being forced into economic competition with Black people and women just as the long period of post-war growth was coming to an end.

The conservative reaction to this was to slander gay people as pedophiles, warn of men in womens bathrooms, decry the subversion of family authority and protest the inclusion of history that highlighted the countrys shortcomings, specifically on matters of race, as destructive to national unity.

Weve heard this all before.