For the last four years, conservative and right-wing activists and pundits have been engaged in a culture war that demonizes racial justice, the LGBTQ community and progressive ideals. So, when presumptive Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris announced Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate on Tuesday, the culture warriors immediately dusted off their old playbook to attack Walz.

Walz, a veteran and former teacher, has been a champion of LGBTQ rights, public education and racial equality — a platform that is anathema to Republican ideology.

As governor, he approved a measure that would provide free menstrual products to public schools, including putting them in both girls and boys bathrooms.

Scandalized by the idea, Chaya Raichik, the person behind the Libs of TikTok account, which is dedicated to smearing the LGBTQ community, began calling Walz “Tampon Tim,” suggesting that he should be embarrassed by advocating for period products.

But studies have shown that there is still a lot of stigma around menstruation, and 23% of students struggle to afford their own pads and tampons.

Elsewhere, Fox News’ Jesse Watters recently took aim at Minnesota’s new flag, which debuted this year, and blamed Walz for the change. “This guy changed the flag of the state to look more like Somalia,” Watters claimed this week. The old flag, which was introduced in 1957, depicted a white man plowing the land while an Indigenous person rode horseback. Native communities in Minnesota asserted that the flag promoted the removal of Indigenous people from the land.

The new flag design was conceived by a state commission created by the legislature. While Walz did sign the bill creating that commission into law, he played no part in the design process. Also, the star design that conservatives allege was a copy of the Somalian flag was actually intended to be a literal representation of the state motto, “The Star of the North.”

But that hasn’t stopped conservatives and right-wing figures from making false claims like this and others about Walz.

During a recent Fox News appearance, Stephen Miller, who was a senior adviser to Trump, said Walz and Harris would “turn the entire Midwest into Mogadishu,” also citing Walz’s backing of refugee resettlement programs.

Meanwhile, Angela Morabito, the spokesperson for the Defense of Freedom Institute, a conservative nonprofit, posted claims on social media Tuesday that Walz kept “pornographic books in Minnesota schools” and “promoted critical race theory.”

These are popular lies among conservatives and right-wingers, who have spent the last three years attempting to ban books that promote racial equality or have LGBTQ themes from schools by falsely claiming they are sexually explicit or harmful to children.

But some of the most unhinged attacks have come from Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who is largely credited with manufacturing a panic about critical race theory and helping Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) takeover of the New College, a small liberal arts school in Florida.

In a series of social media posts filled with lies, Rufo said Tuesday that Walz “shouts ‘trans women are women’ in the shower,” “knows that child castration is life-saving, gender-affirming care” and “speaks fluent critical race theory.”

How did Republicans get here? As part of an effort to whip up a moral panic, conservatives have been smearing transgender people as child abusers, falsely suggesting that books that discuss gender and sexual orientation are sexually explicit, and claiming that critical race theory, a college-level framework for understanding racism and policy, is really about hating white people. And before pivoting to these issues, right-wing activists railed against COVID-related school closures, masks and vaccines.

But, unfortunately for Republicans, voters have repeatedly signaled that the culture wars are not working as a winning electoral strategy.

After Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s mansion in 2021 while running on a “parental rights” message in Virginia, Republicans coalesced around the idea that a faux moral panic in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests could lead to electoral success.

But in the 2022 elections, the candidates who ran on right-wing social issues, like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Paul LePage in Maine and Tudor Dixon in Michigan, lost their races. DeSantis’ short campaign for president floundered from beginning to end, despite his attempt to take his “anti-wokeness” bona fides to the national stage.

The Republicans’ problem is now twofold. They seem to be unable to come up with attacks that can stick — especially to a politician who is white, Midwestern and moderate.

Then there’s the fact that the Republican Party has abandoned any pretense of having a policy platform and has chosen to double down on its ever-growing list of white grievances. And while making deranged claims about Walz’s record may satisfy its base, the culture war-style attacks are becoming more inscrutable to the average voter with each passing day.