In a supposedly very conservative red state, Arkansas, the recent TV ad message run by the GOP candidate was “young men who are gaming at home and eating Cheetos all day are why we had to implement work requirements for welfare”; it was a very negative ad that made young men look like slackers, layabouts etc.

Of course, only about one percent of welfare recipients are young men; single moms in middle age are the ones who are a large percentage of those receiving the benefits, for very different reasons than Cheetos consumption.

But it shows how attacking young men when they aren’t even the crux of the problem is en vogue.

BTW House Speaker Johnson has said the same thing on TV about young men.

It's separate from the welfare angle, but there absolutely is a trend of deteriorating workforce/education participation for men. Male labor force participation has fallen sharply over the long run, and the long-run decline is concentrated among men without four-year degrees.

Did they ever stop blaming video games?

Like you said, it's a very red state, so I guess these young men voted for these people in the first place?

This is the paradox of it all, disenfranchised people voting against their own best interests, all the time. This is populism, this is 2026. yay.

Lying and blaming whoever seems good targer is very on brand for conservatives. There is nothing "supposedly" to he had here.

After all, that is what people (including men) want when they vote for republicans. They just dont expect themselves to be receiving it.

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You conveniently forgot to mention that a lot of the controversy is coming from the GOP side because it was a young white man being used to depict someone that's lazy. You should ask yourself if these people would be as upset if the ad depicted a young black man instead.