Why is Taylor Swift such a difficult puzzle for Republicans? Part of it is probably because some of the Right’s shrillest and loudest voices refuse to even acknowledge that she’s real. Not kidding.

Earlier this year against the backdrop of Swift’s support for Joe Biden, right-wing personalities including podcaster Benny Johnson and activist Laura Loomer expressed their incredulity at the fact that a musician who grossed a billion dollars on tour could possibly be considered famous without being a Pentagon asset.

As I wrote at the time, parts of the Right have an odd relationship with celebrities, especially left-wing ones (although there’s much to be said about Hulk Hogan’s political playbook as well).

Now that President Joe Biden has departed the electoral picture, the pendulum of Swift’s political influence is presumably swinging back toward relevance, this time with gender politics to boot. However, as the Left’s candidate du jour has changed, the Right really hasn’t: same candidate, same playbook, and still no answers to the Taylor Swift problem. As we look at the increasing probability of Swift’s endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris, I’m left to ponder how Swift perfectly highlights the failures of the Right’s approach to culture.

Much ink has been spilled about how political polarization creates parallel cultural identities: Chick-fil-A vs. Whole Foods, Tractor Supply vs. Target (insert your favorite economic dichotomy here). The same rings true for entertainment culture.

Here’s the tactical breakdown for our side: As the in-house debates rage on about what’s “woke” and what’s safe for conservatives to partake of culturally, the conservative tendency is to retreat and become nonparticipatory to avoid moral collapse. As someone working in corporate engagement, I’ve seen firsthand how deep the boycott tendency runs. Retreat often seems like a safer default, and cultural engagement is often not a natural tendency for the temperamentally conservative.

The same retreat mentality simply isn’t present in the cultural temperament surrounding a figure such as Swift. An endorsement from the Eras star can motivate otherwise completely disinterested people into the voting booth, particularly when paired with the Harris-Walz ticket’s unique status of having fresh faces without either of the two political names by which many people are simply exhausted.

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The Harris-Walz run is accelerating into its drive phase. As the Democratic Party tries to shore up its margins with traditionally Republican voter blocs such as veterans and evangelicals, the cultural phenomenon of Taylor Swift offers a far more enticing (and arguably difficult) outcome: not making the undecided the decided, but making the uninterested interested enough to show up in November.

Conservative bashing of Swift earlier in this election cycle accomplished nothing beyond proving how much certain sections of the Right just don’t understand fame outside of political parameters, but that bashing didn’t cost them. This time, the Republican inability to generate the kind of political momentum Swift’s influence creates may be a key fumble.

Isaac Willour is an award-winning journalist focusing on race, culture, and American conservatism and a corporate relations analyst at Bowyer Research. He can be found on X @IsaacWillour.