How Maga fell out of love with beer

For the archetypal US conservative male, beer has long been seen as the booze of choice, but a growing number of right-wingers are turning against a cold one.

Conservatives in America have had a “stormy relationship” with beer in “recent years”, said Slate. Now the right is waging a “war” on the beverage on several fronts, and “beer is losing badly”.

Dizzying backlash

In 2023, a “conservative uprising” against Bud Light became “one of the highest-profile beverage-themed revolts since the Boston Tea Party, except with more guns and influencers”.

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For two decades, the brand had been the best-seller in the US with “boorish marketing aimed squarely” at men of all ages, but when a transgender influencer featured in a social media ad campaign, it sparked a backlash that was “swift and dizzying”, as “seemingly every conservative personality” turned against the brand.

Sales “plummeted” and Bud Light “tumbled” from top spot to third. Twelve months later, it was estimated that the company had lost $1.4 billion (£1 billion) in sales from the “backlash”.

Next, two Mexican beers – Modelo and Corona - found themselves in the “conservative crosshairs”. Donald Trump’s tariffs meant that selling beers imported from Mexico became a “disastrous business model” because the president was “obsessed with keeping out stuff from abroad, especially stuff (and people) from Mexico”.

Beer is also suffering from a wider trend of sobriety among Republicans. Many leading right-wing figures, including Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have talked about being sober. So did Charlie Kirk. “Maybe the rising tide of Christian nationalism has revived an old-fashioned Protestant temperance,” said The Guardian, or perhaps heeding RFK’s quest to “make America healthy again” means “eschewing beer, barbecues and bourbon”.

‘Anti-woke’

For those right-wingers who want to boycott what they see as “woke” brands but without giving up the booze, there is a solution: “anti-woke” beer. In the wake of the Bud Light boycott, a “slate of alternative ‘anti-woke’ brands” has appeared on the scene to “meet the boycotters’ needs”, said Politico.

One was “Conservative Dad’s Ultra Right 100% Woke-Free American Beer”. It has an alcohol volume of 4%, but one tester for Politico said it tasted “like a non-alcoholic IPA”, adding: “I can’t imagine anything less conservative” than that.

There was also bad news for this brand earlier this year, when beer giant Anheuser-Busch filed a trademark claim against it, claiming that Ultra Right Beer infringes on the trademark of Michelob Ultra, a move the makers of Ultra Right described as “revenge”.

The challenges facing the brewing industry go beyond the political divide. In a poll last month, Gallup found that the percentage of American adults who reported drinking any alcohol had fallen to 54%, the lowest number in nine decades of polling. Once again, the demographic “leading the charge” were “self-identified Republicans” of whom “more than half are off the sauce altogether”.