Why?: We expected a “red wave.” The polling showed our momentum, the Democrats had a horrible record, financially we were competitive – although outspent…and yet we may barely cobble together a majority in the House and the Senate is an open question.
The good news…with a House Republican majority we at least have a “check” on the progressive liberal Democrat’s agenda and President Biden’s dictates.
In my opinion, there are several factors that require a deeper dive by the party and conservatives to better understand what happened.
I would raise the following:
Candidates Matter: Even in a wave election, you must have good candidates with a good message. Very rarely can you just “ride the wave” and expect to pick up seats if the candidates are ill prepared, out of touch with their districts/states, make mistakes, etc.
Not all candidates who can win a primary…can win in the general. To paraphrase the late Bill Buckley, I would rather support the most conservative candidate who can win.
The Trump Effect: In some cases he helped, in others not so much. There is still no greater motivator of our base and an endorsement that most conservatives and/or Republicans would like to have. However, in some cases, his primary support doesn’t transfer to a positive in general elections. The President doesn’t necessarily seem to be able to differentiate that. His obsession with “loyalty” and willingness to attack fellow Republicans who he feels aren’t loyal enough hurts. Exit polling showed that there is still a large number of voters (particularly independent swing voters) who voted “against Trump,” overriding what normally should have been “obvious” decisions based on the Democrat’s record and policies.
Abortion: The Dobbs decision motivated the Democrat’s base and brought out many younger voters and women who saw this as an important issue. Although the economy and inflation led the pack as to the most important issue in this election, the issue of abortion rights was close behind to many. The left effectively framed the issue as a “national ban on abortion” when, in reality, only 10 of the 50 states had laws that fundamentally banned abortion after conception while the other 40 had a variety of exceptions and restrictions that most voters would agree with. In several key states “abortion rights” was on the ballot and regardless of how extreme or convoluted some of the initiatives were, they played to the Democrats advantage.
Money Matters: The Democrats outspent Republicans when you look at their candidate, Super PAC, and Dark Money funds. In some cases by a lot.
Super PACs and the parties also now dominate the fundraising at the candidate’s expense and therefore controlling the message. This gives the establishment and so called “experts” way too much control over local candidate, at least in my opinion.
I would like to see more campaign finance reform that allows the candidates to raise more funds on their own, control their own messaging and their own destiny.
Just a few thoughts to ponder.
Who to Blame: This is a mistake and at the very least an oversimplification of reality. Something went wrong…hell, lots went wrong. The wave fizzled.
There were plenty of mistakes made at every level. Some state parties had no absentee voter chase programs or early voter programs, when voting now starts some 30 days before election day in many cases. Some primaries divided the party and our base, and party unity and bringing folks together was replaced with calls for loyalty pledges and accusations of those who don’t agree with you as RINOS.
Win, lose or draw…any good and competent organization should assess their successes and failures after a campaign. We need to learn from both and then pull the party together to move forward, not attack or ban those one disagrees worth. There will always be time for those who want to play the loyalty game, but as one of earliest pieces of advice I received from a leading politico in my college days shared “always forgive…we need to win…but never forget.” A political reality that rings true more today than ever.
Georgia on My Mind: Put aside our differences, disappointments, and frustrations. Politically, nothing is more important than winning the U.S. Senate seat in Georgia.
If you can help…in any way…please do. Call a friend, send $10 bucks, help make the case for mainstream American values. Too much is on the line to sit on the sidelines.
https://secure.winred.com/team-herschel-inc/fnc-221110-w
ELECTION DAY 12/6
EARLY VOTING 11/28 – 12/2
(Some counties may start on 11/26) ABSENTEE VOTING Absentee Ballots can be requested NOW through 11/28, and must be returned by 12/6. To request an Absentee Ballot:
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–Saul Anuzis
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Can Raphael Warnock Pull Off Another Senate Runoff?
Not all Senate runoffs are created equal. Once again, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock is headed to a runoff in a Georgia Senate race, less than two years after his fight against former Sen. Kelly Loeffler in January 2021. This time, though, things may be a bit different since the balance of the Senate may not depend on Georgia in the same way it did last year.
In short, the eventual outcome of Warnock and Republican Herschel Walker’s runoff on Dec. 6 may in part hinge on whether control of the Senate hangs in balance. As of now, the Senate will include 48 Democrats and 48 Republicans, with three other as-yet-unprojected Senate races in Alaska, Arizona and Nevada. Returns give Republicans an edge as of now in both Alaska and Nevada. Arizona, meanwhile, tilts slightly toward Democrats currently. With a Democratic win in the Pennsylvania Senate race last night, that means Democrats need to hold on to two of their three competitive seats — Arizona, Nevada and/or Georgia — in order to reach 50 seats and maintain their majority in the chamber. If Georgia is the deciding seat, parties will likely throw everything they have at the Georgia runoff, even with Walker’s obvious warts as a candidate.
Three Pillars of 2022 GOP Disappointment
There are at least three (at times overlapping) ways of looking at the GOP’s disappointing midterms: candidates, policy, and voting.
The topic that has gotten perhaps the most coverage is candidate quality, especially at the gubernatorial and senatorial levels. Many swing voters are not hard-core ideologues, so perhaps they are particularly attuned to the immediate presentation of a candidate (whether she has experience, a closet full of skeletons, and so forth). The GOP struggled at candidate recruitment. Top-tier potential candidates often passed on running in key battleground races, as when Chris Sununu decided against a Senate run in New Hampshire. Sometimes, very weak candidates triumphed in fractured primaries. Doug Mastriano is perhaps the most prominent example of this. And weak candidates at the top of the ticket often dragged down other candidates, costing seats in the House and state legislatures. Moreover, these flawed candidates were often associated with fringe policy positions.
How the 2022 Midterms Became a Squeaker
Late one mid-September evening, the leaders of the House Democratic campaign arm were in the middle of a marathon meeting, grappling with an increasingly hostile midterm landscape. Two choices were on the table: a more defensive posture to limit their losses in the face of a potential red wave or a more aggressive approach in hopes of saving their paper-thin majority.
Leftover Chinese food was strewn about. The hour approached midnight. The decision was made. They would go all in for the majority — the pundits, polling and punishing political environment be damned. Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the group, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, walked to the whiteboard and scrawled a single word.
BELIEVE.
What Went Wrong Tuesday? A Post-Election Autopsy
The results of Tuesday’s election were, in a word, odd. Almost no one, except perhaps for those who were cheering the Democrats on to a big win, conceded in advance of the counting that such an outcome was possible.
A book can, indeed probably will be written about all the things that went wrong for the GOP and what went right for the Democrats. In the simplest scenario, President Joe Biden’s constant appeals to his party’s base to come home and stop Republican “extremists” from seizing power worked.
Looking at the map, particularly where the U.S. House of Representatives is concerned, the results fall just inside the category of what could be expected. That the GOP would take over was hardly in doubt. The Democrats’ margin going into the election was just a handful of seats. Those who predicted a wave, including yours truly, failed to consider several things that proved to be decisive.
Newt Gingrich: There’s An Awful Lot For Republicans To “Reassess” After 2022 “Red Trickle”
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told FBN’s “Mornings With Maria” Bartiromo that Republicans did not do as well in the 2022 midterm election as he expected.
“There were races we thought we were going to win that we didn’t, and there were people we didn’t think we’d lose that we did. I think for Republicans, this may be as big a time to reassess and look at things as it is for Democrats,” Gingrich said.
“Ron DeSantis got a huge boost and he is much more likely to run for president now. President Trump has to be looking at some of this and thinking about it because he worked very hard. He led a huge rally in Miami with Marco Rubio and Rick Scott two nights before the election, so he can take some credit. But I think DeSantis is probably the biggest single winner of the night. That means he will be, for everybody who doesn’t want Trump, Ron DeSantis will now become far and away the leading alternative and the superstar,” he explained.
Four Lessons Republicans Must Learn Before 2024
The Republican Party swaggered into Tuesday’s midterm elections with full confidence that it would clobber President Joe Biden and his Democratic Party, capitalizing on voters’ concerns over inflation and the economy to retake majorities in both chambers of Congress. The question, party officials believed, was one only of scale: Would it be a red wave, or a red tsunami?
The answer, it turns out, is neither.
As of this morning, Republicans had yet to secure a majority in either the House or the Senate. Across the country, Democrats won races that many in the party expected to lose. Millions of votes are still to be counted, particularly in western states, but this much is clear: Even if Republicans eke out narrow congressional majorities, 2022 will be remembered as a triumph for Democrats, easily the best midterm cycle for an incumbent president’s party since 2002, when the country rallied around George W. Bush and his GOP in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Given the tailwinds they rode into Election Day—a fragile economic outlook, an unpopular president, a pervasive sense that our democracy is dysfunctional—Republicans spent yesterday trying to make sense of how things went so wrong. There was a particular focus on Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, three battleground states that went from red to blue on Election Day 2020, and states where Democrats won major victories on Tuesday.
Based on my reporting throughout the year, as well as data from Tuesday’s exit polling and conversations with Republican officials in the immediate aftermath of Election Day, here are four lessons I believe the party must learn before the next election in 2024.
What Florida Got Right: The Moms Behind the Red Wave
Everyone expected Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to win reelection, but no one anticipated the stunning 20-point landslide on Tuesday. Floridians made it clear: they want pro-family, pro-freedom leadership. While Republicans across the country were expecting favorable results, not all of them won, and few won as decisively as DeSantis.
What was behind the magic in Florida? Moms!
Governor DeSantis was unafraid to speak directly about the issues that most concern moms: border security, inflation, woke gender ideology aimed at kids. While many Republicans who lost races in other states avoided the big issues, Governor DeSantis boldly offered an alternative. He did not shy away from talking about the topics we discuss around the dinner table and the concerns that keep us up at night.
Governor DeSantis took decisive action on the issues that matter to moms. From affirming parental rights to expanding school choice, banning Critical Race theory in the classroom and protecting children from radical ideological indoctrination, Governor DeSantis put stood for truth, freedom, and common sense. He put Florida children first, not a political agenda.
Governor DeSantis invited moms to attend important bill signing events, asked for their input on policy and legislation, and listened to their concerns. Moms across the country began looking at Governor DeSantis as the model for good leadership they want to see in their own states.
Moms are not fooled by throwaway lines and cheap promises. When a leader has a clear and strong message in support of the Constitution and the American family, moms will listen. If they also have a track record of following through on those promises, moms will vote. And vote they did!
Buck the Bureaucratic Supremacists
From the shadows, they and their metastasizing totalitarian regime of systemic censorship and propaganda must be unmasked, uprooted, and undone.
Freedom’s death march to serfdom hastens: The deep state that lied about “Russiagate” is now policing “disinformation.”
In a story broken earlier this week by The Intercept, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)—largely through its Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)—and the FBI engaged with Big Tech companies to censor Americans and interfere in the 2020 presidential election. Cloaked in the nebulous pretext that it is endeavoring to protect Americans from “misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation,” this insidious collusion between unaccountable bureaucrats and Big Tech companies is part of a continuing effort by federal apparatchiks to have Big Tech do what the government technically cannot do: stifle and criminalize dissent, and eradicate the God-given, constitutionally recognized and protected right to free speech.
GOP Gaining Support Among Black and Latino Voters, WSJ Poll Finds
Republicans appear to be in a better position with both groups heading into the midterms than they were in 2020 or 2018
The Republican Party is winning support from a larger share of Black voters than in other recent elections and has improved its standing in the past few months among Latino voters, the latest Wall Street Journal poll finds, adding to evidence of the party’s increasing appeal among groups that have overwhelmingly favored Democratic candidates.
About 17% of Black voters said they would pick a Republican candidate for Congress over a Democrat in Journal polls both in late October and in August. That is a substantially larger share than the 8% of Black voters who voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020 and the 8% who backed GOP candidates in 2018 House races, as recorded by AP VoteCast, a large survey of voters who participated in those elections.
Among Latino voters, Democrats held a lead of 5 percentage points over Republicans in the choice of a congressional candidate in the Journal’s October survey, a narrower advantage than the Democrats’ 11-point lead in August.
MCCOTTER: Has the GOP Rediscovered Its Roots and Reagan-Democrats?
As we head into the midterm elections, the past beckons with omens of opportunity. Whether they augur well or ill remains to be seen…
Having represented a suburban swing seat in Metro Detroit from 2003-2012, I vividly recall trying to explain to our house leadership how the GOP had to make a concerted effort to earn blue collar workers’ (i.e., the “Reagan Democrats’”) votes. The typical response from the leadership was “those voters are now Republicans.”…
… By 2016, Mr. Trump had blown up their bridge by crossing the corporatist Rubicon and actively courting – and receiving – blue collar votes, most importantly in the Midwest, which led to his electoral college victory. Still, the lesson of President Trump’s 2016 victory fell upon the barren ground of the GOP establishment that remained addicted to the ready cash and comforting, antiquated ideological confines of corporatism.
But, once more, reality ruined the party. After the 2018 Democratic wave and, in 2020, the party’s extra-legal collusion with corporations and the media to rig the rules and defeat the incumbent Trump the writing was on the wall. After the continuing collusion between corporate America and the Democrats to infringe upon Americans’ liberty, prosperity, parental rights, freedom of conscience, push the “DIE Cult” of “diversity, inclusion, and equity,” et. al., the vast majority of the GOP and large swaths of independents joined blue collar workers in rejecting the Left and its colluding corporate allies.
27 of Top 30 Crime-Ridden Cities Run by Democrats
A new report shows that Democrat policies in cities and counties are responsible for rising crime rates in “their otherwise red states.”
The Heritage Foundation today released a 19-page report titled “The Blue City Murder Problem” that includes analysis on crime data and explores who is responsible for rising crime throughout the U.S. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
“Those on the Left know that their soft-on-crime policies have wreaked havoc in the cities where they have implemented those policies,” authors Charles Stimson, Zack Smith, and Kevin D. Dayaratna, who are scholars in the Edwin Meese III Center for Judicial and Legal Studies at The Heritage Foundation, wrote in the report.
The authors continued:
It is not hard to understand why ‘reforms’ such as ending cash bail, defunding the police, refusing to prosecute entire categories of crimes, letting thousands of convicted felons out of prison early, significantly cutting the prison population, and other ‘progressive’ ideas have led to massive spikes in crime—particularly violent crime, including murder—in the communities where those on the Left have implemented them.
As of June 2022, the top three cities with the highest homicide rates include Chicago, with 304 homicides; Philadelphia, with 240 homicides; and New York, with 197 homicides, the report said.
Abortion Rights Are Reshaping American Politics
In June, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and the court’s ultra-conservative majority wrote that they were sending the issue of abortion back to the voters. The voters are displeased.
The midterm election results look like a striking rebuke of the court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and the wave of near-total abortion bans that followed it.
Results are still pending in some key states like Arizona, but Democrats won many contests that will shape abortion access for the next few years — and in some cases, much longer. Abortion-rights supporters managed to enshrine the right to abortion in three state constitutions, including the crucial state of Michigan, where a near-total ban on abortion from 1931 has been tangled up in court battles for months. And supporters notched another consequential win in Kentucky, where a majority of the state’s voters opposed a ballot measure that would have explicitly clarified that abortion rights was not protected under the state constitution.
These are significant victories for Democrats and abortion-rights supporters, particularly as Democrats faced significant headwinds on other topics important to Americans. That success almost certainly means abortion will remain a defining political issue as the 2024 presidential race looms on the horizon. There will be plenty of opportunities for Democrats to push their message: Abortion-rights activists now have momentum to push for ballot measures like the one that passed in Michigan, perhaps in states with active or pending bans like Ohio, Oklahoma and Missouri. And candidates may see this week’s results as evidence they need to talk more about abortion than they may have otherwise.
In other words, the unpopularity of the Supreme Court’s decision isn’t just registering in polls – it’s also reshaping the country’s political landscape.
Results for Tax-Related Questions on State Ballots
Voters in 14 states had their say on income tax rates, property tax breaks, taxes on marijuana and more during the midterm election. We have the results.
The 2022 midterm elections are finally over. Americans went to the polls on November 8 (if they didn’t already voted early) to determine who will control Congress, as well as state and local governments across the country. But in addition to voting for specific candidates, most people probably noticed a question or two at the bottom of their ballot – and some of them were about taxes.
These “ballot initiatives” are one of the purest forms of democracy. Citizens vote directly on matters important to them, bypassing the normal (and often ugly) law-making process. This year, voters in 14 states gave a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on a wide variety of proposed tax law changes. Did Arkansas, Maryland, or Missouri legalize and tax recreational marijuana? Did California and Massachusetts voters impose higher taxes on millionaires? Did the sales tax rise in Arizona? Your overall state tax bill could go up or down by hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dollars each year depending on how voters acted on these issues.
If your state didn’t hold a tax referendum this year, you should still pay attention to the results from other states. You may see similar tax measures on your next ballot, since states (especially neighboring ones) often mimic successful tax policies.
The Weakness Behind China’s Strong Façade – Xi’s Reach Exceeds His Military’s Grasp
In late October, Chinese leader Xi Jinping kicked off the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th Party Congress—a twice-a-decade, agenda-setting conclave of the party’s key leaders—with a report that touted China’s achievements and laid out a vision for the years ahead. In a move that was widely expected, Xi extended his own rule. But he surprised even the closest China watchers by unveiling a roster of leaders in which his confidants now occupy all the top positions within the party and state apparatus. Using direct and forceful language, Xi consolidated his hold on power and projected a strong and ambitious China to the world.
But the façade of a confident and robust Xi masked deep anxiety. Xi sees China hemmed in on all sides and facing intensifying security threats. This anxiety is driven by Beijing’s perception of a hostile Washington, its problematic relations with its neighbors, and the fact that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army still has a long way to go to become a force capable of fighting and winning local wars—never mind larger conflicts. Such a bleak outlook motivated Xi’s selection of new military leaders, underscored the urgency with which he has pressed the PLA to modernize, and resulted in a daunting list of tasks that the PLA must meet in the years ahead. Indeed, Xi’s insistence on Chinese military strength at the party congress was in truth an admission of weakness: China cannot yet defeat its rivals, and Beijing knows it.
