The electorate tunes Biden out—and why it matters for November
By • The Washington Free Beacon
The 2022 election grows more mysterious by the day. Republicans enter this cycle with the wind at their backs: President Biden is unpopular, voters say we are in a recession, Democratic majorities are razor-thin, and midterms favor the opposition party. The issue set—inflation, border security, crime, and the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan—is well-suited for Republican candidates. Many Democrats are retiring. GOP voters are enthusiastic. And did I mention the president is unpopular?
Yet Democrats are increasingly bullish about their electoral prospects. They have closed the gap with Republicans on the congressional generic ballot and lead the GOP for the first time this year. They are even or tied with Republicans in (admittedly spotty) polling averages of seven marquee Senate races. Since June 24, when the Supreme Court overruled Roe v. Wade and restored abortion law to the political sphere, Democrats have outperformed their expected margins in special elections. The reversal of Roe has mobilized an important Democratic constituency: voters, especially women, with high levels of educational attainment. On August 2, Kansans dealt pro-life forces a setback by defeating a referendum that would have forbidden state judges from reading abortion rights into the state constitution. On August 23, Democrat Pat Ryan defeated Republican Marc Molinaro in a closely watched congressional special election in New York. Ryan staked his campaign on preserving abortion rights. Molinaro focused on inflation. Voters had a clear-cut choice between the two parties’ messages. Abortion won.
Suddenly, the political class is revising its expectations for the fall. “Red Wave Looks More Like a Ripple,” says the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter. “Democrats sense a shift in the winds, but it may not be enough,” says the New York Times. “Democrats’ Outlook for Midterm Elections Brightens After New York Win,” says the Wall Street Journal. The Journal‘s op-ed page says the GOP has an abortion problem. The problem? Republicans have no idea what to say about abortion. Some are reticent, some are all over the place, and others support restrictions that go against public opinion. The Democrats are free to define the landscape and press the attack that Republicans will take away women’s rights. It’s a replay of past Democratic accusations that the GOP will cut entitlements such as Medicare or Social Security—except this entitlement is sexual, personal, and not a question of dollars and cents. This summer, Democrats have spent tens of millions of dollars on pro-choice television ads targeting Republicans. Why? Because it works.
There may be more behind the changing dynamics of this election than falling gas prices and abortion rights. Typically, midterm results depend on a president’s approval rating. If that were the case this year, Democrats would be running behind expectations. As it stands, Democrats are running ahead of Biden’s approval rating in the congressional generic ballot, in Senate polling, and in special elections. Voters are not translating their disapproval of Biden into disgust with Democrats in general. They are not factoring Biden into their down-ballot calculations. They have tuned him out.
Jeff Bell, the late Republican consultant, wrote an essay 22 years ago that resonates today. Called “The Politics of Bifurcation,” Bell’s article tried to explain why primary voters in both the Democratic and Republican parties during the 2000 election cycle were more interested in a candidate’s character than in political ideology. The reason, Bell argued, was that voters held a “bifurcated” view of the Clinton presidency: They disapproved of Clinton’s personal conduct but applauded his job performance. Hence, they elevated candidates who displayed honor and integrity over candidates who proposed major policy changes.
That helped figures like John McCain, George W. Bush, and Bill Bradley, and hurt the politician with the closest ties to Clinton the man: Vice President Al Gore. “Without the bifurcation,” Bell wrote in the March 13, 2000, issue of The Weekly Standard, “the Republicans would have far less chance than they do of retaking the White House, given the positive economic and social trends over which Bill Clinton and Al Gore preside.” The split decision on Clinton put Bush in the Oval Office—with an assist from the Supreme Court.
A generation ago, voters differentiated between their views of the president’s personality and of his job performance. The Democrats picked up five House seats one month before the Republican-controlled House of Representatives impeached Clinton. Might it be that voters now distinguish between their views of Biden the president and of down-ballot Democrats? In the new politics of bifurcation, voters separate their attitudes toward Biden, whom they see as a lost cause, from their feelings toward the Democratic Party. They might not be happy with either their president or the economy. But unlike last year, they see today’s Republicans as more frightening than the alternative. The upshot: a Democratic revival.
The new politics of bifurcation explains why 18 percent of voters disapprove of Biden but say they will vote for Democrats in the fall. It explains why a recent Pew survey found that Biden’s job approval is a pathetic 37 percent, but voters who disapprove “not so strongly” of Biden favor Democratic candidates by double digits. The not-so-strong disapprovers are a mix of voters who probably were never enthusiastic about Biden to begin with but accepted him as the best way to remove his predecessor from the White House. The economic mismanagement, border insecurity, breakdown of law and order, persistence of viral threats, and chaotic international scene of the past year and a half remind them of Biden’s many flaws. Still, they are not ready to embrace Republican candidates who hold marginal positions on abortion and long for a Trump restoration.
Bifurcation works in paradoxical ways. The last two Democratic presidents had terrible midterms but rebounded in time for reelection. That might not happen with Biden. The electorate views him so poorly that it may be difficult for him to recover—and his job will be more difficult still if surprising Democratic strength in November deprives him of Republican foils in Congress. CNN’s July poll found that 75 percent of Democrats want someone other than Biden to run for president in 2024. The most important number in the Pew poll was 35 percent. It’s the percentage of voters who say Biden is “mentally sharp.” He’s not getting sharper.
The safe bet is that undecided voters will swing toward the opposition party in the closing days of the campaign. In this likely scenario, Biden’s dismal approval rating will bring down the Democratic congressional majorities. That, after all, is how the world works. And yet the world hasn’t been working as expected for the last six years. The most unpopular candidate in the history of the Gallup poll became the first U.S. president with no experience in government or the military. That president became the first chief executive to lose reelection in 28 years. We have had a once-in-a-century pandemic, the largest single-year jump in violent crime ever recorded, the breakdown of the southern border, the worst inflation in 40 years, the first cross-border invasion in Europe since 1945, and a Supreme Court decision that reversed a half-century-old precedent. Things are weird. And if I am right about the new politics of bifurcation, things are about to get weirder.
Republicans learn that a midterm victory won't come easily
By • The Washington Free Beacon
Today caps off the worst week yet for Republicans in the 2022 campaign cycle. Their troubles began with Senate passage of the Chips and Science Act on Wednesday, July 27, and culminated in the Kansas pro-life rout on Tuesday, August 2. Before last week, the party was riding a red wave to victory in November’s elections. Now, one month before the campaign begins in earnest on Labor Day, aimless Republicans must fend off a Democratic Party that is playing offense.
Yes, the fundamentals continue to favor the GOP. Voters do not like this economy. They blame President Biden for inflation and supply shortages. The president’s job approval rating is 39 percent in the FiveThirtyEight average of polls. Republicans are enthusiastic, Democrats less so. Nancy Pelosi’s days as speaker of the House are numbered: The FiveThirtyEight model gives the GOP an 80 percent chance of winning the lower chamber of Congress.
Yet Republicans want more than control of the House. No one wants to repeat the gridlock, frustration, debt crises, shutdowns, and sequester that roiled the country when Democrats held the White House and Senate between 2011 and 2015. If Republicans gain only in the House, Biden won’t feel as much pressure to triangulate off the GOP Congress. He will be able to count on Senate Democrats to confirm his executive and judicial branch appointees. He will turn Kevin McCarthy and the MAGA Squad into foils and scapegoats. The media will be happy to play along.
The GOP needs a full-spectrum victory if it wants to stop the left and shock Democrats into abandoning Biden. The data and events of the past week suggest that the party has a way to go. For starters: Republicans have enjoyed a modest lead in the congressional generic ballot since January. Now the ballot is tied.
Meanwhile, according to FiveThirtyEight, the GOP nominee leads in only one of six key Senate races. The lucky Republican is Ted Budd in North Carolina. He’s ahead of Cheri Beasley by 1 point. The other Republicans are either close behind (Adam Laxalt in Nevada) or far gone (Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania). The GOP needs to net one seat to win Senate control. If the election were held at the time of writing, the party would lose three.
I know, I know: Most of these races are tight. Surveys this far out are unreliable. There is time for Republican challengers to define their opposition. How candidates react under pressure to unknown events in the coming months will be important. Polls of registered voters or all adults do not consider the widespread GOP enthusiasm that will be reflected in polls of likely voters this fall. And state-based polling has been notoriously off since at least the 2014 cycle.
Still, there is no denying that Republicans are acting less confident than just a week ago. The reason? They have been surprised and shell-shocked. Senate leader Mitch McConnell pledged that Republicans would block the $280 billion Chips and Science Act of 2022 for as long as Democrats tried to reach agreement among themselves on a big-spending reconciliation bill. Republicans mistakenly assumed that Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia was opposed to reconciliation because of inflation. To be fair, he said exactly that on July 14.
On July 27, 17 Republicans voted to pass the Chips Act, subsidizing U.S. semiconductors for reasons of national security. Hours later, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that he had reached a deal with Manchin on a climate, health care, and tax bill absurdly known as the “Inflation Reduction Act.” Regardless of whether the deal holds, the Senate Republicans had been outmaneuvered. “Looks to me like we got rinky-doo’d,” said Sen. John Kennedy. “That’s a Louisiana word for ‘screwed.'”https://659b56ca16f539d2f2f5e86f3a679aa6.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Then, on August 2, voters in Kansas rejected an effort to overturn a state court’s ruling that the Sunflower State constitution guarantees a right to abortion. Similar referenda allowing state legislatures to regulate abortion have passed in West Virginia, Alabama, Tennessee, and Louisiana. But this was the first such initiative put to the ballot since the Supreme Court held Roe v. Wade unconstitutional. Kansas voted for Donald Trump by 15 points in 2020—and voted to maintain a state right to abortion by 18 points in 2022.
Kansas was a defeat for the pro-life movement. It also scared Republican strategists, whose eyes bugged out at the huge Democratic turnout in the middle of the summer. The GOP consultant class was leery of abortion politics to begin with. Now it is all but guaranteed to steer its clients away from a debate over the issue.
This is the wrong response. Too many Republican candidates won’t defend their stance on abortion and provide counter examples of pro-choice extremism. Afraid of what the party’s pro-life ultras might say, Republicans opt for reticence and mixed messaging on abortion rather than offering measures that command public support.https://659b56ca16f539d2f2f5e86f3a679aa6.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
“Imagine thinking that what it will take to win the people’s support after this historic [Supreme Court] victory on the human right to life is to ignore it all together and put all your chips on economic issues,” wrote veteran conservative activist Gary Bauer on August 3. “Go on the campaign trail and talk about carried interest, semiconductor shortages, and misuse of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Follow the lead of presidential nominees Dole, McCain, and Romney, who rode social issue silence all the way to second-place finishes in national elections.”
Here, then, is the Republican dilemma: The party’s Senate candidates are weak, it has no economic message beyond lamenting inflation, and its fear of the social issues leaves it exposed. “Without an answer to the left’s attack, Republicans in extremely winnable races will lose—and badly,” warned social conservative leader Frank Cannon, who urged Republicans to get behind laws banning abortions after the fetus has a heartbeat and after it is capable of feeling pain. “Now we are in the democratic era of the abortion debate,” Cannon went on. “Republican members of Congress can no longer act like the decision is out of their hands.”
Nor can Republicans act like the outcome of the 2022 election is predetermined. They may have thought that the Democratic majority would collapse under its own weight. They learned this week that it won’t.
By • Newsweek
The Biden presidency is a disappointment to Americans. That goes for people who voted for him—who thought he’d do a better job—and people who, even as they voted against him, did not believe he could make as much of a hash of things as he has.
The list of problems is long and growing longer. More COVID-19 cases than there were under Donald Trump. Inflation like we haven’t seen since the Carter years. Rapidly rising interest rates. Shortages. The debacle in Afghanistan. War in Ukraine. It’s no wonder a growing majority of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction.
According to a new Associated Press-NORC survey, 85 percent of American adults—including more than 7 in 10 Democrats—say the country is not on the right track. Almost two-thirds—60 percent—blame the president for that, with just 39 percent of those participating in the survey saying they approve of his overall presidential leadership. As if that were not bad enough, 69 percent of those surveyed, including 43 percent of the Democrats who responded, rated his handling of the economy “poor.”
Democrats need to face facts. If the president’s age is not an argument against his seeking a second term, his poll numbers are. Support for him has dropped to his predecessor’s level. Trump, at least, benefited from a highly motivated, energized bloc of diehard supporters upon whom he could always count. Biden was always a compromise choice about whom no one was truly enthusiastic.
As of now, the president’s numbers are more likely to get worse than they are to get better. It is much easier, as a friend of mine likes to observe, for his approval rating to fall deeper into the 30s than to get back above 50 percent. This is good news for the Republicans, because it makes it increasingly likely the GOP will win back control of one or both congressional chambers in November, all but guaranteeing the Biden agenda, such as it is, will grind to a full stop.
That may not put the Republicans in charge of the government, but it would effectively make Biden a “lame duck.” He won’t be able to get anything major through and won’t have anything on which to campaign for a second term. Recognizing that, GOP leaders need to be extremely strategic in deciding who they want to run in 2024.
The likely choice, most polls say, is Donald Trump. He’d be the easy winner—in a race against Biden. But what if the Democrats nominate someone else? What if Trump decides not to run? What then? It’s a puzzle, and one that’s not easily solved.
Biden has set the bar so low that it would not be too hard to find a better president among the list of potential GOP nominees—which extends well beyond the list currently being bandied about. The challenge is to find the best president, the one who will right the ship of state the current administration sent headlong into a typhoon.
The GOP needs a nominee who doesn’t just say he or she will put America’s interests first and is on the right side on critical issues like economic growth, taxes and spending, guns, abortion, and school choice, but who has demonstrated leadership on those issues. Someone who has a dynamic vision of the future most all Americans can embrace with enthusiasm.READ MORE
These people do exist. The best candidates to be “the best president” are out there now, in the U.S. Senate and running the red states. In the next campaign, their records will be what matters most. What a candidate says he wants to do needs to be measured against what he’s accomplished—or at least tried to accomplish. That goes for candidates’ record building the party as well. Did they help expand the party and its representation in Congress and the state legislatures? How many Senate, House, and gubernatorial candidates did they help? How much money did they help raise for others compared to how much they raised to fuel their own ambitions? Do they adhere to Reagan’s 11th Commandment (“thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican”), or do they resort to sharp elbows and cutting remarks against foes who should be considered friends? In short, what kind of leader do Republicans want for the next four, and perhaps eight, years?
The answer is not obvious, even for those who’ve already decided to back Trump again. He accomplished much. It’s fair to say he delivered on his promise to “Make America Great Again”—at least before the lockdowns started. His commitment to keeping his word on judges is directly responsible for the overturning of the constitutionally suspect 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which was bad law no matter which side of the issue you were on.
Trump was right for his time—but is he right for the future? He’ll get a chance to make his case after November if he chooses to run. Whether he does or doesn’t, the others who want the job will get the same chance. The Republicans who are tasked with choosing the candidate in 2024 need to keep their options open and think seriously about who can best get the country where it needs to go. If they want to win, they need to make the candidates come to them.
By • American Liberty
A new media analysis of U.S. voter registration data shows that more than one million voters have reregistered as Republicans over the last year. That number, while dramatic on its own, might just be a glimpse into the changes that are ongoing in the national electorate.
No one will know until the next election whether this high number of voters re-registering as Republicans – and it’s important to note that not every state requires or even allows a voter to select a party affiliation when registering – reflects a changing attitude among the American electorate or an underhanded effort by progressives to interfere in the GOP’s nominating process.
While that sounds conspiratorial, it’s important to note that no less an authority than The New York Times reported Monday that the more Trumpian candidate in the race for the GOP nomination for governor of Illinois – State Sen. Darren Bailey – had seen his campaign’s aspirations boosted “by an unprecedented intervention from (Illinois incumbent Democratic Gov. J.B.) Pritzker and the Pritzker-funded Democratic Governors Association, which has spent nearly $35 million combined” attacking Bailey’s opponent in Tuesday’s GOP primary as being insufficiently conservative.
The voter registration study conducted by two reporters working for the Associated Press using data provided by L2, a political data firm, concluded the 1.7 million voters who changed their party affiliations over the last year constitute a “definite reversal from the period while Trump was in office when Democrats enjoyed a slight edge in the number of party switchers nationwide.”
“Statistical modeling of the data revealed that of the 1.7 million voters over 1 million registered as Republican, while only 630,000 registered as Democrats – a massive shift in new partisan allegiance from the Trump years,” the website Mediate reported in its coverage of the story.
Whether this is a plus for conservatives specifically or the GOP generally has yet to be determined. Looking at the numbers and where they come from, most of the change appears to be happening in the suburbs in battleground states like Wisconsin and Georgia that, while typically more conservative than the cities they abut gave a majority of their votes to Joe Biden rather than Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
The AP analysis attributed the switch to voters becoming “increasingly concerned about the Democrats’ support in some localities for mandatory COVID-19 vaccines, the party’s inability to quell violent crime, and its frequent focus on racial justice.” Perhaps, although that sounds like the kind of political shorthand a liberal might use to explain what was going on without having to delve into the issue too deeply. There’s indeed been an anti-lockdown component to some primaries already ended – and the prolonged closure of public schools in New Jersey and Virginia may have had a profound impact on the 2021 gubernatorial and state legislative elections in New Jersey and Virginia but that’s only part of the story.
What’s notable on the list of factors is what is missing. There’s not a single economic issue on it. Taxes, spending, jobs – issues that voters consistently say are at the top of the list of things they care about – are, in the AP analysis, not driving the shift among voters leaving the Democrats for the GOP.
That’s hard to believe, especially for anyone old enough to remember Bill Clinton’s successful 1992 campaign for president where his consultants posted a sign on the headquarters wall to remind him and themselves that “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The areas where voters are switching also include counties “around medium-size cities such as Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Raleigh, North Carolina; Augusta, Georgia; and Des Moines, Iowa,” as well as “areas like Atlanta, Denver, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland”. These are all places where Biden’s mismanagement of the economy is hitting home hard. The president may like to brag about the number of jobs he says have been “created” since he took office but, as any reasonable person understands intuitively, most of those are jobs that existed before the lockdowns were imposed and which came back first in states led by GOP governors.
Voters like these are the ones most likely to feel the pinch of higher gas prices, the pain of doing more with less at the supermarket and the challenge of rising interest rates present to existing homeowners and those looking for a new place to live.
In a statement to the AP, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel voiced excitement over the prospect Biden’s blunders will result in her party making significant gains in the next election. The president and the Democrats, she said, “are woefully out of touch with the American people, and that’s why voters are flocking to the Republican Party in droves,” adding she believes “American suburbs will trend red for cycles to come.”
According to the AP, of the roughly 1.7 million Americans who changed their party affiliation over the past 12 months, two-thirds became members of the GOP while the others went the other way. While probably not enough to shift the outcome of a national race these changes, if they are a legitimate reflection of changing voter sentiments and not an effort to ensure conservative nominees are chosen to run in places where a more moderate member of the GOP could easily win, the movement of one million voters who were formerly Democrats, independents or members of third parties into the GOP is significant enough to determine the outcome in contests that may be especially close.
If that’s true, it’s still not likely to make the difference in which party controls either chamber of Congress next January but it could have an impact on the size of the GOP’s margins of majority in the House and Senate, if, as expected, the Republicans take back Congress. This will have an impact on the confirmation of judges and what legislation actually makes it to the president’s desk, it sets up a meaningful contrast between the two parties that will likely influence the outcome of the 2024 presidential election no matter who the major party nominees are.
By • Newsweek
There are a lot of folks who like to watch the NFL on TV. Maybe not as many as there were before the whole kneeling thing started, but it’s still a big number. And many of those probably find it irritating to no end when one of the commentators says something like—and it’s almost inevitable that they will—”It’s all going to come down to which team can put the most points on the board.”
For the people who, like me, make a living writing about politics and elections, the onset of primary season produces for us the same kind of annoyance. It’s maddening when someone who is presented as an expert on the ins and outs of the electoral process says, as you can safely bet someone eventually will, that “it’s all going to come down to turnout.”
There are times when there is a real urge to smack some of these analysts in the face. This is what comes from eliminating high school civics programs and news organizations deciding that those who at one time or another covered local government are now well-suited to explain how and why politicians get elected.
The 2016 presidential election is a perfect example of this phenomenon in practice. Many of the nation’s top political reporters, as well as those in the middle and many of the bottom-feeders, missed what was going on. They bought into the spin that Hillary Clinton‘s election was inevitable. As such, they regarded the October 2016 leak of an audiotape in which Donald Trump could, to put it gently, be heard speaking unflatteringly about women, as a death blow.
Admittedly, in many races and almost any other year, it probably would have been. But the choice between Clinton and Trump was unlike any presented to the voters in some time.
It takes experience in the electoral process to generate the level of sophistication regarding the many nuances in American politics. It takes more than subject-matter expertise to get it right. So many of my colleagues missed it so totally that I—who saw Trump’s chances of getting to the White House growing while Clinton’s were contracting, even after the release of the infamous audiotape—was either onto something or had simply become a cheerleader for whichever candidate the GOP chose to nominate.
The reason I bring this all up is that I now see it happening again. The dominant political media’s obsession with Trump, the candidates he’s endorsed and whether or not they’re winning contested GOP primaries is only a small part of the 2022 midterm election story.
It’s a popular subject because it’s easy to cover and people seem interested in it. It doesn’t, however, tell us much about where the GOP is headed or what’s now happening among the Democrats. The next election, as much as the mainstream media won’t like it, isn’t going to be a referendum on Trump. It’s going to be about President Joe Biden and how the Democrats have run the country for the last two years, even though—and this is something else that’s been overlooked—the GOP is in charge of more states now than at almost any time in history.
The Biden presidency is failing. At least that’s the perception people have. His approval rating, which started in the low- to mid-60s when he took office, has now sunk below 40. That’s not good for him, and it’s not good for his party. Democrats are getting the blame for things that are happening as a result of policies Biden has put in place, as well as for things harmful to the interests of the United States over which he has no direct control. That’s created a positive political environment for the GOP, which has amassed a nearly double-digit lead on the crucial polling question of which party voters want to control Congress after the next election.
How people feel, and why, is what ties all this together. The environment drives turnout and, right now, GOP voters are energized and engaged. A Rasmussen Reports national survey released May 26 found that of the 79% of likely voters who are excited to vote in the midterm election, Republicans led Democrats by an eight-point margin. Among those who said they were “very excited” (49 percent) to vote this fall, the GOP lead grows to 16 points. “These findings are consistent with the generic congressional ballot,” the polling firm said, “where Republicans held a nine-point lead last week.”
The challenge for those writing about elections is to figure out why that is. To be blunt, they need to set aside their personal biases—left and right—long enough to get in touch with what the American voter is thinking, while also abandoning their propensity to judge whether those thoughts are “right” or “wrong.” Only then will they be able to report competently on the contest for control of Congress this fall.
By • Daily Caller
The left loves to hate on those who speak truths they’d rather not hear. Elon Musk was once their darling until he came out for free speech. Extremists also hate Tucker Carlson, the popular news and opinion host at Fox News, because he has been particularly effective in pointing out the hypocrisy, inconsistency and outright insanity of the far left. They want his show cancelled and him silenced. They’ve even staged protests at Tucker’s home in hopes of intimidating his family. That is how the left works — notice the recent protests at the homes of Supreme Court justices.
Despite all the hate from the left, Tucker Carlson and the ideas he advocates had a very good night this past week in Ohio. One doesn’t have to agree with every opinion expressed by Tucker — he’s expressed literally thousands and thousands of opinions, so it would be normal to have some differences with even like-minded people. But no one can deny that Ohio’s primaries showed that Tucker is on to something big and that conservative, America-first ideas are popular.
Ohio is broadly seen as a bellwether because the state has historically been representative of the nation’s voting patterns in several ways. So what do the Ohio GOP primaries tell us? Twenty-two out of 22 candidates who represented a conservative, America-first political approach won in the primaries. Additionally, GOP voters outnumbered the opposition by 2 to 1 in the US Senate primary. Simply stated, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) approach batted a perfect one thousand and energized voters, proving that the MAGA agenda is far more supported than the Left is willing to admit.
Tucker was also the first major supporter of J.D. Vance’s Senate candidacy — a political newcomer who easily won the GOP primary. While Vance garnered other endorsements, including Trump’s, most came at the last minute, and Tucker’s early support helped build Vance’s support and credibility. Tucker’s endorsement of Vance not only hit back at the left but also dealt the more establishment, anti-MAGA Republicans in the state who had endorsed more moderate candidates a stinging defeat.
The left continues to contend that a conservative, America first economic and foreign policy doesn’t represent what most Americans think and that while Donald Trump may have been the president from 2017 to 2021, he only won because of the so-called Russian collusion. And as a result, he wasn’t that popular and his MAGA agenda was illegitimate. But Ohio’s GOP recent primary proves the lie of the left’s absurd propaganda.
While President Trump on occasion alienated voters with his brusk no-nonsense manner of speaking, his policies were actually widely supported. The economy was strong, wages were growing, America and its friends were safer and less threatened by totalitarianism and terrorism.
And while some voters may have assumed that the economic boom and safer international climate were just good fortune before the COVID pandemic struck, the last 15 months have provided a sharp contrast to the good times that the MAGA agenda brought. The evidence has been mounting that while Trump may have offended some, his policies benefitted everyone and made the country freer, more prosperous and more secure. Ohio’s primary results — with record turn out and a strong and consistent showing for MAGA oriented candidates — prove that Americans have woken up to the destructive mischief caused by the left.
Virtually every night, Tucker Carlson is exposing the left and showing that they seem more interested in expanding their power and prestige than in helping make America stronger, freer and more prosperous. So we should expect the attacks on MAGA candidates and Tucker to become ever more shrill and intolerant. The extremists on the left are losing the political debate — being beaten on the airwaves and at the ballot box.
These are very difficult times for the extreme left. Tucker Carlson will continue to draw their ire as one of the most articulate proponents of America First principles. Anyone who effectively advocates for American values can expect to be the target of increasingly shrill attacks and demands that these “dangerous people” with “dangerous ideas” must be silenced.
The extreme left sees time-tested truths and basic facts as dangerous to their political aims. And since they cannot win the debate, they hope to silence their opponents. If you disagree with Tucker or with an America First agenda, that’s your right. But it isn’t your right to silence those with whom you disagree.
Those who seek to silence others are admitting the inferiority of their own ideas and their ability to advocate for them. Those the left seeks to silence are typically the most effective and fact-based advocates of conservative principles. So watch who the extremists on the left attack most vociferously and seek to silence, and you will know who is advocating most effectively for making and keeping America strong, prosperous and free. I suspect that Tucker will continue to be one of those at the top of their list.
Glenn Youngkin's victory and the Republican future
By • The Washington Free Beacon
Consensus forms quickly. Within hours of winning the Virginia governor’s race, Glenn Youngkin was identified as a model for GOP candidates. The argument ran as follows: The former businessman and political newbie figured out how to hold Donald Trump’s hand—as one Republican senator put it, under the table and in the dark—and still win big in a blue state. He ran on kitchen-table issues: rising prices, schools, crime. He tailored his message to his locality and avoided national debates. None of his television advertisements featured President Biden and none mentioned illegal immigration. He defined himself as a basketball-playing, dog-loving dad from the suburbs before his opponent was able to portray him as Trump in fleece. He built coalitions with parents, veterans, and minority groups. Republicans who follow his path might enjoy similar success in 2022 and beyond.
In truth, Youngkin might not be as replicable as he appears. The reason is candidate quality. For a political rookie, Youngkin has mad skills. He has a preternatural ability to stay on message. He is positive and optimistic without coming across as treacly or sentimental. I have yet to see him frown. He has what Reagan adviser John Sears called “negative ability”—the power to deflect, repel, and ignore personal attacks. Nothing seems to get under his skin. Politicians who have this quality drive the opposition nuts. You could sense the Democrats’ frustration when Biden told a Virginia audience that extremism can come “in a smile and a fleece vest.” Maybe that’s right, but the average Virginian doesn’t look at Glenn Youngkin and see a neo-Nazi or a Proud Boy. The average Virginian sees an approachable and energetic father of four with commonsensical plans to improve the quality of life in his home state. That’s the type of profile any candidate, Republican or Democrat, ought to aim for. But it’s easier said than done.
Both his opponent and the national environment helped Youngkin. Terry McAuliffe learned how difficult it is to win nonconsecutive terms—something that may be of interest to the ruler of Mar-a-Lago. And McAuliffe clearly believed that demographics are destiny and that Virginia was irrevocably blue. He ran on airy evocations of a pleasant past and fiery denunciations of Youngkin as a Trump-like threat to institutional stability and social peace. McAuliffe’s inability to find a galvanizing issue led him to run an idea-free campaign based on mobilizing Democratic interest groups. His accusations of racism and nuttery turned out many Democrats to the polls. Just not enough to win.
The general deterioration of Biden’s presidency hurt McAuliffe. The inflation, incompetence, and cultural radicalism dragging down Biden’s job approval rating are taking other Democrats with him. The red shift in Virginia, New Jersey, and elsewhere on election night hints at bad things to come for the incumbent party. Republican leader Kevin McCarthy speculates that another 2010, when the GOP picked up 63 House seats, may be in the making. For that to happen, McCarthy has to find plenty of candidates who aspire to be Glenn Youngkin, match them against clueless incumbents, and pray that Biden’s approval rating next November is the same as or lower than it is today. This is a possible scenario, and perhaps even the most likely one. But this is also the Republican Party we are talking about. Things can always end in disaster.
It’s less as a candidate than as a governor that Youngkin can be a model for the Republican Party. He’s been given the opportunity to govern, and to govern well. His coattails brought in a Republican lieutenant governor, a Republican state attorney general, and a Republican House of Delegates. The Democrats control the state senate by two seats—but this narrow margin is pliable and open to compromise. Youngkin is in a unique position. He’s the first high-profile Republican chief executive elected in the Biden era. He has the chance to demonstrate that Republicans can address parental revolt, public safety, and economic insecurity in responsible and effective ways. He has the chance to define that agenda in the coming year, and even to broaden it, so that Republicans in 2022 have an example to point to and a lodestar to follow.
This agenda starts with education. Parents became the centerpiece of Youngkin’s campaign, the lynchpin of his victory, after McAuliffe’s career-ending gaffe of September 28, when the former governor said that parents shouldn’t be telling teachers what to teach. In a post-election interview with Hugh Hewitt, Youngkin mentioned charter schools, high curricular standards, and more spending on teachers and on special education. On the trail he pledged to ban “Critical Race Theory,” or “CRT,” from public school instruction—though he has to find a way to do so without revising or omitting the history of slavery, segregation, and the civil rights movement. My American Enterprise Institute colleagues Brad Wilcox and Max Eden suggest that Youngkin promote “academic transparency” by requiring parental review and opt-in for hot-button curricula, prioritize educational savings accounts, and align school-board elections with the national political cycle.
Youngkin also has said that he will place public safety officers in schools. This initiative should become the basis for a more wide-ranging effort to bolster state and local police forces, with an eye toward community policing and the reassuring presence of cops on the beat. Youngkin’s “game plan” includes firing the state parole board to discourage early release of violent offenders. He wants to reform the state mental health system. He might also want to combat drug trafficking and opioid abuse—with the understanding that it is better to do several things well than many things poorly.
As Henry Olsen observed in October, Youngkin’s economic agenda fits well with the emerging Republican coalition of non-college-educated voters. Rather than cut marginal tax rates, Youngkin would double the state standard deduction, eliminate the grocery tax, and suspend the gas tax, easing the burden on lower- and middle-income taxpayers suffering from a rising cost of living. He says he’d like to encourage innovation and job creation throughout the state. One way might be to take the lead in “strategic decoupling” from China and incentivize manufacturers of critically important goods to reshore facilities in the commonwealth. Over a decade ago, I accompanied then-senator George Allen (R.) on a tour of a Virginia-based semiconductor plant. Let’s make room for more of them.
The danger for the governor-elect is that he will entangle himself in national debates over vaccine and mask mandates. I expect the next state attorney general to join the legal challenges to President Biden’s vaccine mandate on private-sector employers, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the incoming state government attempts to end public school masking requirements. In general, however, Youngkin ought to be wary of intruding on local control and private-sector decision-making, even if it might win him fans among certain parts of the right. It ought to be remembered that Youngkin’s populism was actually popular and commonsensical—unlike some of the anti-elitism and suspicion of expert opinion that one encounters in politics these days.
It would be a missed opportunity if the governor-elect frittered away his resounding victory on cultural squabbles that generate headlines and score likes but do not improve life for Virginians in the real, not virtual, world. Still, I have a feeling—maybe it’s just a hope—that Youngkin will be a serious governor in demanding times who shows his fellow Republicans not just how to win, but how to govern. All with a smile and a fleece.