What exactly happened on election day? All over the media, every platform, you are being inundated with crackerjack gaslighting telling you the Republicans got walloped and the Democrats had the best night ever. GOPers are clutching their pearls lamenting that the red wave didn’t happen. Forget there were victories. Convince yourself everything is Super Awful MAGA Bad Bad. “Why, why?!” they cry. “Because TRUMP” is the answer whispered from the corner of the room. “Because TRUMP endorsed people who didn’t win” growl shadows that look strangely like Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, the Lincoln Project’s professional trolls, MSDNC, the New York Times, along with others afflicted with Chronic Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It’s very strange for a party that is on the precipice of winning the House and very possibly the Senate to be moping around as though they’ve seen Four Horsemen galloping through that fluffy cumulus cloud, heading right for them. The truth of the matter is victories and defeats offer important lessons, and ours are allowing just enough time for the Republicans to get their act together for the 2024 presidential race.
Meanwhile, they’ll have to suffer with control of the House, the flipping of a purple and nerve-wracking Florida into a beautiful red courtesy of Ron DeSantis, and inroads made in multiple states including deep-blue New York. Lee Zeldin’s bold and clear campaign was key, helping the GOP win several New York congressional seats and contributed in large part to the ability of the GOP’s likely taking of the House.
Significantly for the GOP, and therefore generally ignored by the mainstream media, is the defeat of Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress, by Republican Mike Lawler. It’s a bad night for Democrats when the man who is responsible for getting Democrats elected gets himself fired. Are the Democrats moping around? No. They’re pretending they won a basketful of puppies.
I appeared on Fox News’ “Outnumbered” the day after the election and noted that Biden and Gang will completely misread the election and vow to stay their catastrophic course. After all, they haven’t cared about the disastrous polls for the last two years, why would they care now?
As predicted, just a few hours after that program Biden held a press conference wearing a smug grin as though he just received a mandate as opposed to having lost the House. Asked by an AP reporter what he will do differently during the next two years considering the staggering poll numbers showing Americans by a 70-80 percent margin believe America is on the wrong course. His answer? “Nothing, because they’re just finding out what we’re doing,” Biden responded.
Oh, we’ve known for quite some time what they’re doing, every time we go to the grocery store, get gas for the car, or have to remember to put the pepper spray in our pocket before heading out, we know. Biden’s disconnected attitude does not bode well for the economy, their war on energy will proceed, and our enemies will continue with their tyranny and looting of the world.
And what about that loss of Oz to Fetterman? Yes, it was shocking, but not so much when you know what transpired. It wasn’t because Trump endorsed a flawed candidate but in part because close to 50 percent of the Democratic mail-in vote had already been cast prior to the debate which was a debacle for the stroke afflicted Fetterman. When the stroke first happened, the Fetterman campaign misled the public by insisting it wasn’t severe at all. They then delayed the debate until the majority of early voting had taken place.
This is an example of the structural voting problem expanded by Democrats using COVID to implement and extend vote-by-mail and early voting schemes. This is an issue impacting the entire the country and which the GOP must work aggressively to remedy.
Another longtime GOP issue is the belief that they can win simply because the Democrats are so awful. Arguably, while voters rejected the Democrats’ extremism, they didn’t vote overwhelmingly for Republicans because there was no widely articulated statement of values, plans, and intentions if elected. Trump was embraced in large part because he had clear plans about the issues and wasn’t shy in explaining how he would get things done. Like Trump, DeSantis delivered on promises, was unafraid, and secures his work in the conservative ideal.
As long as those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome see everything as an opportunity to get Trump, they will never address the voting infrastructure changes the Democrats have been installing for years. GOP bosses keep saying it’s time to move on from Trump. Maybe it’s time to move on from the GOP bosses who couldn’t (or wouldn’t?) turn the national rejection of the Democrats into an actual red wave. Senate Leader Tim Scott has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
One of the most exciting and promising events of the election was the red wave of Florida. Ron DeSantis and Florida Republicans were rewarded for delivering unapologetically conservative governance for the people of that state. It is truly a template for a national Republican Party which can benefit from seeing what governing for the people really looks like.
As far as that zero-sum argument out there that DeSantis is the new, better Trump and both cannot exist on the same planet at the same time– that’s nonsense. Both men represent the power and promise of a better and safer America. Our path forward involves all our talent, which includes both of them. A Trump/DeSantis ticket for 2024 term would be unbeatable. DeSantis can then handle 2028 and 2032. Undoing generations of Democratic Party vandalism to this country will take several cycles, a generation. It’s going to take discipline, patience, focus, and all our America First talent working together to overcome the corruption and malevolence of a cancerous bureaucratic establishment.