There are several key reasons why Republicans underperformed and won a pyrrhic victory in the House in the midterms:
- ABORTION
- SPENDING
- Election season in states like Pennsylvania
- Anti-Trump suburban Republicans split their tickets all over the country which explains the uneven result with candidates like Brian Kemp winning and Herschel Walker losing in Georgia
- Trump voters who have always been unreliable voters in midterms particularly in the Rust Belt
- Running on nothing but pure backlash politics.
Donald Trump deserves a large share of the blames for elevating awful candidates like Herschel Walker and Dr. Oz, but so does Mitch McConnell who refused to articulate a positive legislative agenda because he thought it was a clever winning strategy. Independent voters were turned off by the GOP running on pure backlash politics and failing to offer solutions to any of our major problems.
Laying it all at the doorstep of Dump being a drag on the party is VERY UNFAIR.
AP:
“EAGAN, Minn. (AP) — As Republican Tyler Kistner’s closing ad aired last month in one of the most competitive congressional districts in the U.S., Vickie Klang felt that something was missing.
The 58-year-old veterinary technician and self-described independent voter watched as the 30-second spot showed grainy black-and-white images of President Joe Biden with two-term Democratic Rep. Angie Craig superimposed alongside him. The narrator ominously described life in America as “dangerous and unaffordable” because of an alliance between the two Democrats.
Absent from the ad, Klang thought, was anything close to a solution beyond electing Kistner.
“You’re never telling me what you’re going to do for the state or the country,” Klang recalled. “That’s a huge turnoff.”
Klang ultimately backed Craig, contributing to a 5 percentage point win for a Democratic incumbent whom Republicans spent more than $12 million to unseat. From Maine to California, Republicans faced similar unexpected setbacks with the small but crucial slice of voters who don’t identify with either major party, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping national survey of the electorate. …”
This lack of any proposed solutions keeps coming up again and again in post-election surveys. Independent voters were angry about inflation and immigration, but correctly assumed that Senate Republicans had neither a plan or the will to deal with these problems.
This is how Mitch McConnell has always preferred to run the Senate though. He confirms judges and strikes awful deals with Democrats which he thinks are clever like on Juneteenth, criminal justice reform, gun control, “marriage equality” and the Porkulus spending bill. Nothing else happens regardless of which party is in power like when Trump’s MAGA agenda went nowhere in Mitch McConnell’s Senate. The tax cut bill sailed through the Senate through budget reconciliation though.
I mean I get that hardcore conspiracy theory is off putting to some people, but you seriously believe any of these mcconnell “failures” aren’t 100% scripted and on the rails? Yes, some people are stupid and incompetent, some of the time. But when your claim is basically that most if not all politicians in your party are stupid and incompetent all the time, you’re the crazy conspiracy theorist and “muh illuminati” or whatever starts being a more plausible and reasonable way to look at the issue. I just do not get how you have the energy to keep writing about this like this is some kind of legitimate scene where the unexpected happens. Other than being paid to pretend is is. You do have a real job and a family right? Who in their right mind wants to play this stupid game over I dunno spending time with their own children just for one example? Or even going fishing.
The abortion issue has kind of proven to me that there’s little left to be salvaged in this god forsaken country.
I’m not a voter who is totally animated by my pro-life beliefs, however, it was a pleasant surprise that Roe V Wade was overturned. For once, the SCOTUS was interpreting constitutional law the way it was written. More importantly, SOUTHERNERS were rightfully allowed to enact laws that reflected the will of the South. This was huge to me.
Likewise, the Southern electorate seemed to have a generally favorable view of this development. Local state governments tended to get a little “redder” overall, am I not correct? The Christian Nationalist wing of the GOP also gained a little more credibility and power.
It is on the national level that independents were swayed against conservatives by overturning Roe V Wade, not the regional level as in the south.
I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be complaining about as far as that one issue goes.
Now as far as McConnell, his biggest weakness is that he doesn’t champion these positive developments. Instead of being a spokesman for the positive side of mothers not being allowed to kill their babies, he champions the cause of sending billions to Ukraine so that more Ukrainian and Russian families can suffer the loss of their sons in a senseless war.
“Instead of being a spokesman for the positive side of mothers not being allowed to kill their babies”
What’s the positive side? What benefits have accrued to us since we banned abortion? I can’t think of any, and neither, it seems, can many swing voters.
Ummm. The positive side is WOMEN NOT KILLING BABIES. Like, as in, allowing their babies to LIVE. Retard.
Banning abortion means more babies will LIVE in dysfunctional, broken families. Hunter Wallace thinks it will result in more babies born to middle-class Christians like himself, he’s never explained the mechanism for this. In reality pro-life policies will accelerate the degeneration and trashification of our culture.
The bottom line is that voters see abortion bans and don’t see how they benefit from them.
I hear this often from White Nationalists.
I can also see the crowd though that supports atheism and abortion. It seems to me that is the crowd which overwhelmingly supports everything that is degenerate in our culture. Pro-abortion overlaps with pro-gay marriage and pro-“trans” and pro-immigration and anti-White and so forth.
@ Hunter Wallace DECEMBER 29, 2022 AT 7:00 PM
>I hear this often from White Nationalists.
Generally not from me.
When White Nationalism is narrowly defined, as it ought to be, it’s obvious that all of these ‘culture war’ issues have nothing specifically to do with White Nationalism; as far as I’m concerned, you might as well talk about e.g. education policy.
White Nationalism is about Whites not being ruled by non-whites — nothing else.
Perhaps you associate these ‘culture war’ issues with White Nationalism in your own mind, as well as posit what White Nationalists think about ‘culture war’ issues, in order to make your own disavowal of White Nationalism seem more justifiable.
>Republicans paid a heavy price for failing to run on a positive agenda
Perhaps a more honest, to the point lead-in would be ‘Republicans paid a heavy price for being Republicans’, i.e. unambitious (except for soliciting donations), incompetent system apparatchiks — today the GOP as an institution, its leadership, as well as most of its candidates, are simply not capable of achieving better results.
Unless you are driven by local concerns about e.g. ‘culture war’ sorts of issues (forget nationally, the mainstream GOP is not very useful there, as recent votes in Congress showed), which as I’ve said size-wise is a small problem (although as ethical/moral issues for society they are definitely important), I see absolutely no reason to go out and vote for the GOP — you can vote against Democrats by making your mark next to the name of a Republican candidate, but that’s not quite the same as voting for Republicans.
The GOP is running on fumes, and has been for some time.
Only Trump, who was rhetorically not a typical GOP politician, although in practice he turned into one when he was president, as well as the fact HRC was and is widely despised (the media was willfully blind to this), saved them in 2016.
Here’s an important message from the Pennsylvania GOP:
Twitter/PAGOP — Happy Kwanzaa
If they keep this up, they just might be able to push their share of the black vote in PA to, what, I don’t know, maybe 10%?
You just dotted the “I” on a very accurate assessment..
Not to belabor the point but if the worthless Republicans were elected to 435 out of 435 House seats, 100 out of 100 Senate seats, the Presidency and Vice-Presidency and had appointed 9 of 9 Supremes Court justices and unanimously controlled 50 out of 50 state legislatures and 50 out of 50 governorships they would proceed to stab their voters in the back again and give away the store to the Democrats who hate them. As BHO and FJB would say: It’s who we are.
The Republican Party can’t wait to slobber all over minorities and attack their White voters. They don’t really want to win anyway. They just want a seat at the table so they can participate in the asset stripping of the USA like The Usual Suspects asset stripped the USSR when it was going down.
The worst thing that ever happened to republicans is taking the house. They may have to work now, not just sit around talking about “The Democrats”.
Nothing will be done, we are in the same loop.
Republican Inc does not give a rats about you or me.
Doing nothing is better than spending over $100 billion on a war in Ukraine or doubling gas prices or codifying gay and interracial marriage into law or allowing over 3 million illegal aliens to cross the border or trying to make Puerto Rico a state or passing the Equality Act or any number of things the Democrats have done over the past two years like creating my latest $700 gas bill.
You speak-um heap big truth.
Voter fraud. No way any incumbent sitting on as big of a self-laid turd as the Biden Dems in 2022 doesn’t get destroyed at the urns. NO WAY.
I ain’t buying that abortion hurt Republicans. People are intelligent enough to know the difference between the congress and the Supreme Court, which just punted the issue back to the states, where it belongs. As others have mentioned, there were only a few places before the Supreme Court decision where you could get an abortion. The liberal press cried about it for years.
Yes, terrible candidates. I myself will not vote for a jew or a Muslim. I vote my own self interest, if I vote at all. Last election I didn’t even vote for my Republican rep, though he won easily. Don’t care a lick for him. He sent me an email a few months ago where he claimed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was the FIRST time since WW2 that a major world power had invaded a sovereign nation. No, he isn’t ignorant. Just a liar.
Republicans are losers. It is only amazing that democrats have to cheat to beat them.
It didn’t here in Alabama.
States like Michigan are a different story. Look at the abomination who is their governor.
Another Christian Nationalist…
“I ain’t buying that abortion hurt Republicans.”
So much of the system skewed by systemic cheating, of numerous styles, it’s difficult to get a proper read on what is, or is not, going on.
At this point I have given up all proper expectations of the elections to work, or, if failing that, for the courts to make the proper corrections.
Not that every single thing will be corrupt. No, I do not think that, but, with so many things corrupt, the picture on the whole is far too murky.
What are the things I am sure about ?
That most Americans are very unhappy; that they know that the system is rotten, and that they cannot figure out what to do, because that would require an effort far greater than that to which they are accustomed..
How many years will pass this way comes down to that last thing – how long Americans remain purposefully clueless.
You overestimate the intelligence of the voters on such an issue as Roe vs. Wade. I’d say voters are only intelligent enough to know something is wrong at the grocery store checkout and the gas pumps. And many of them are still not being squeezed enough by that, yet.
” voters are only intelligent enough to know something is wrong at the grocery …gas pumps.”
I doubt that.
“Itz da oil companies, itz da grocers, itz dem ppl buying too much food.”
Abortion was illegal in New England and other “Liberal” states until the Jan. 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision. The 1973 decision was condemned by a good number of local politicians and clergy then. Massachusetts had a poll tax (the same $2.00 as Mississippi) until the poll tax was outlawed by Constitutional Amendment in 1964.
https://www.daileyint.com/mytimes/lkback3.htm
The history of “Liberalism” in the North is sometimes a tangled up thing.
The only way for The Right to have widespread appeal with the Independents is to relinquish our values and adopt theirs.
Most of the Independents want most of what The Left wants – endless substance abuse, pornography, systemic faggotry, – they just do not have the destructive edge of The Woke Left.
If The Right gets power by catering to what it is not, what is the point in that?
We might as well crown Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney king and queen – or is that queen and king?
Well, no. Do-min-ion. Frau-du-lent mail-in votes. Dead men vo-ting. Etc.
Elon Musk 2023!
Mitch McConnell , spineless !
Oh really? We were pilloried for stating the Fact that “Owning the Libs” and backlash politics was a loser.
Republicans are Scum. Took me years to realize that. JB was right all along.
Elon Musk, like Ye is a Tool. Follow him if you must.
It hurts me to see our people so desperate for a Strongman, that we do not recognize our own strength.
When Roe vs. Wade was ruled on and abortion became legal nationwide, the majority of abortions were obtained by White women. That has turned completely around in the past 50 years. Today, now that the Roe vs. Wade ruling has been overturned, nonwhites-that is niggers and spics-get about 2/3 of the abortions. What does this tell you? It tells me that nigger and spic babies are more valued than White babies, as if I need to tell anyone here that. My stance on abortion has changed as well. I was solidly pro-life, but since race trumps everything else in my worldview, I support abortion. In fact, I encourage nonwhite abortion. We would have-and now we will have-millions more muds in this already darkening country.