Posts Tagged ‘election 2022’

At least overconfidence won’t be a problem for the GOP in 2024 as it was after the two Red Wave elections–and other thoughts

Posted: November 13, 2022 by John Ruberry in congress, culture, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

I was around for the 1994 and the 2010 Red Wave elections. And for the most part, they were pretty awesome, particularly the first one, when the Republican Party bulldozed the Democrats and captured the Senate after eight years of Democrat control, as well as the House of Representatives, after a record 52-year reign by the Dems. And while the GOP didn’t win the Senate in 2010, the Republicans gained an astounding 63 House seats in what is now known as the Tea Party election. 

After both midterms, conservatives salivated at the prospect of the next presidential election. In 1992, Bill Clinton was victorious, it was believed, because George H.W. Bush ran a lackluster campaign–that was true–and votes for third-party candidate Ross Perot siphoned enough support from the GOP conservative base to elect the Democrat. In 2008, the feeling was that John McCain never had a chance against Barack Obama after the Great Recession market crash two months before Election Day. But McCain ran a lackluster campaign too. 

Overconfidence, bordering on hubris, kicked in for the GOP after those Red Waves.

As of this writing there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate in the next Congress, and maybe, a razor-thin Republican majority in the House. 

Bubba had a come-to-Jesus moment–having Dick Morris in his camp helped–and Clinton after the ’94 midterms pivoted to the center by declaring, “The era of big government is over.” The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, widely-known as the Welfare Reform Bill, offered tangible proof.

After what Obama deemed “a shellacking” in 2010, Obama, as he does best, talked a good game–but he didn’t pivot. With no hope of getting unpopular legislation, such as cap-and-trade passed by the new GOP House, he channeled his charisma to win in 2012–as conservatives seethed. And ObamaCare didn’t go into effect until 2013.

Besides over-confidence hindering their White House chances, Republicans nominated country club-flavor Republicans, Bob Dole and Mitt Romney, for president in 1996 and 2012, respectively. In essence, their campaign was, “I’m not the other guy.” Yawn.

As of this writing there will be a Democrat majority in the Senate in the next Congress, and maybe, a razor-thin Republican majority in the House. 

Election denial.

It’s time for the GOP to look at what went wrong this year, starting with election-denial. As I wrote in March, Joe Biden versus Donald Trump was not a free and fair election. Big Tech and media meddling in regard to suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, in my opinion, was the foremost reason. Richard M. Nixon was the victim of a suspicious presidential election tally in 1960. I was a child in 1968 and 1972, but I don’t recall reading about Nixon mentioning the 1960 race at all during his ’68 or ’72 successful presidential runs.

Deal with it. The Dems won in 2020 and we lost. Move on. If Trump runs in 2024, that needs to be his message. Most of the candidates in close races who said that Biden stole the election from Trump in 2020 were defeated. Election denial is toxic for Republicans.

The big winner in the midterms was Florida governor Ron DeSantis. He’s not an election denier and he has a solid list of accomplishments to point to after four years in office.

The new election playing field.

I loathe mail-in voting, “election season” instead of Election Day, and ballot drop-boxes. But these things aren’t going away. To prevail, Republicans have to adapt and find ways to perform better on the new playing field. Mail-in voting is a good place to start. Increasingly, the GOP is the party of private sector jobholders. Let’s say you’re a construction worker raising a family who is told by his boss, “Hey, I need you at this worksite tomorrow in Nebraska–it pays well.” But that worker hasn’t voted yet and Election Day is two days away. Meanwhile, in Blue Illinois, Election Day is a holiday for government workers.

What if it snows on Election Day? That happened in a Republican area in Nevada last Tuesday.

Shortly before Election Day in 2016, my mother was hospitalized. She had voted in every presidential election since 1956, but mom wasn’t able to vote for Trump, much to her disappointment. We need to reach out to seniors and, gently of course, convince them to utilize mail-in or early voting. 

Republicans need to build on its increasing support among Hispanics and reach out to Asians. The GOP is the party of law and order. However, the media wing of the Democratic Party labels the phrase “law and order” as racist. So Republicans need to rebrand and become, let’s say, the “safety and security” party. Safety and security is an appeal that will resonate among all racial groups.

Tribalism.

If the increasingly frail and mentally feeble Joe Biden runs for reelection and wins renomination–the Democrats won’t have a strong campaigner like Clinton or Obama on the top of the ticket in ’24. And Biden has already said that he won’t pivot, as Bill Clinton did, to the center now that the midterms have passed.

Woo-hoo! We’re gonna win!

Slow down there, cowboy.

Republicans face disaster if they underestimate the support Biden will enjoy from the tribalist base of the Democrats. That tribe will vote every candidate who has a “D” next to their name. In the Chicago area, I live among millions of these people. They might wise up one day. Maybe they won’t. But as Dan Bongino said numerous times in the last week, “Things are just not bad enough yet for a lot of people to wake up from the Kool-Aid slumber.”

And it’s not just Illinois that is afflicted by Dem tribalism. Pennsylvanians chose a cognitively challenged far-left US Senate candidate, John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke this spring, over a mentally nimble Republican candidate, Dr. Mehmet Oz. True, Oz could have run a better campaign. 

Ronald Reagan, in his 1984 landslide win over Walter Mondale, won 49 states. But in the popular vote–yeah, I know, the Electoral College declares the victor–Mondale still collected more than 40 percent. In 2024, even if Biden is in worse physical and mental shape than Fetterman is, he’ll do much better, courtesy of tribalism, than Mondale did, in both the Electoral College and the popular vote.

Fetterman, if by some other-worldly convergence ends up as the Democrat nominee for president in 2024, could match Mondale’s popular vote percentage. I am dead serious about that. Tribalism is a tough nut to crack.

There is much to think about and much to do for the Republican Party. But at least the GOP won’t be overconfident in 2024. That might be the best news out of this Red Ripple election.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

The #Unexpectedly Chronicles One Post Election Prediction that I GUARANTEE Will Come True

Posted: November 7, 2022 by datechguy in elections, politics, Uncategorized
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It is very hard to predict anything particularly the future and it’s even harder to predict the results of an election when you know the other side is going to be counting the ballots in key precincts without being watched but there is one prediction I can make with complete certainly.

I guarantee you that after the new GOP majority congress comes in. Whether that majority is large or small the MSM and the cable networks will suddenly decide that the opinions of the minority leaders of the house and senate will be will not only newsworthy and relevant but worth plenty of screen time and air time for their viewers, listeners and readers and said opinions will be advanced with the greatest possible reverence and spin.

Of course if the left manages to hold the senate then only the House’s minority leader will be relevant enough to air.

Democrats Spinning Pelosi Like it’s 1983 not 2022

Posted: November 1, 2022 by datechguy in crime, culture, elections, politics, Uncategorized
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The only way I can lose this election is if I’m caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy.

Louisiana Gov Edwin Edwards 1983

10th Doctor: Actually, the most impressive thing about you is that after all this time, you’re still bone dead stupid.

Doctor Who The End of Time Part 2 2010

For people who are both supposed to be progressives who have rejected the norms of Christianity and the smartest people in the room our democrat friends seem to be not only out of touch with reality but bone dead stupid as they still think it’s 40 or 50 or sixty years ago.

For example if Edwin Edwards running as a Democrat was caught in bed with a live boy or a dead girl today, not only would he lose no votes from the party of “Drag Queen Story Hour” but the media would call anyone who objected “homophobic” if it was a live boy or “necrophobic” if it was a dead girl.

Put simply there is not a registered Democrat or Independent today who will vote against any Democrat based on a sexual tryst of any type.

But you know what a Democrat or independent will vote against a Democrat for, if they think their policies put them in physical danger.

This year both crime and illegal immigration are issues that are killing Democrats in Georgia, New York, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and all over the nation. The rise of violent crime particularly and the fear thereof is front and center almost everywhere.

So I ask this question to the Democrats in media, in politics and online: Ignoring for a moment the facts of this particular case, What narrative would you rather have dominating the news in the week before this election?

Paul Pelosi, husband to the person 2nd in line for the presidency while taking part in a tryst with a man in the Gayest city in America, which is nobody’s business but his own, was injured in his own home when it went bad.

OR

Paul Pelosi husband to the person 2nd in line for the presidency residing in the most Democrat City in the Most Democrat state in the country was violently attacked in his own home by a mentally ill illegal alien who somehow gained access to it.

I submit and suggest the first story wouldn’t cost the left a single vote they hadn’t already lost years ago but the 2nd is dynamite because it suggests that under Democrat rule even the spouse of the one of the richest and most powerful Political leaders isn’t safe in his own home in a year when both crime and illegal immigration are issues front and center.

Now the facts are what they are and hopefully they will all be out there quickly but when I see every Democrat pushing the 2nd line thinking it will hurt the GOP all I can do is laugh and think of Casey Stengal’s famous cry when he saw the ineptitude of his 1962 Mets:

Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game? 

Let’s Go to the Film…or Not Althouse, Schlichter, Treacher, York, Surber Edition Plus the REAL news of the Day

Posted: November 1, 2022 by datechguy in crime, media
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Yesterday Instapundit put a link to Ann Althouse who had a very interesting take on the Paul Pelosi story and how the NYT spun Elon Musk tweet answering Hillary Clinton:

The main thing Musk did there was ding Clinton for throwing out baseless speculation. He was emboldened — just kidding, he seems to have felt emboldened — to swing wildly because he was swinging back at her wild swing. She wielded the hammer of self-serving accusation and he grabbed it and demonstrated how badly you can hurt someone with it.

The article alleges that Mr. Pelosi was drunk and in a fight with a male prostitute.

Oh, my lord, now the vivid allegation is right there in the NYT. It was fit to print. Why?! Because Musk merely pointed at it in a tweet that was — as I read it — designed to tell Hillary Clinton to back off with the political propaganda. 

Mr. Musk’s tweet was later deleted, and it was not immediately clear who had deleted it.

But this is a news story. Musk linked to something, then deleted it. I’m inclined to speculate that the reason the NYT is elevating this story is that the drunk-fight-with-a-male-prostitute story is not beyond the pale. It needs to be rendered toxic so no one will pass it around. Don’t dare say it! 

Kurt Schlichter also had a few things to say on the subject:

An official investigation? Yes, please! This is a serious matter, we’re told. After all, the regime media and Democrats such as Ilhan Omar are out there making charges like “A far-right white nationalist tried to assassinate the Speaker of the House and almost killed her husband a year after violent insurrectionists tried to find her and kill her in the Capitol, and the Republican Party’s response is to either ignore it or belittle it.” Heck, Our Democracy is at stake, so the incoming Republican majority must get to the bottom of this alleged act of political violence.

I somehow think the Democrats will be reluctant to help, though Speaker McCarthy should not let any Democrats on the panel in the first place as payback for the 1/6 kangaroo committee. But why not investigate? These are serious charges, albeit from unserious people. Omar, a commie ingrate whose stupidity is exceeded only by her dishonesty, could not resist trying to leverage some cheap advantage from this grody scenario, but she should have passed on strategic if not moral grounds. By trying to place the blame for this on us, she triggered the Streisand Effect just when Democrats least needed to be associated with even more weird nonsense than they are already. Blaming Republicans for what appears to many people to be a sex tryst gone sour guarantees the wrongly accused – us – are going to hammer the Democrats unmercifully about it.

Well there are some obvious questions to be answered. Jim Treacher leads of his piece at Substack with the one most obvious:

The Pelosis are worth somewhere north of $100 million. Nancy Pelosi is the speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and second in the line of presidential succession. You’re telling me her husband Paul was alone in a house with no security or surveillance cameras? This lunatic David DePape just walked right up to the house and broke in?

In fairness if you told me ten years ago that San Francisco would have “poop maps” I’d have found that pretty unbelievable too.

Those are all interesting takes but the most sensible take on the subject comes from a tweet from Byron York who is the king of sensible takes.

This of course is a good idea if you want to establish the actual facts. This is however why Don Surber believes this is unlikely:

I imposed the 24-hour rule on the attack on Paul Pelosi, 82, on Saturday. Today I impose the 24-year rule because we never will learn the truth because San Francisco’s police are not as depicted by Karl Malden and Michael Douglas a half-century ago. The cops put on this case are political operatives whose duty is to shield the truth from the public.

The left says Trump did this and cites social media posts which conveniently portray the assailant as a QAnon fan, et cetera.

The right says this was a lover’s quarrel.

The suspect was born and raised in Canada. 

None of this adds up. Nobody knows outside a few cops and those who were there. Pray for Paul Pelosi and move on. Forget it, Jake. It’s San Fran town.

Now the truth is charges not withstanding I don’t know what actually happened and neither do any of you but I hereby make this prediction: If the 911 audio, officers body cam video, the Toxicological tests the various reports and the camera footage from the Pelosi house and any surrounding cameras in the neighborhood support the media’s narrative then they will all be released pretty soon.

If they are not then I strongly suspect Don Surber’s 24 year rule will kick in, unless the GOP forces the issue as Mr. Schlichter suggests.

Now when it comes down to it regardless of which narrative if any is correct and whatever the fellow was actually doing at the strangely (particularly given how the left has been insisting that there have been an unrelenting wave of right wing violence over the last year) unprotected Pelosi residence assaulting the old man is wrong and we of course hope for his recovery.

This is a story that is generating a lot of buzz but if you want to know what story SHOULD be all over everyone’s tongue it’s this one also via Insty:

IF THEY REALLY NEED HER THERE, IT’S BAD NEWS FOR THE DEMS. IF SHE’S BEING SENT THERE TO KEEP HER OUT OF THE WAY, IT’S BAD NEWS FOR HER. Kamala Harris to stump for Maura Healey, Democrats, at rally Wednesday.

The story proper

The Biden Administration will lend its weight to Attorney General Maura Healey’s campaign again this week, when Vice President Kamala Harris is scheduled to hold a get out the vote rally in Boston.

“On Wednesday evening, Vice President Kamala Harris will attend a campaign rally in support of the statewide Massachusetts Democratic ticket. Massachusetts voters have the opportunity to make history by electing the first woman as Governor of Massachusetts with Maura Healey, the first all-women executive office team in the country with Healey and Lieutenant Governor nominee Kim Driscoll, and the first Black woman elected statewide in Massachusetts with Attorney General nominee Andrea Campbell,” the Healey campaign announced Sunday night.

Think about this for a second. It’s the final week of the campaign with critical races to defend the Senate and House for the Democrats and the Democrats find it necessary to send the VP to campaign in friggen Massachusetts to help Maura Healey in a race considered so safe for the left that they don’t even bother to list the 25.5 Democrat spread on the two pols they have listed at RCP.

No wonder the left/media would rather go all in on either the “Right winger attacks Pelosi” or “Right Wingers spread Pelosi conspiracy theory” stuff instead.

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