Never underestimate their ability to blow it, but national Republicans appear to be on the verge of winning back control of one or both houses of Congress come November.
The question now being bandied about, as the GOP starts to plot strategy, is whether the party should come up with a policy package to give to voters (much like the Contract with America of the 1990s) or just sit quiet under the assumption those voters will run from Democrats in droves, regardless.
I predict the party will take the latter option, and I predict it will be a mistake. Maybe not bad enough to cost them majorities, but to cost them seats they otherwise could have one.
Let’s cut to the chase: I’m no fan of congressional Democrats, but congressional Republicans are 99%-plus as bad. Yes, some things would change if Republicans take over, but Congress and the executive branch will still conspire to spend the country into insolvency — or enslavement to our creditors. Nobody has a plan to avoid that.
To have a good November, lamestream (er, mainstream) Republicans are going to have to win back the Trump supporters, and those folks are (rightly) skeptical. If Republicans just sit around with their [redacted] up their [redacted] all the way to November, there’s no chance Trump’s people turn out in great numbers. That won’t just hurt candidates for House and Senate, but those running for governor and others all the way down the ticket across the U.S.
We’ll see what they do, but if Republicans fail to enunciate a plan, and then convince voters they actually are serious about it, they’re going to fall short. Free advice.
A POLITICAL SWITCHEROO DEMOCRATS OUGHT TO BE WORRIED ABOUT: I won’t say who, won’t say where, but there is a relative of mine who was somewhat proudly among the 81 million Joe Biden voters of 2020. (It counted for nothing; the state he/she was in went for Trump.)
I checked in with my father on his birthday on Friday, and asked, given things that had been going on, whether this family member was among the roughly 80 million of those 81 million Biden voters who suddenly had gone to radio silence, pretending they never voted at all that year rather than admit they’d backed our slightly dazed and confused current president.
It’s worse than that, my father said; this family member has come out strongly anti-Biden because of his miscues over the past 14 months. Not a good sign for Democrats.
AND THEY SAY I DON’T SAY NICE THINGS ABOUT JOE BIDEN: I actually think our president, or whomever is pulling the strings, is finessing the current world situation reasonably well given the limited options at his disposal.
It certainly is the right thing to do to support the Ukrainian people in their fight against Uncle Vlad’s military divisions, but do we want to trigger World War III over the situation? We do not.
- Scott McCaffrey