Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory

Much of the polling last week showed an increase in the popularity of a president who failed in Afghanistan, failed in relations with Iran, failed in securing the southern border, failed in stopping the flow of the deadly fentanyl which comes with the open border, failed in providing necessary and timely support for the Ukraine starting with Russia’s threat to invade, through the invasion and on to today, failed in ensuring America’s energy independence, and succeeded only in giving us the highest rate of inflation in four decades with no end in sight. It also showed an increase in support for Democrat candidates in an election that was supposed to introduce a “red wave” of new Republicans at all levels of the 2022 election. A surge in support despite the Democrats presiding over the rising tide of violence in America’s major cities, despite a continued support for the teachers unions who to this day continue to urge mask mandates, limited opening and more money to increase pay to teachers who have proven over the past two years that they are either incompetent or unwilling to teach our children, and despite their hypocritical protests over dispersing illegal immigrants into Democrat run “sanctuary cities.”

You are probably asking yourself how this could be? How could the American voters continue to return the very people who are destroying their economy, their cities, their military protection and the security of their nation? Well, let me take a stab at it and you can see that the underlying reason is that the Republican Party offers them nothing but criticism of the Democrat Party. They don’t need that. They already know that. They experience it every day at the grocery store, at the gas station and whenever they open their utilities bills, What they are waiting for is the Republican plan for fixing it. And absent such a plan, voters are left to the tender mercies of the Democrats to tell them what the Republicans intend to do: let women die in the streets as a result of the Hobbs decision (not true), take away your Social Security benefits (not true), raise taxes on working men and women and lower them on the mega rich (not true), deny you medical care and coverage (not true) and deny you the right to vote (not true). Oh, and destroy the planet through global warming (not true).

And we are still waiting for the Republican response. I don’t mean some knucklehead senator from Florida (Sen. Rick Scott) who can’t even get his wife to agree on his tax increase plan let alone a single other Republican senator. And I don’t mean a couple of blow hard President-wanna-Be’s, Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) who have decided to federalize the abortion issue with a congressional mandate to bar abortions after fifteen weeks. Any right thinking conservative would know instantly that the best thing about the Hobbs decision was the it returned the issue of abortion back to the people – presumably the state legislatures and that federalizing the issues as Mr. Graham and Mr. Cruz have proposed is simply a precursor to the Democrats reinstating Roe by congressional action the first time they have control – which is likely to continue after the 2022 election. How can the Republicans argue that the decisions on abortion should be left to the states when two of their moronic senators have already introduced legislation to federalize the issue with a nationwide ban? Congressional myopia is just one of the reasons that voters have not embraced the Republicans – it’s just that they can’t get their arms around what the Republicans will do and why they will do it.

The lack of a reasonable accord amongst Republicans for a national strategy on any issue let alone the dominant ones is just one element. The lack of being able to articulate a rationale for a position is yet another. For instance, we all now that Republicans are opposed to government mandates for taxpayer funded abortions on demand but they lack a uniform rationale for that position. It isn’t that hard. Look the Democrats justify abortion by focusing solely on the health of the woman – a phony rationale that can be attributed to a minutiae justification for terminating some pregnancies as justification for terminating any pregnancies. And yet the Republicans are unable to build a similar rationale based on the child, the taking of human life, the torturous methods used by abortionists and the simple message that in all but a small number of pregnancies, the process of gestation left undisturbed will result in the birth of a live child – a human being both before and after the birth.

And finally, the selection of candidates is in many instances horrible. It’s not to say that Democrats are any better but they need not be as careful because they have willing accomplices in the mainstream media to bury the short comings much like the palace sycophants in the Emperor’s New Clothes. For instance, the Democrats have nominated for the United States Senate, and the mainstream press has embraced and lionized, a man who has never worked a day in his life (outside of political office), lived in his mother’s basement until he was in his 40’s and has suffered such a debilitating stroke that he cannot understand oral questions and has difficulty putting together a sentence in response – John Fetterman (D-PA). In the debate with his Republican challenger, Mr. Fetterman has demanded that all asked questions appear via subtitles. (For those of you forced to endure a teachers union led education in the Portland Public Schools, subtitles are intended for viewers who cannot understand the language – Mr. Fetterman – while closed captioning are for those who cannot hear the dialogue.)

Arizona is a golden example of the poor choices in Republican candidates. First, there is Blake Masters – the California returnee and protege of high tech investor and political activist Peter Thiel. (Mr. Masters was born in Tucson and attended private schools there until entering Stanford University. He joined Mr. Thiel and prospered as a venture capitalist and author until returning to Arizona to run for the Senate – running for the Senate in Arizona is much cheaper than California because most of the population is concentrated in two television markets – Tucson and Phoenix.) Like most young men and women, Mr. Masters had opinions on everything – most of which he knew nothing about – but committed the “unpardonable sin” of putting them on social media where they have been a fruitful bounty for his Democrat opponent. He could have at any time – particularly at the point that he announced his candidacy disowned most of those remarks as the product of an adolescent whose brain had not yet fully formed (usually by age twenty-five). But he did not. Other remarks he made as a fully formed adult were just as bad when he attempted to generalize characterizations of particular groups based upon individual experiences – really stupid. At any rate, this should have been a roll-over campaign against a sitting Senator who voted with President Joe Biden nearly one hundred percent of the time and, therefore bears the same responsibility as Mr. Biden for open borders, failing schools, out-of-control spending which has caused the inflation, and the growing wave of violence extending even to Tucson and Phoenix.

And then there is former television personality Kari Lake who the Republicans have nominated for governor. Ms. Lake, in her job as a television reporter, was a chameleon changing her positions as necessary to move with the political tides – including supporting former President Barack Obama and former Democrat presidential nominee, former Sen. John Kerry (D-MA). That flip-flopping has come back to bite her. To say that Ms. Kari Lake is rooted in the conservative traditions of Arizona Republicans is a stretch. Worse yet her principle primary challenger and virtually only other choice was a woman with no real business or political success until she married a billionaire real estate developer and who has a big hole in her biography for the period of time she was married to her first husband. She is Karrin Taylor Robson. Ms. Lake may be saved by virtue of the fact that her opponent is Democrat Katie Hobbs who personifies the empty-headed knee jerk liberal/progressive that supports open borders and taxpayer funded abortion on demand without restrictions – anathemas to Arizonans in general and the Hispanic community (who hold the key to the election) in particular.

Both Mr. Masters and Ms. Lake were supported by former President Donald Trump (R) who despite his significant contributions in righting the ship of state after eight disastrous years under Mr. Obama has sponsored some pretty sketchy candidates. Enough said.

In conclusion, the 2022 congressional elections, once a sure thing for the Republicans, are now theirs to lose. And, once again, we are likely to see the Republicans snatch defeat from the jaws of victory because they are again without a plan, an alternative, or possible course of action to end inflation, reduce crime in the streets, close the border, deal with existing illegal immigrants, or recover our international prestige. Voters remember the promises of Republicans in 2010, 2012 and 2014 who told them if they were given the majority they would stop the abuses of Mr. Obama but failed – instead saying they needed the presidency as well. If the Democrats win it will be because the Republicans failed to define themselves.