What Red Wave? Part II

It certainly was not a total blowout for Republicans.  Fox reported that governors who either opposed Covid lockdowns, or reopened their states quickly, did very well.  Ron DeSantis in Florida won reelection by 19.4 percentage points.  DeSantis had his state on lockdown for only one month, with schools closed for under 3 months.  Kristi Noem of South Dakota won reelection by 26.8 points.  She did not lock her state down, and only closed schools for less than 3 months.  

Kim Reynolds of Iowa won reelection by 18.6 points.  Again, Governor Reynolds only closed the schools for a few months.  Jared Polis of Colorado won by 18.1 points, having a one month shutdown only.  And Brian Kemp of Georgia again beat Stacey Abrams, this time by 7.6 points.  We'll see if Ms. Abrams again becomes an election denier.  

As Kimberly Strassel, of the Wall Street Journal, noted, DeSantis carried Hispanics, women, white men, older voters, independents and married voters.  ABC reported that DeSantis carried Hispanics by 57% to 42%.  He carried Cubans 68% to 31%, likely because Cuban voters understand freedom better than most.  In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine won by 25 points, and helped to increase Republican majorities in the legislature.  In Iowa, not only did Governor Reynolds win, and Senator Grassley win, both by double digits or more, but Republicans held all of the State's House and Senate seats.  Republicans also gained a super majority in the state Senate, and increased their majority in the state House.

In Texas, in addition to Governor Abbott winning, the Republicans increased their majorities in the state legislature.  Governor Abbott:  "Tonight, Texans sent a message that they want to keep Texas the beacon of opportunity that we provided over the past eight years."  Hard to argue with that, given the supporting facts.  In the decade from 2010 to 2020, Texas added about 4 million people.  Meanwhile, California lost people and lost a US House seat as a result.  700,000 Californians during that decade moved from California to Texas.  And, as recently as in 2021 alone, 62 businesses moved from California to Texas.  

Of course, the Democrats had their own wins - in addition to staving off a red wave in the House and the Senate.  In 4 states that had split governments before the election, the Democrats post election are now in complete control.  In Michigan, Minnesota, Maryland and Massachusetts, the Democrats control the governor's house as well as both branches of the state legislature.

Is there a takeaway from these state elections?  Daniel Henninger, of the Wall Street Journal, thinks so.  Referring to Governors DeSantis, Kemp, Abbott, DeWine and Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, Henninger concluded:  "Each of these Republican governors ran on policy successes that elevated their state's economies, schools and indeed personal freedom.  Abortion didn't defeat them."    

Could the Republicans have done better in this divided country?  Maybe.  But, clearly all is not doom and gloom either.    

What Red Wave? Part I

There have been many explanations for why the Republicans did not do better in the 2022 midterm elections.  Abortion, with the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade (Dobbs case).  One commentator suggested that many people thought the decision actually outlawed abortion nationwide.  Which, of course, it did not.  (Perhaps "government" is no longer taught in the schools.)  The threat to democracy.  Weak Republican candidates.  Young people, who vote overwhelmingly Democrat, voted in large numbers.  Biden, an unpopular president, mostly avoided the campaign trail, akin to hiding in the basement in 2020. 

I think that the outcome in the Senate gives us a pretty good clue as to what happened.  Of the 35 Senate seats up for election, the Democrats were at risk for 14 - and won all 14.  The Republicans were at risk for 21 - and so far have won 20, with Georgia to be decided by a runoff vote on December 6.  Regardless of who wins (if Walker wins the Senate remains at 50-50, and if Warnock wins it will be 51-49 in favor of the Democrats), the message seems to be that the country remains very evenly divided.  As I write this, the GOP has the lead in the House, barely, 212 seats to 204, with 19 seats still to be decided.  Again, very evenly divided.  So, the question I have is this - with such an evenly divided country, should we have even expected a red wave?

Were other factors at play?  Probably.  But, again, the question I have is - were those factors simply supporting the evenly divided outcome in our evenly divided country?  For example, the Democrats, who always excel at their unified messaging, talked non-stop about the threat to democracy by MAGA Republicans, by which they meant all Republicans.  It was not just Biden's speech (see the 9/4/22 post).  It was virtually all the Democrat candidates, along with their allies in the mainstream media.  And the messaging was non-stop.  Did that messaging prevent more Republicans from winning, when inflation is at a 40 year high, crime and homelessness are out of control, the border is unprotected (with over 5 million people crossing illegally since Biden took office), lack of energy independence (with high gas prices), and a feckless foreign policy.  Inflation, alone, should have resulted in a red wave, no?  

It is worth pointing out that the Democrats played dirty.  In a surprising, but successful move, the Democrats spent tens of millions of dollars in support of weak Republican candidates in the primaries.  Yes, they supported many "MAGA Republicans" in the primaries, expecting that they would be easier to defeat in the general election.  Their bet paid off, as those candidates did, indeed, lose.  But the very idea that the Democrats would support candidates in any election that they viewed as a threat to democracy, was called "cynical" by the Wall Street Journal.  One could also call it hypocritical.  I call it corrupt.  

Chuck Schumer had some interesting comments, after realizing that he would remain Senate Majority leader.  Schumer:  (the) "American people...rejected the anti-democratic, extremist MAGA Republicans."  And this:  (Americans are) "not happy with Republican leaders who condoned and even supported this nasty, poisonous rhetoric."  Schumer is a piece of work.  As Majority Leader, he stood outside the Supreme Court of the United States and threatened Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, if they did not agree with him on abortion.  As we know, there was subsequently an effort made to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh.  Schumer is a hypocritical liar.

And I'm sick of hearing about the "anti-democratic, extremist MAGA Republicans."  Democrats, who will not support US sovereignty, with their open border policy; who favored state courts rulings against state laws that placed limits on the time for voting; who support prosecutors who ignore state laws in order to effect "equity" in the criminal justice system, thereby ignoring the victims and protecting the criminals.  Tell me how ignoring enacted legislation supports democracy.  And who is extremist?  All the Democrats who claimed election fraud over the last decade or more, with some still in Congress? The Democrats who support socialism?  The Democrats who want to defund the police?  How about the antisemites in Congress who are part of the Democrat Party?  Why isn't antisemitism considered "extreme?"  Oh, that's right.  It is only considered extreme when the Democrats believe they can pin the "antisemite" label on a Republican.   

Did the consistent "anti-democratic MAGA extremists" propaganda play a role in the outcome?  To the extent that it may have affected the votes of independents, I would say it did.  Again, the Democrats have the near universal support of the mainstream media.  And the message was repeated day after day after day.  We have a mainstream media that no longer bothers to even give any pretense of being objective.  In fact, quite a few so-called "journalists" have justified their one-sided reporting (lying) on behalf of Democrats.  

When I refer to the mainstream media, it is not just most newspapers, it is also NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC.  It is also many TV shows and movies, because the writers are usually left-wing.  In a recent episode of "The Good Fight" on Paramount+ (I have never watched it), Ron DeSantis was accused by a gay character of sexual harassment, and of forcing this character to have oral sex.  Of course, the story is fictional, but it raises two questions.  Why even have such a story, unless the intent is to damage the likely leading Republican in the country, hoping that many people will assume the claim to be true.  Secondly, given Joe Biden's actual history of inappropriately touching women and even young girls, why wasn't he the target of the accusation of sexual harassment?  Well, we know why.  He's a Democrat.

Was it a total defeat for the Republicans?  See Part II.   

The Attack On Paul Pelosi

The attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was horrific.  Pelosi is an 82 year old man, and was viciously assaulted by someone who was in the country illegally.  Someone who clearly has mental health issues.  The perpetrator was supposedly yelling "where's Nancy?"  Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle have appropriately condemned the attack and wished Pelosi a complete and speedy recovery.

Rand Paul Tweeted this:  "No one deserves to be assaulted.  Unlike Nancy Pelosi's daughter who celebrated my assault, I condemn this attack and wish Mr Pelosi a speedy recovery."  Recall that Rand Paul was himself viciously attacked by his neighbor in 2017.  He suffered six broken ribs.  One of his lungs was also damaged, and in 2019 part of his lung had to be surgically removed.  But the Pelosi's daughter Tweeted at the time that Rand Paul's neighbor "was right."  Sick.

But the Left always objects to being called out for their hypocrisy.  They don't want to hear about it.  Sometimes, they will make the accusation of "whataboutism."  Here was a comment by independent journalist Aaron Rupar:  "That Rand Paul can't bring himself to either just say nothing or condemn the assault without resorting to whataboutism speaks volumes about him."  

After the assault on Rand Paul, Kasie Hunt, of MSNBC, said:  "New details today on the incident that left Senator Rand Paul with six broken ribs.  This might be one of my favorite stories..."  More recently, Democrat Senate candidate in Iowa, Mike Franken, Tweeted last year:  "Wasn't Rand's neighbor more than a little in the right?"  

What about the mainstream media?  Here was the Washington Post:  "Attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband follows years of GOP demonizing her."  The New York Times had this headline:  "Years of efforts to vilify Pelosi preceded brutal attack in home."  Here was Hillary Clinton:  "The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories.  It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result."  

That's it, make Republicans responsible.  So who was responsible for the shooting at the Republican baseball game in 2017, which nearly killed Congressman Steve Scalise.  The shooter was a Bernie Sanders supporter, and follower of Rachel Maddow.  Were they responsible for the shooting?  Were all Democrats responsible?  

Who is responsible for the beatdown of  someone who was canvassing for Republican Senator Marco Rubio?  That person was wearing a Rubio T-shirt and a DeSantis hat, and suffered internal bleeding and a broken jaw.  But one of the attackers allegedly said:  "you can't pass by here, this is my neighborhood."  Very likely that was a Democrat.  Are the Democrats at fault?

Pat Harrigan is a Republican candidate for Congress in North Carolina.  Just recently, his parent's home was shot at, while his children were sleeping upstairs.  While he has been on the campaign trail, Harrigan's children, ages 3 and 5, have been sleeping at his parents.  The bullet entered the first floor of the home, directly under the room where the children were sleeping.  A random attack?  Maybe.  But maybe a targeted attack.  A number of news articles describe Harrigan as "a firearms manufacturer and U.S. Army Special Forces Veteran."  

And, of course, we have the attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.  In that case, a young man from California was said to be angry over the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas (who wasn't) and over the leaked draft of the Supreme Court opinion that overturned Roe vs Wade.  Very likely that man is a Democrat.  So, yes, I want to discuss "whataboutism."  I want to point out the hypocrisy of the Democrats and the Left, who lie about political violence all being one-sided.   They lie when they say all political violence is encouraged or instigated by Republicans.  And, yes, I'm sick of their lies and hypocrisy, and the support given to those lies and that hypocrisy by the mainstream media. 

The 2022 Midterm Election

Last week, President Biden gave a major speech regarding the upcoming midterms.  He started out talking about the attack on Paul Pelosi, then switching to January 6, of course.  He next discussed voter intimidation (is that a big issue?), and followed up with threats against election officials.  After glossing over the real issues of the economy, crime and the like, he got to the substance and focus of his speech:  "But there's something else at stake, democracy itself."  The implication is clear:  if Republicans win, it is the end of our democracy.  

Biden:  "We the people must decide whether we will have fair and free elections, and every vote counts."  Yet, later on in his speech, Biden tells us:  "Once again we're seeing record turnout all over the country."  So, which is it?  Voter suppression or record voter turnout?  Georgia has reported record early voter turnout.  The same Georgia that passed a voting law to insure integrity of elections, the one that Biden called Jim Crow 2.0, somehow still resulted in early record turnout.  That's because Biden's attack, as well as the attacks of others on the Left, were nothing but lies.  Recall that Major League Baseball moved their All Star game from Atlanta to Denver over those lies.  Any apologies by Biden?  No, he continues to double down.

Biden:  "We the people must decide whether the rule of law will prevail..."  I know I'm not alone in wishing the rule of law applied when leftist groups such as Antifa and BLM were causing $2 billion worth of damage across the country.  I wish the rule of law applied in our cities, instead of criminals not being prosecuted by left-wing district attorneys.  I wish the rule of law was applied evenly in this country.  Recently, Steve Bannon was sentenced to 4 months in prison for contempt of Congress.  Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, was also held in contempt of Congress.  His prison sentence?  Please, he was not even prosecuted.

Biden:  "The great irony about the 2020 election is that it's the most attacked election in our history."  There's a whopper of a lie!  Hillary Clinton said the 2016 election was stolen from her.  Many Democrats said that Trump was an illegitimate President.  There was talk of impeaching Trump from the day he assumed office.  Then they made up the Russian collusion story, which was used as a vehicle for non-stop harassment of Trump during his entire term.  I cannot recall, at least not during my lifetime, of another president being so hounded during his entire term in office.  I was disappointed when Trump did not attend Biden's inauguration.  But just two days prior to Trump's inauguration, 55 Congressional Democrats had already announced that they would not attend.  

Biden's speech was non-stop about the threat to democracy if the people do not vote as he wants.  Ironically, Democrat candidates are claiming that Republicans are engaging in fear-mongering by talking about the rise in crime.  But Biden and the Democrats are trying to scare people into believing a Republican victory in the midterms means the end of democracy.  Didn't Biden promise to be the great unifier in his inaugural address?  Just another lie.    

Israel Votes - And The Issues Are Similar To Here In The US

First, the results.  Recall that Israel has a parliamentary system.  The people vote for a party, not for individuals.  The Knesset, the parliament, has 120 seats.  Any future government needs to put together a coalition of the many parties to total at least 61 seats - a majority.  After four rather indecisive elections, the Israeli public chose a conservative path.  

Benjamin Netanyahu, already Israel's longest serving prime minister, won.  More accurately, his party, Likud, won; and he is the leader of that party.  Likud got 32 seats in the Knesset.  The religious parties did well also.  The Religious Zionist party got 14 seats, Shas got 11 seats and United Torah Judaism got 7 seats.  It is expected that Israeli President Isaac Hertzog will shortly give Netanyahu the authority to form a government, if he can.  Bibi (Netanyahu) is a shrewd politician, and I am confident he will be able to put together a ruling coalition, with himself as prime minister.  And Meretz, a far left party, got zero seats.  Labor, a left-wing party, and the ruling party for many years after Israel's reestablishment in 1948, got only 4 seats.

Caroline Glick is one of the best commentators on Israeli affairs and the Middle East.  She had a very interesting article prior to the election, discussing the issues that voters should be focused on.  As you read some of the quotes from her article, you will see that it is amazingly similar to our issues in the U.S.  But maybe not that amazing, because the Left everywhere is the same.

Glick wrote that under Netanyahu Israel's economy grew.  And that "Israel was at the pinnacle of its regional power and global stature."  But under the current government there has been a backsliding.  Australia announced that it was rescinding its recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital.  And under the recent governments (of Bennett, Lapid and Gantz) "Israel surrendered its operational independence."  Glick points out that there have fewer attacks of sabotage on Iranian nuclear facilities.  

And, as Biden did in his recent speech (see the next post), Glick also discusses "democracy" as an issue in their election.  She says that the Left's version of democracy is "substantive democracy...where unelected. 'enlightened' members of the judiciary and the permanent bureaucracy decide Israel's course."  (Akin to our deep state.)  And Glick says that under Gantz Israel's boundaries (borders) were loosened because he allowed illegal construction of Palestinian homes in parts of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank).  The result is the creation of a de facto Palestinian state.  (Akin to Biden's and the Left's open borders here.)

Glick:  "In place of Jewish and Zionist education (the Education Minister) has introduced gender studies and other progressive nostrums, beginning in pre-school."  (That definitely sounds familiar.)  Glick also takes issue with the prior governing coalition on the fundamental nature of the country:  "Lapid and Gantz have both expressed their desire to gut Israel's basic law, which defines Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people."  It is amazing to me that this should even be an issue.  When the UN voted partition of Mandatory Palestine in 1947, they did it expressly to create a Jewish state and an Arab state,  The land is the Jewish homeland, with centuries - millenniums actually - of Jewish history.

Glick ends with this very astute observation (which, again, can easily apply to the US):  "Do we believe in our nation state and wish to preserve and defend it, or do we reject our national identity and national rights, and aspire to replace both with a globalist, progressive identity, devoid of Zionism and of Jewish sovereignty?"  (Do we wish to preserve our national identity of a constitutional republic of 50 states?  That post about our upcoming midterms is next.)

  

The Left Wishes To Fundamentally Transform America - Part II

In today's New York Times is an Op-Ed by regular columnist Jamelle Bouie, titled "The Constitution Is in Tension With Democracy."  When things are not going the way the Left wants, all the rules of the game need to change.  Even the fundamental rules in the Constitution.  Yet, they told us it was Trump who was the dictator, who didn't care about the rules.  

So what are the threats to democracy?  The election deniers, of course.  But only the Republican election deniers.  Not Gore, not Clinton, not Abrams, and not the many others in the Democratic Party.  The other threat to our democracy is the Constitution itself, the very structure of our government.  First, Bouie tells us about the "democratic backsliding of the past six years;" although she is only referring to the Trump years.  Why?  Aside from the fact that the Left hated Trump, there is the assertion that "Donald Trump was selected constitutionally, not elected democratically."  

I get it.  Clinton got nearly 3 million more popular votes than did Trump, but Trump won the electoral college vote and therefore became president.  Many people are unhappy with the fact that we are a republic of 50 states, and not a pure democracy.  I suspect there are some who are even unhappy with our representative form of government in the House.  Those people would like to see the people vote on everything.  

Why do we need an electoral college anyway?  Shouldn't every person's vote count equally?  There are fair arguments to make.  But the other argument is that we are a republic of 50 states.  It would be ridiculous to assert that all 50 states have the same or even similar interests.  How are the interests of those different 50 states best taken into account?  By both the electoral college and the Senate, where each state is represented equally regardless of population.  

Bouie tells us that we have "a system the basic structure of which fuels dysfunction and undermines American democracy, from how it enables minority rule to how it helps inculcate a certain kind of political chauvinism among some of the voters who benefit from lopsided representation in the Senate and the Electoral College."  Well, yes, there is lopsided representation in the Senate and the Electoral College by the smaller states.  

But I cannot help but wonder if that lopsided representation would be of any concern to the Left if it always favored Democrats.  The Left does not ask if our country is best served by a popular vote, which would likely result in the two coasts dictating the outcomes.  Tell me, are the big cities in those coastal states doing so well that we should allow them to set the agenda for the rest of the country?   

Our Constitution has been in effect since 1789.  Of course, some say that is the problem - it is old and outdated.  I hear the same thing said about the Bible.  Our Constitution has the distinction of being the oldest and most enduring governing document on earth.  It has survived a civil war, and numerous other societal challenges.  And it has been amended to meet the needs and the mores of the times.  

But the change that the Left seeks is one that they hope will insure their hold on political power for as long as is possible.  The Constitution, as written, does not do that.  And that is the problem.   

The Left Wishes To Fundamentally Transform America - Part I

You need not take my word for it.  Barack Obama told us back on October 30, 2008, that "we are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America."  The Left applauded.  The mainstream media was all in.  Then we had the Trump years.  With the Democrats out of power, it was necessary to change the structure of government.  Get rid of the electoral college.  Add states that would be reliably Democratic, in order to increase the number of Democrats in the Senate.  Or, get rid of the Senate altogether.  Pack the Supreme Court.  Term limits for the Justices.  Reduce the Court's jurisdiction.  

Fast forward to now.  The first Monday in October starts a new session of the Supreme Court.  The day prior, on Sunday, October 2, the New York Times had a long editorial titled "The Supreme Court Has A Crisis Of Trust."  We all know why this so-called crisis has suddenly arisen - the Court's decision in Dobbs at the end of the last term, which overturned Roe v. Wade.  If trust in the Court has fallen, it is because papers like the Times and many others in the mainstream media and on the Left have done their best to discredit and malign the Court.

Says the Times:  "The actual cause of its (the Courts) historic unpopularity is no secret.  Over the past several years, the court has been transformed into a judicial arm of the Republican Party...Within four years, the court had a 6-to-3 right-wing supermajority..."  In other words, Trump got to appoint 3 justices to the Court, and the Left cannot tolerate that.  When the Court had 6-to-3 left-wing supermajorities?  No problem.  

At no time does the paper concern itself with whether Roe was decided on solid Constitutional grounds, even though some liberal scholars acknowledged that it was not.  At no time does the paper concern itself with what powers belong to the federal government versus state governments.  The reason, of course, is that the ends justify the means for the Left.  Actual legal and constitutional issues are of no consequence to the Left.   

Here is more from the Times:  "Election deniers in the Republican Party are undermining the integrity of the American electoral system."  If you tell them that Hillary Clinton continues to claim that the 2016 election was stolen from her, that's different.  The same for Stacey Abrams claiming the Georgia gubernatorial election was stolen from her.  Then, of course, we had the entire 4 years of the Trump Administration with a large segment of the Democratic Party not only claiming that he was an "illegitimate" president, but trying to remove him from office with their phony Russian collusion story.

The Times:  "Right-wing political violence is a present and growing threat."  Who shot up a Republican Congressional baseball game and nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise?  That would be a left-wing political activist.  What about the threat on the life of Justice Kavanaugh?  And, how about the approximate $2 billion in property damage caused by various left-wing protesters and groups, in the summer of 2020.  Apparently, the Times is not concerned with political violence by Antifa or BLM or other left-wing groups.  

The Times quotes Justice Elena Kagan from a speech given in September at the Northwestern University School of Law:  "When courts become extensions of the political process, when people see them as extensions of the political process, when people see them as trying just to impose personal preferences on a society irrespective of the law, that's when there's a problem - and that's when there ought to be a problem."  Shame on Justice Kagan.  Here we have a sitting Justice of the highest court in the land, trying to undermine the legitimacy of that court, for the sole reason that the Dobbs decision did not go as she wanted.  

When Chief Justice John Roberts joined the 4 liberal justices in the initial decision upholding the Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), he did so by calling the individual mandate a "tax," which it clearly was not.  The then four liberal justices, including Kagan, made it clear that they  would have upheld the ACA under any legal theory.  In other words, they were willing to act as an "extension of the political process," and support Obama's signature piece of legislation no matter what. 

To this day, I am both amazed and dismayed that so many on the Left simply accept at face value what they read in the New York Times or LA Times or other mainstream papers.