The million-dollar question for 2024 contenders is: How will you win the general election under the present voting system? //

An inability to answer this question clearly, compellingly, and convincingly imperils Republican odds of retaking the White House, no matter how favorable their prospects might look come next November. It is incumbent on anyone who wants to earn the Republican presidential nomination to answer this question at the outset, and to operate accordingly.

Over the last two election cycles, Republicans lost in historically aberrant if not unprecedented ways. That, or they underachieved relative to what conditions on the ground would have suggested. Political analysts have pointed to numerous factors to explain why the results broke the way they did, but perhaps the one constant in the presidential and midterm elections was that they were both held under a radically transformed voting system. //

“Zuckerbucks” continue to loom over our contests as well, despite bans in many states. The left is doing everything it can to steer private money toward public election administration — administration done in conjunction with left-wing nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) seemingly targeting the Democrat ballots needed to win.

The Biden administration is working to leverage federal agencies to mobilize presumed Democrat voters as well — also potentially in conjunction with the same NGOs — under a March 2021 executive order, “Promoting Access to Voting,” that has remained shrouded in mystery as the bureaucracy stonewalls over inquiries about its implementation. //

Lawfare is also now an integral part of our election system. Republicans have started to devote significantly greater attention and resources to the litigation game, but to catch up to Democrats will require a long-term, sustained effort, backed with real money. And filing suit over election policies and practices after votes have already been cast of course has proven a losing proposition, //

Meanwhile, Democrats have engaged in efforts to ruin the lives of Republican election lawyers — in their own words to “make them toxic in their communities and in their firms” — seeking to kneecap their competition before it ever reaches the courtroom. //

At minimum, this thought exercise would yield critical insights, and instill in voters and donors alike confidence there is a robust and coherent operation in place to maximize the odds for success.

The planning must begin now.

Only by competing and winning under a rotten system rewarding the kind of organizing and action historically anathema to conservatives will there ever be an opportunity to dismantle that system.

The House Select Subcommittee on the pandemic on Wednesday held a hearing on “Investigating the Origins of COVID-19” to gather facts about the origination of the virus that has claimed nearly seven million lives globally, including more than one million in the United States.

Several witnesses explained how the science, facts, and evidence strongly point to a lab leak in Wuhan.

Yet The New York Times reported that the GOP-led subcommittee “underscored just how difficult it might be to turn up conclusive evidence” that COVID originated in a Chinese lab, not to mention the assertion by some that the ChiComs intentionally released the virus in an effort to destroy the economies of countries not named China. //

Hence the NYT’s headline:

Republicans Push Lab Leak Theory on Covid’s Origins, but Lack ‘Smoking Gun’

Tom Cotton
@TomCottonAR
·
Follow
The Chinese Communist Party destroyed evidence so there may never be a "smoking gun."

But all the available evidence points to a lab leak.

There's a reason why the CCP covered this up.
10:01 AM · Mar 9, 2023 //

We’re talking about the very essence of science and scientific methodology. In October 2020, Scientific American observed:

[D]oubt in science is a feature, not a bug. Indeed, the paradox is that science, when properly functioning, questions accepted facts and yields both new knowledge and new questions—not certainty.

Doubt does not create trust, nor does it help public understanding. So why should people trust a process that seems to require a troublesome state of uncertainty without always providing solid solutions?

anon-t26i
2 hours ago edited
“Republicans are a small government group with leanings toward capitalist economics..” No they are not. Deficit spending – Republican. New federal agencies? Republican. Destruction of habeas corpus? You guessed.
Mini Refresher Course partial list: Herbert Hoover increased federal spending 38%, passed the Agricultural Marketing Act (welfare for farmers) and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (pork and corporate welfare) as well as increased taxes.
Eisenhower: Increased federal spending 30 percent, Created Department of Health, Education, & Welfare (and spending), Started American involvement in Vietnam, Created NASA
Richard Nixon: Increased federal spending 70 percent, Created EPA, OSHA, and CPSC, Imposed price and wage controls, Made your 1968 dollar worth just 78 cents by the time he left office.
Gerald Ford: decreased the value of the dollar by 8 cents while increasing federal spending.
George Herbert Walker Bush: Increased federal spending 12 percent, Managed to knock 13 cents off the value of your dollar in just four years, he was kind of like Obama’s “you can keep your doctor” with his “no new taxes”.
GW Bush: Expanded the size of government with the Department of Homeland Security, increased federal spending by 48.6 percent and shot habeas corpus to heck. And let us not forget how he ignored the warning signs, from the FBI no less, of 911 and then involved us in a unprovoked attack of a sovereign state. What is the difference between a Republican and a Democrat? You know the answer.

RNC Research
@RNCResearch
·
Follow
“Everything [Maggie Hassan] talks about wastes money, costs money, and takes money out of everyone’s pocket,” says @GenDonBolduc.

DON BOLDUC: Under Joe Biden and Maggie Hassan, “you can’t even buy a house, you can’t even rent property, you can’t even feed your children, you can’t even heat your home. That is the ultimate tax.” #NHSen

CLOSING STATEMENT from @GenDonBolduc: “You have to ask yourselves, Granite Staters, are you better off today than you were two years ago?”

“Two years ago, you were NOT making choices between heating and eating.” #NHSen

8:24 PM · Nov 2, 2022

Sen. Rick Scott recently did what no one else in the Republican Senate thought important: he released an agenda ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. Up to this point, Senate Republicans, led by Mitch McConnell, appeared content to proudly run on no strategy at all, convinced that simply pointing at Democrats and shrieking about how bad they are will crown them victorious.

As a point of electoral politics, this is not completely irrational. Polling shows Democratic policy failures and broad cultural overreaches are driving voters to Republicans in record numbers.

But as I’ve written previously, a content-free campaign only gets you so far. In many cases, the voters now identifying with Republicans are non-traditional GOP voters. To get them to stick around—that is, to actually expand the base of the party while continuing to motivate traditional base voters—you have to tell them what you’re for, what you’re going to do. And then you have to go and do it.

Establishment politicians dislike agendas because they’re a measure of accountability. An agenda is a tangible reminder of what a majority said they were going to do. On the contrary, traditional establishment rhetoric routinely plays down expectations about what’s possible, makes vague hand gestures about “the long game” (usually undefined), and generally avoids anything that would force them to roll up their sleeves and attempt to legislate on the hard things—that is, what their base voters care about

As I have repeatedly stated, violence is not legitimate political discourse – whether in the U.S. Capitol or in Democrat-run cities across the country – and neither is abusing Congress’ investigatory powers for political gain. Media outlets pretending that the RNC believes otherwise are doing so in bad faith, and their lies should be called out for the cheap political stunts they are.

Both men know that their base won’t like it if they attack the other, especially right now when the Republican Party is poised to win big in 2022. So they need to hold their fire. They are smart enough to know this and have people around them smart enough to remind them of this.

I still suspect that the future of the Republican Party is more DeSantis than Trump. I think Trump was a “fire on everybody” type of personality and DeSantis likes to concentrate on tactical and targeted sniping. Where Trump fights all the battles, DeSantis picks strategic ones. As a result, I get the feeling that, come 2024, more Republican voters will like what he’s offering more. //

Neither man is going after the other right now, though. They aren’t even mentioning each other. But the media and the Democrats so want there to be Republicans in-fighting that they are willing to make something out of nothing and use it to distract from the fact that the Democratic Party is on the verge of collapse.

Forcing our daughters to sign up for mandatory conscription in an environment where they may now be sent directly to the frontlines is an appalling breach of the oath by these Republicans.

Today was one of the darkest days the United States has suffered in the last two decades. It opened with suicide bombings disrupting the already bungled evacuation attempt in Afghanistan. The latest count is that at least 13 American soldiers have perished, with at least 90 Afghans, including many women and children.

For nearly eight hours, the President of the United States remained silent. Shockingly, even as the death toll rose, we heard nothing. No written statement offering condolences for their deaths ever came. The White House couldn’t even muster a quick show of empathy via Joe Biden’s Twitter account. Once again, it became patently obvious that we simply don’t have a president. //

So, what now? Unfortunately, there are no easy answers. But for Republicans, they are answers nonetheless. Without control of the House, the GOP cannot start hearings and investigations to figure out what went into the series of incompetent, inexcusable decisions that led us to this moment of national disgrace.

But what they can do is call for impeachment. They can call for Biden’s resignation. They can start finally talking about his clear mental and physical decline. Will any of that lead to his removal? I have no idea, but what I do know is that this is no time to sit on the sidelines and hide behind norms and decorum. Rather, this is the time to take a strong position and take no prisoners in the process.

The GOP does not need a majority to file articles of impeachment. They certainly don’t need a majority to get in front of a camera and point out that Biden is suffering from some combination of senility and dementia.

The bill also gives the secretary of the Department of Transportation (DOT) significant powers to direct funds. It all but eliminates the current formula for distribution of funds and puts almost all funding into competitive grants for the current DOT secretary, choo-choo-train-lover Pete Buttiegeg, to dole out. How does Graham think this will work out for his home state of South Carolina or any other red state?

What conditions will get rammed down the throats of voters in these states to get the funds required to maintain their infrastructure? Could it be the elimination of single-family zoning, which the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation seeks? How about a gas-powered vehicle ban like California’s? What other green policies could be forced on states in order to receive their highway funds? The list of progressive with-list items is endless.

The bill centralizes power in D.C. under the ever-growing bureaucracy in an agency that has presided over the complete degradation of our infrastructure through central planning. Much like the Department of Education has presided over the decline in the performance of America’s public schools, the DOT has failed to maintain America’s infrastructure. Congress should scale back the agency and give control back to states and local communities. Yet it looks like 17 Republicans, including Graham, still believe in the bipartisan project that does nothing but enlarges the central government.

The Democratic messaging group Future Majority in May released a deck identifying areas where Republicans hold an advantage:

Of the issues polled, “defunding the police,” “open borders” and “reparations for slavery” were by far the biggest turnoffs for both independents and voters in general.
Republicans bested Democrats on jobs and the economy, gun rights, and “keeping you and your family safe.”
The poll, Future Majority wrote in its report on the findings, “shows voters, especially Independents, believe Democrats overspend.” //

Of course, Republicans could screw all this up, whether it’s by folding to Democrats on policy or focusing on issues that don’t move the needle such as making everything about the 2020 election. If the GOP is going to win in 2022, they have to remain laser-focused on the issues that win elections. The time to worry about investigations and other issues like that is after retaking power because if they don’t, they won’t be able to move on any of that stuff anyway.

The Daily Wire reports that the Western Conservative Summit found that for those who attended, “The top five candidates, in order of most approval to least, were: Ron DeSantis (74%), Donald Trump (71%), Sen. Ted Cruz (43%), Mike Pompeo (39%) and Sen. Tim Scott (36%),” //

John Cardillo
@johncardillo
People want action and DeSantis has proven he’s willing to act.

Anecdotally, those I speak to trust DeSantis FAR more on personnel. //

Indeed, it’s no secret that personnel staffing problems plagued President Trump’s administration from the get-go.

GOP hacks from the Republican National Committee and other D.C. swamp creatures took advantage of the new president’s inexperience dealing with the government, and, rather than appointing those who supported President Trump, folks like Reince Priebus saw it their duty to fill his administration chock full of Paul Ryan, George Bush-type appointees.

While Joe Biden’s legislative policies will have a lasting, damaging impact on the country, and already have in some cases (inflation caused by the massive COVID “relief” bill, for example), what’s not talked about much is his impact on the bureaucracies.

After all, that’s where the real power lies in our system. Elected officials are often just weak quasi-celebrities with little ability to propagate any real change. Meanwhile, a determined group of bureaucrats can make regulations, target their political enemies with state power, and generally enact massive societal change — and you won’t even know their names.

The Founders never intended for such a corrupt system to become the country’s standard procedure, but here we are, and Democrats are keen to take advantage of it. We saw what the often-called “deep state” was capable of during the Donald Trump era. Now, Biden is looking to super-size that effort, and it should terrify you. //

Julie Kelly 🇺🇸
@julie_kelly2

Biden’s “domestic terrorism” plan of attack. At least $100 million for “DOJ, FBI, and DHS to ensure that the Federal Government has the analysts, investigators, prosecutors, and other personnel and resources it needs to thwart domestic terrorism.” //

What is “domestic terrorism?” Well, it’s pretty much whatever a bunch of left-wing ideologues want it to be. And after Biden and his cohorts hire hundreds of new “analysts” from biased think-tanks and activist groups, what they will want it to be is Republicans of all shapes and sizes. //

Why are we needing to spend $100 million to combat “extremism” when other causes of violence are a far, far greater threat to the average American?

None of this makes sense until you realize it’s all political. White supremacy is a catch-all to target political adversaries of the left. The definition is always expanding, and when mixed with ideologies like critical race theory, suddenly every white Republican is a white supremacist by birth worthy of cracking down on. Heck, Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin is being called one by his own colleagues.

This doesn’t stop until these agencies are dismantled from top to bottom. That has to happen the next time a Republican becomes president. But what the country can’t handle right now is another influx of rabid ideologues into a bureaucracy that already has no credibility. Whatever can be done to stop this from happening must be done.

North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson first gained notoriety at an April 5, 2018 Greensboro City Council meeting, when he eloquently defended his, and his fellow gun owners, Second Amendment Rights. The Council was taking constituent comments on then-Mayor Nancy Vaughn’s attempt to end gun shows at the Greensboro Coliseum, and despite Robinson’s qualifier that he didn’t have time to prepare a fancy speech, his words were well-spoken, fiery, and effective.

Americans are a country of people that should be proud of who they are and what they’ve accomplished and despite what the left may say about you or this country, it’s one that not only needs defending, it deserves defending.

That was the message from North Carolina’s Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson during the North Carolina Republican Party State Convention. //

“The greatest example that I saw, and witnessed it firsthand on television, was during 9/11. People running away from those burning buildings, running away in horror. We saw a policeman and fireman running to those buildings, basically running to their deaths to go help others because they saw trouble and they knew that they would need it.,” said Robinson.

“That’s got to be us this day right here,” he continued. “And what is the trouble? The trouble is the Biden administration that is seeking the turn this country into a socialist hellhole. The trouble is Antifa, who wants to roam the streets and beat you into submission. The trouble is Black Lives Matter that claims to care about the lives of black people but it’s turned a blind eye
while violence in black communities are taking lives at a genocidalal of rate. They turn a blind eye!”

“That’s where the trouble is and that’s where we’ve got to run to,” he added.

“We’ve got all the right in the world on our side, and there ain’t no reason to be afraid,” said Robinson. “It ain’t no reason to not take the challenge dead on.”

Robinson reminded the crowd who it is we come from, saying that we don’t descend from “weak, jelly backed, spineless people.” He also made it clear that it doesn’t matter your skin color or what nation your ancestors came from, nor how much money you have. In the end, we’re all Americans.

“If all you’re doing is, the Democrats propose $2 trillion in infrastructure, so we say we’ll do $1.5 trillion, that’s not going to animate anybody,” he told the outlet. “That’s just ‘me, too’ Republicanism and ultimately that’s not going to be successful.”

During the interview, he also said Republicans need to be willing to take the hits that go along with proposing legislation that triggers Democrats, the media, and “woke corporations.”

“I’m totally willing to sacrifice an event in order to stand with the girls of my state. It’s an easy decision, and I don’t view it as pressure as much as saying, ‘The battle lines are clearly drawn, so which side are you going to be on?’”

The most important advice he had for Republicans was in reminding them that they “need to understand where the battle lines are being drawn.”

“Stop trying to grovel in front of them [the media], stop thinking that they’re going to like you, stop trying to impress them. Fight back against them,” he said during the interview. “That’s really what you have to do.”

“So, all of you have this problem,” Hannity said. “And the problem is people from New York, and New Jersey, and California, and Michigan, they’re leaving their states and they’re going to your states. You’re — Florida seeing a huge impact of migration out of the — out of these blue states. Now, my only fear for all of you — and I’ll let you start first, Governor DeSantis — is that they may bring their liberal policies with them.”

DeSantis said that it’s interesting that you had so many Democrats slamming Florida for being wrong about everything under the sun, especially COVID-19, and saying that New York is doing so much better than Florida when they were actually 10 times worse up north than down south. He added that people who bought into that phony narrative are likely staying up north, but he noticed those that saw through it came to Florida and registered Republican.

“And so, I think what it did is the people that buy those phony narratives for these media, they probably aren’t coming to Florida,” said DeSantis. “But most people see through it. But the people that see through it, they think like us. And so, I think a lot of these people are coming. I think they are registering as Republicans overwhelming.” ///

Maybe

If only these people had as much energy for the George Floyd riots as they do for the assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Indeed, despite what the left would have you believe, Cheney did not lose her position because she criticized Trump. She was not ousted because she supported the second impeachment sham. It was her constant need to bring up the riots and Trump’s comments about the 2020 election that eventually did her in.

When she faced the same consequences in February, she still enjoyed enough support to keep her in as conference chair. But now, even her allies have grown sick of her incessant relitigating of the election and the riots that followed. While the rest of the party wishes to move forward and work with Trump, regardless of their disagreements with his comment, people like Romney, Cheney and the rest of the Never Trump crowd present themselves as obstacles to progress on the right.

The administration’s mishandling of these matters presents a prime opportunity for the GOP to go on the offense. However, the opportunity will be wasted if their strategy is only to criticize the president’s inability to properly address these issues. It is a mistake the party has made time and time again.

While it is important to expose the administration’s poor performance, it won’t matter if the right fails to put forth its own solutions to these situations. While pointing out the deep flaws in Biden’s handling of these problems, the GOP must also put forth viable solutions that would work better than the White House’s current strategy.

You might be thinking: “But won’t the Democrats just reject anything Republicans suggest?”

Of course, they will.

In fact, when they rebuff these recommendations, it will only work in the Republicans’ favor. As the Biden administration continues to ensure that these crises end up in a FUBAR-type situation, it will make the Republicans’ solutions look far more attractive, which will help them immensely in 2022 and 2024.

It is not enough to simply point out that the Democrats are screwing things up – conservatives must compete by coming up with sane, rational solutions. Instead of being only the opposition, Republicans must focus on being the competition. Otherwise, Biden’s incompetence might not be enough to ensure a GOP victory.

Yesterday, the worst miss in job’s report history made its debut. Only 266,000 out of over one million projected jobs were added to the economy, and it wasn’t just the economists who were surprised. //

It was a watershed moment in the new administration that showed that policy actually matters, and obsessions over decorum seem rather shallow when the bullets really start to fly.

Naturally, given the seriousness of what we witnessed, that meant resident Never Trumpers were talking about Donald Trump yesterday — instead of the failures of Joe Biden and how inflation is threatening to crush the middle class. //

Stephen Hayes
@stephenfhayes
For 6 years, elected GOPers have rationalized their Trump support saying to themselves "if I just compromise my values this one time" the worst will be behind me. They've been wrong every time.

Trump's not going away. This isn't going to get easier. Trump won't bring GOP unity //

Mollie
@MZHemingway
Replying to @MZHemingway
What's more far and away the largest source of division in the party has not been Trump but the NeverTrumpers who refused to accept the legitimacy and significance of his election, spending five years trying to throw him out of office and undermine his electorally winning agenda. //

Stephen Hayes
@stephenfhayes
"Electorally winning agenda."

In 2016 and 2020, Trump underperformed Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign at the national level. Romney won a higher share of the total vote in 2012 (47.2%) than Trump did in either 2016 (46.1%) or 2020 (46.9%). Romney was challenging a popular incumbent //

This is the delusion of Never Trump, in as stark of terms as I’ve ever witnessed.

Note the appeal to participation trophies instead of actually, you know, winning elections. Mollie Hemingway is obviously correct because Trump did actually win, and her qualifier of “electorally winning” is important. //

It is an exercise in beating one’s head against a brick wall to continue to sugar-coat Mitt Romney as the true representation of a winning coalition. He simply wasn’t, as evidenced by the fact that he did not win. Hayes can cherry-pick whatever results he wants, but in the end, the GOP has moved past Romney’s vision of the Republican party. No amount of fluffing The 2012 loss and obsessing over Donald Trump is going to change that. That doesn’t mean you have to support Trump himself as the 2024 nominee, but it does mean you have to accept the reality of how the party has changed in regards to policy and posture.

The current dynamic is simple. Republican voters prefer a far more restrained foreign policy; they see China as a threat to be combated; they oppose big tech monopolizing the means of information distribution; they want immigration laws followed; and they give no quarter to big corporations that turn around and spit in their faces with woke ideology. It’s not 2005 anymore. Mitt Romney and those like him are never going to represent the GOP at a high level again. Liz Cheney is not the future of the party.

These are facts that can be accepted and worked with, or one can continue to yell at the clouds as they pass. Hayes and his cohorts have chosen the latter path. We’ll see how that works out for them.