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Comments on the Midterm Elections
Barry MacDonald — Editorial
For those of us who uphold good government, the protection of the innocent, and civic virtues, the midterm elections were a disappointment. Instead of a red wave, we received a red trickle. Many good, articulate, conservative candidates — for example, Kari Lake in Arizona — lost to Democrats who chose to forgo or minimize debates. We have to face the fact that the opposition has an effective political machine geared toward getting out their base of support.
That John Fetterman won and Kari Lake lost is a disgrace. In the purple state of Pennsylvania, John Fetterman won a senatorial race against Mehmet Oz, despite Fetterman’s far-left radical history, and his stroke-induced, severe, mental incapacity. He was able to win because his radical positions weren’t exposed by the media, and he was able to put off a single debate until late in the campaign, by which time many Pennsylvanians had already voted.
Kari Lake lost her campaign for governor in Arizona against Katie Hobbs, who was able to get away with not debating at all. There was nothing exceptional about Katie Hobbs — she was a typical Democrat. That Kari Lake lost was perhaps the most disappointing event of the election. She was aggressive and articulate about the negligence of the Democrats’ open border policy. Arizona is a border state, so one would suppose that illegal immigration would have been a decisive issue for Republicans.
J. D. Vance’s election to the Senate from Ohio, Ron DeSantis’ overwhelming reelection as Governor of Florida, and the Republicans’ recapture of the leadership of the House were the high points of the midterms for Republicans. There is now an effective block on Democratic lawmaking in Congress, and we may be witnessing the rise to national prominence of Ron DeSantis as a youthful and politically savvy leader of the Republican party. Time will tell.
What are the hard lessons we should learn from the midterm elections?
If ever there were a season when the issues favored Republicans, this was the election. There were the “Defund the Police” movement, the rampant rise in violent crime in Democratically-run big cities, the no-cash bail policies of soft-on-crime city attorneys, critical race theory and gender ideology in public schools, the open southern border, and the consequent ruination of the rule of law, along with over 100,000 American deaths due to fentanyl overdoses in 2021. Obviously, the Mexican drug cartels control our southern border, and Democrats are lying when they claim the border is secure. According to polls, most Americans believe America is on the wrong track. Inflation and the high cost of energy are rampant, and the Democrats own responsibility. There is also the overhang of the overly aggressive and ineffective COVID-19 lockdown policies perpetrated by Democrats.
Why weren’t the Democrats held responsible across the nation?
Politics in America has become extremely polarized. Americans are divided in the news we choose to consume, and the opposing side is demonized and dismissed. We ingest narrative journalism, and our youth have no notion of the distinction between news reporting and editorial opinion. The ideal of free speech is not being honored any more, and it is acceptable to shout down, censor, and persecute those who don’t agree with the Black Lives Matter talking points.
The “woke” agenda is woven into all levels of government bureaucracy, including national law enforcement agencies like the FBI. There are now reports surfacing in conservative media about collusion between the management of Facebook and Twitter and the FBI to suppress the news and fallout from Hunter Biden’s laptop previous to 2020 elections — we may suppose the collusion between social media and the FBI, advancing the progressive agenda, has been continuing ever since.
The “woke” agenda is also operating within our national corporations and financial institutions. By stealth, our energy industry is being severely impacted by the withdrawal of necessary investment funds from lending banks, which have become pawns of the Democratic “Green Energy” agenda.
The main problem for conservatives is that it’s devilishly difficult to get our message out to mainstream American voters. We American conservatives think we are doing well enough with Fox News and The New York Post, talk radio, podcasts, and a few conservative publications. This election proved that the Democrats in the news media successfully limited the extent of our ability to inform Americans of Democratic Party corruption and negligence by Democrats. So many of our Republican talking points were dismissed as “conspiracy theories.”
We have to admit that the Democrats possess a well-oiled machine that leverages early voting, ballot harvesting, and voter outreach in the months preceding election day that puts the Republicans to shame. Republicans have some catching up to do.
Too many Americans have closed minds politically. The question is how may we free America from the grip of Democrat Party propaganda? There aren’t simple answers. We have to keep chipping away in the information wars. We have to keep a grip on the platforms of communication that we have, and we have to expand where we can. The purchase and restoration of free speech on Twitter by Elon Musk is a hopeful sign. We should imitate the success of governors Ron DeSantis of Florida and Glenn Youngkin of Virginia in confronting the ideologies of critical race theory and gender fluidity being foisted on grade school children — parents are good advocates for our side.
Conservatives are stuck within our own conservative bubble. This is not easy, as polling has become a tricky and unreliable indicator — this election some polls pointed to a “red wave” that didn’t arrive.
The riots of January 6 were a catastrophic blunder. As far as public opinion goes, the images of rioters despoiling the capitol were on a par with the “Defund the Police” movement of the Left. This is what the exit polls from the midterm elections showed. The January 6 riots were a propagandistic gift for the Democrats. There might have been a red wave, but for those dreadful images — which the Democrats used to full advantage.
The exit polls also showed that the continued focus on the 2020 presidential election is unpopular with the broad swath of public opinion — it’s a losing issue for us. Republicans need to address the problems of voting integrity at the local level, and also must adjust to the new demands of an election “season” — ballot harvesting, drop boxes, early voting, and the targeting of the lean-Republican voters. The Republican National Committee needs to foster a better ground game.
We need a way to more accurately gauge public opinion so that we can find and persuade those Americans whose minds are open enough to hear our messages. Is this a difficult task? Yes.
It does no good to recite the 2020 summer riots, the deaths, and the criminality perpetrated by Antifa and Black Lives Matter to people who have closed minds. The media is not telling the truth. Many Americans are profoundly ignorant of facts. We have to find a way to overcome the Leftist media advantage. It’s a real conundrum.
The Republicans in the House must use their newly-earned, subpoena-powered, investigative abilities to mount revealing hearings into big-tech censorship of conservative news and opinion, practiced by Twitter, Facebook, Google, and the legacy Media. Republicans must expose the extensive pay-for-play corruption and negligence of Joe Biden’s history with congressional hearings. The Biden family corruption, involving Hunter Biden, should be a focus, along with many other issues.
The St. Croix Review is not a news publication. We advance the principles of liberty and decency. Americans have to find and regain our balance. We conservatives have to keep chipping away at our messages — and to improve where we can. Political wars are distressing and depressing at times. We really have to place our faith in God. And we need to be as united as we can be as conservatives. *
