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The Republican Party is Getting Its Comeuppance in the 2022 Senate and House Races

The Republican Party is Getting Its Comeuppance in the 2022 Senate and House Races

By John R Guardiano on September 5, 2022

By highlighting former President Trump, the GOP is getting what it deserves: unanticipated and unprecedented defeats in a midterm election it otherwise should sweep convincingly.

We see it every day in American politics. Politicians, activists, journalists, and political parties do things that are wrong, misguided, condemnable, and contemptible, and for that, they pay a steep price.

They get what they deserve. They get their just deserts. They get their comeuppance. And here at ResCon1, we are gonna call them out, starting with…

The Republican Party—for putting Donald Trump back on the ballot, making him the issue in the 2022 Senate and House races, and diverting attention away from Joe Biden and his disastrous record as President.

Their comeuppance: Six months ago, there was widespread talk of a “red wave” or even a “red tsunami,” with the GOP poised to take decisive control of the House and a comfortable majority in the Senate.

“One of the most ironclad rules in American politics is that the president’s party loses ground in midterm elections. Almost no president is immune,” reports FiveThirtyEight.

Except, perhaps, for Joe Biden, who is benefiting from the Republicans’ boneheaded decision to make Trump the centerpiece of their campaign. Consequently, and unsurprisingly, the GOP is trailing in key Senate races and has given the Dems a plausible, albeit still long-shot, chance of keeping their House majority. 

But even if the Republicans take the House, they likely will do so now with a slim majority that may prove more politically troublesome than it’s worth.

“Must-pass bills to prevent government shutdowns and address a looming debt ceiling crisis could create massive headaches for Republican leaders” if they have only a slim House majority, CNN warns.

“The involvement of former President Donald Trump makes 2022 different than almost any other midterm” election, notes FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver.

“Trump is on the ballot this fall in every key Senate race and in almost every top-tier gubernatorial contest,” admits The Dispatch’s Chris Stirewalt. “That makes 2022 a referendum on Trump at least as much as it is about President Biden.”

Unfortunately for the GOP, this does not bode well for November:

The Republicans are “getting killed in money, they’re getting killed in some of these contests when it comes to fundamentals,” Jessica Taylor told The Dispatch. (Taylor is the Senate and governors editor for the Cook Political Report.)

“There is a reason Democrats are eager to keep Trump at the center of the conversation,” observes conservative pundit Ben Shapiro.

“Half of independents say Trump is a major factor in their vote, and they’re breaking 4-1 for the Democrats. Republicans shouldn’t play that game. If they do, they’re cruising for a bruising.”

Exactly. The GOP is getting what it deserves. It’s getting its just deserts. It’s getting its comeuppance.

Feature photo credit: Former President Donald Trump, courtesy of Business Insider.

Back to the Future!

Back to the Future!

By John R Guardiano on January 9, 2022

How Ted Cruz lost the 2024 Republican Presidential Nomination to Mike Pompeo and Tom Cotton.

HOUSTON, Texas, March 14, 2024—Sen. Ted Cruz today announced that he is withdrawing from the presidential race after suffering lopsided defeats in every primary and caucus state thus far, including a stinging defeat in his own home state of Texas.

Cruz’s candidacy never really took off and was stillborn almost from the start because of controversial remarks he made in 2021 and 2022.

Cruz harshly criticized Trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol Jan. 6, 2021. He said the January 6 protest was a “violent terrorist attack.”

Cruz quickly retracted that remark after being called to account by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. However, his presidential candidacy never recovered. Out on the campaign trail, Cruz’s depiction of the January 6 protest was used against him by his GOP rivals.

Mike Pompeo. “Let’s be clear,” said former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo during the Feb. 22, 2024, debate at the Citadel in South Carolina.

Senator Cruz called Trump supporters “violent terrorists.” That depiction is wrong. It is inaccurate. It is a lie. And it is slur against millions of good and decent Americans whose only crime was to support President Trump. The senator ought to be ashamed.

Cruz said the remark was a one-off and used only to criticize those January 6 protesters who assaulted the police. CNN, though, found that Cruz had used that controversial depiction “at least 17 previous times in official written statements, in tweets, in remarks at Senate hearings, and in interviews.”

Cruz’s rivals for the nomination said that Cruz was being disingenuous. They said that Cruz is a Harvard-trained lawyer who always chooses his words very carefully.

“He knew what he was saying. It was no mistake and it was no accident. Those reprehensible remarks reflect a lifelong habit the Senator has of always trying to have it both ways,” Pompeo said.

Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), meanwhile, reminded voters that former President Trump called Cruz “Lyin’ Ted” during the 2016 GOP presidential primary race.

Trump has remained officially neutral in the 2024 presidential contest. However, his comments about Cruz have helped to sink Cruz’s campaign.

Three weeks ago, for instance, the former president told reporters that, although neutral, “I will tell you: Ted has a lot to answer for. A lot. And I’ll just leave it at that.”

Pompeo and Cotton are both military veterans, and they spent all winter hammering away at Cruz’s lack of military service.

“Senator Cruz, Secretary Pompeo, and I are all Harvard Law alumni ,” said Cotton during the March 3 debate in Huntsville, Alabama.

But only Mike and I left the Ivy League to serve in the U.S. military out on the frontiers of freedom. Ted, by contrast, is a career politician whose sole pursuit has been political power for himself and his cronies.

Defense and foreign policy issues became top campaign issues last fall after Russia invaded Ukraine and China attacked Taiwan’s electrical grid. The intermittent blackouts have persisted for months and are seen as the prelude to China’s attempted annexation of Taiwan.

Iranian proxy forces, meanwhile, have attacked Saudi Arabia, and Tehran has announced that its nuclear weapons capability is “non-negotiable.”

“Two years ago,” said GOP political consultant Whit Ayres, “no one thought defense and foreign policy issues would be the big, defining issues in this race. But things have gotten so bad so quickly that voters can’t help but take note and be concerned.”

Working class GOP primary voters, he added—”especially the increasing number of Hispanic Republicans and African American military veterans—they give pride of place to military service. That matters to them.”

Elitist. In addition, Cruz was hurt by his wife’s work for Goldman Sachs. His rivals used this work to portray Cruz as an out-of-touch elitist more interested in catering to the well-heeled and the wealthy than the working class voters who compose an increasing share of the GOP primary electorate.

Pompeo and Cotton wished Cruz well. Pompeo said that, if elected, he would consider appointing Cruz attorney general. Cotton said Cruz would make a good Supreme Court appointee.

Feature photo credit: Ted Cruz via the Dallas Morning News, courtesy of NBC News Dallas-Ft. Worth.

Why Congressional Republicans Must Vote to Impeach and Convict Trump

Why Congressional Republicans Must Vote to Impeach and Convict Trump

By John R Guardiano on January 12, 2021

Impeachment and conviction will allow the GOP to wash away the stain of dishonor that Trump has stamped upon their party.

As a matter of principle, Congressional Republicans should support the impeachment and conviction of Donald Trump.

The Republican Party, after all, is the nation’s conservative party—the party of liberty, the rule of law, faithful adherence to the Constitution, and the separation of powers.

Yet, all this and more was flagrantly assaulted in the Jan. 6, 2021, violent attack on the Capitol that Trump shamelessly and unapologetically orchestrated.

Why, then, are so few Republican lawmakers in favor of impeachment? In a word: politics.

Congressional Republicans have convinced themselves that Trump commands the allegiance of too many voters in their districts and their states to risk supporting his impeachment.

Their fear: that they will face a pro-Trump challenger who will defeat them in a primary and destroy their political careers.

This fear is understandable, but shortsighted and myopic—and it risks destroying the Republican Party.

The obvious truth is that Trump is intensely loathed and despised by a clear majority of voters nationwide. And everything he has done in the past two months since losing the election to Joe Biden has made him even more reviled, and justly so.

As the New York Times’ Bret Stephens points out:

The president attacked the states, in their right to set their own election procedures. He attacked the courts, state as well as federal, in their right to settle the election challenges brought before them.

He attacked Congress, in its right to conduct orderly business free of fear. He attacked the vice president, in his obligation to fulfill his duties under the 12th Amendment.

He attacked the American people, in their right to choose the electors who choose the president.

The risk to Republicans is that by trying to appease Trump’s base, they risk losing the country, as they did in the election, and it wasn’t even close. Trump lost the popular vote by more than seven million votes, and he lost the electoral college 306-232.

Trump Voters. Republicans obsess over Trump voters; but the truth is that Trump voters, all 74 million of them, are hardly a monolith.

Sure, many of them may be diehard Trump fans, but many (yours truly, for instance) are not. Many can be constructively engaged and persuaded through good-faith efforts to tell them the truth.

Unfortunately, too few Republican officeholders are willing to tell their voters the truth—the truth about the 2020 election and the truth about Donald Trump; and, until they do, the future of the Republican Party is in grave danger.

Indeed, if Republicans think the loss of two winnable Senate seats in Georgia was bad, they ain’t seen nothing yet. Worse and even more catastrophic political losses may be yet to come, and precisely because of their uncritical embrace of Trump.

Watershed Moment. The Jan. 6, 2021, Trump-engineered assault on the Capitol was a watershed event that will live in infamy. Elected Republicans need to recognize this and respond with the seriousness of purpose that the times and the moment demand.

Impeaching and convicting the ringleader of this attack, Donald J. Trump, is the right and necessary place to start.

Feature photo credit: Violent thugs, summoned by Trump to Washington to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power, scale the walls of the United States Capitol as they begin their assault on Congress (José Luis Magaña/Associated Press, courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquirer.)

Trump Must Be Impeached and Convicted—and Legalistic Defenses Cannot Spare Him

Trump Must Be Impeached and Convicted—and Legalistic Defenses Cannot Spare Him

By John R Guardiano on January 10, 2021

Impeachment is not about punishing Trump. It is about safeguarding American democracy and protecting our Constitutional order.

Of course President Trump should be impeached and convicted. He incited a mob to intimidate Congress and the Vice President to steal the election based on baldfaced lies that he knowingly propagated. As a result, five people are dead, including two Capitol police officers.

As former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie put it, if this isn’t an impeachable offense, then nothing is.

The separation of powers within the federal government was one of the principal objectives of the American Founding Fathers when they drafted the Constitution.

By inciting a violent attack on the legislative branch of government, President Trump attacked one of the pillars of our Constitutional order. He must be held accountable for that attack. Impeachment and conviction are the only remedies available to Congress to ensure that justice is done.

This has nothing to do with punishment or revenge. Instead, it has everything to do with preventing a future president from trying to emulate Trump by launching a similar attack against the legislative branch of government.

Congress must lay down a clear marker now that such behavior will not be tolerated; and that there will be grave consequences for any president who even flirts with this idea.

And legalistic defenses of Trump won’t wash. The Founding Fathers deliberately made impeachment a legislative and not judicial prerogative. So whether Trump’s abhorrent behavior meets the strict legal definition of incitement is utterly irrelevant.

What matters is what Congress thinks and knows, not what a court of law might decide. And what Congress thinks and knows—what all of us think and know—is the the president blatantly egged on a mob to storm the Capitol.

Now, did the president know that the mob would turn violent? Maybe; maybe not. Who knows?

Again, that doesn’t matter. What we do know is that violence was a foreseeable consequence of Trump’s rhetoric and behavior; and that a responsible leader never would have behaved as Trump behaved.

As the New York Times reports:

“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Dec. 19, just one of several of his tweets promoting the day. “Be there, will be wild!”

“We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” he told the mob Jan. 6.

You’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong… Our country has been under siege for a long time…

We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn’t happen. You don’t concede when there’s theft involved…

Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal. …

You will have an illegitimate president. That is what you will have, and we can’t let that happen…

Feature photo credit: ABC News.

Trump Must Move On or the GOP Will Lose the Senate and the Country

Trump Must Move On or the GOP Will Lose the Senate and the Country

By John R Guardiano on November 21, 2020

Trump’s failure to acknowledge that he lost jeopardizes GOP chances in Georgia and risks handing control of the Senate over to Chuck Schumer and the Democrats.

President Trump lost his bid for reelection by being a weak and incompetent leader who failed to provide leadership when it mattered most, during the pandemic.

Now, by failing to show grace and magnanimity in defeat, he is in real danger of causing the Republican Party to lose two critical Senate seats in Georgia.

Catastrophe. As we have reported here at ResCon1, this would be a catastrophe for the United States.

That is because if the Democrats win these two Senate seats, they will control the Senate and thus have the ability to enact a host of radical legislative proposals that would effect an irreversible transformation of American politics and our very system of government.

Think D.C. statehood, the end of the filibuster, packing the courts, repeal of corporate tax reform, new tax hikes, “Medicare for All,” the “Green New Deal,” compulsory unionism, et al.

Indeed, the stakes could not be greater than they are right now in Georgia.

Yet, Trump seems not to care. Instead, his focus is on himself and his failed presidential bid.

Weak Leadership. Trump, of course, is too weak and insecure to admit that he lost. Consequently, he and his toadies are concocting ludicrous conspiracy theories to explain his defeat.

This wouldn’t matter except that Trump is consuming all of the political oxygen that otherwise would go to these two critical Georgia Senate races.

As Kimberley A. Strassel explains in the Wall Street Journal:

The biggest risk is that Republican base.

The GOP is optimistic it can win back suburban and older voters who feel conflicted about Mr. Trump but still want a check on progressives.

None of that will matter if GOP voters in rural and exurban areas stay home, angry or frustrated by the presidential election.

Adds the Washington Examiner: 

At this point, Trump’s efforts are more likely to damage the Republican Party, and more specifically, undermine its chances of winning the Jan. 5 runoff elections in Georgia for the two Senate seats that remain undecided.

GOP control of the Senate rests on those races; the party must win at least one of them to retain its majority. And that majority is all that stands in the way of a Congress dramatically more capable of passing damaging and extreme left-wing legislation after Jan. 20.

The president’s efforts to reverse the election result and stay in office for a second term are not going to succeed. Without a chance of succeeding, they have become distractions from the really important task of keeping the Senate in Republican hands.

In Georgia, Trump is setting Republican against Republican.

“The largest shadow hanging over Republicans,” reports McClatchy’s David Catanese, “is what the outgoing president will do.

Trump, who has been almost entirely consumed with his campaign’s far-fetched legal challenges to his own election defeat, briefly praised [David] Perdue and [Kelly] Loeffler in a Tuesday evening tweet.

But GOP officials don’t expect Trump to get more directly involved—if he chooses to at all—until the presidential election result is finalized and his court battles are exhausted.

[Former Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Republican], indicated that Trump likely wouldn’t be helpful to Perdue and Loeffler if he hasn’t conceded his own defeat.
Enough is Enough. President Trump’s failed reelection bid is now history. For the good of the Republican Party—and more importantly, the good of the country— Trump needs to acknowledge this and move on.
 
He needs to focus his efforts on the future, not the past.
 
Trump needs to help mobilize the Republican Party for this Battle of the Bulge moment to defeat the forces of progressivism, which are threatening to take the Senate and, in the ominous words of Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, thereby “change America.”
 
Trump’s legacy, such as it is, hangs in the balance. More importantly, the future of our country is at stake.
 
Feature photo credit: GOP Senate candidates Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, courtesy of 41NBC.com.