The GOP Conundrum
If most voters including independents agree with Republicans on top issues, why aren't they voting for them?
“The dark side clouds everything. Impossible to see the light, the future is.” – Yoda
It’s not entirely accurate - it rarely is - that the media narrative following this month’s off-year, primarily local and state elections is that Republicans lost. It is fair to say that they largely underperformed based on their stated objectives.
Rank and file Republicans, at least the noisy ones, bought the spin. They took to social media demanding heads, especially Republican National Committee chair Ronna Romney McDaniel. Confusing apples and airplanes, they compare McDaniel - the head of only one, albeit significant, part of the multi-headed monster we call the Republican Party to the head coach of a professional team who controls mostly everything (even head coaches would disagree with that) on the playing field.
That’s profoundly ignorant. This is your reminder that there are three branches of the national Republican Party - the Republican National Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee (official campaign committee of US House Republicans), and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (House counterpart for US Senators). Then, there are 50 independent state parties (plus others for territories like Guam and Puerto Rico) and scores of county, township, and city/town GOP committees beneath them.
The dirty little secret is that the Republican party is way more “democratic” than the Democratic party with its phalanx of super delegates and rules to minimize popular sentiment within their ranks.
And then there are the incumbents and candidates who, by and large, consider themselves largely independent of their national party. Just ask Vivek Ramaswamy. Or especially Donald Trump.
But national parties provide valuable resources, like (a little) money, good contact lists of voters, organizational support and expertise, voter identification and turnout programs, ballot integrity, and outreach to various coalitions (pro-life, Hispanic, etc.). They mostly defer important things like candidate recruitment and training to local and state parties.
The four essential resources all candidates rely on to win include time (the candidate’s, mostly), money, people (volunteers), and talent (expertise). Parties can help with all of them to limited and varying degrees. Parties allocate their resources based on a candidate’s ability to win. “Safe seats” and unwinnable seats are usually left in the dust.
In the vital swing state of Pennsylvania, progressive Democrats won a critical State Supreme Court race, whose elections are partisan, outspending the GOP by a 2:1 margin with lots of outside-the-state “dark money.” In Virginia, GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin and his vaunted, well-funded (but still outspent) political operation fell short of winning majorities in the state House and Senate. The GOP lost control of the House by one seat. They did gain a net of +1 in state Senate races but short of a majority, again by one seat. It was a mixed bag everywhere else.
Down ballot, the news is worse: Pennsylvania conservatives, especially in urban Alleghany (Pittsburgh), Bucks, and Delaware (Philly) Counties, woke progressives swept local school boards and other races. I can’t wait to see what kind of books those public school libraries will feature for elementary and middle school students. Warning: they’re likely to include this:
Good luck, parents.
Adding insult to injury, Democrats and their media allies are trumping a Democrat winning reelection in the heavily GOP state of Kentucky and the landslide win in Ohio of an extreme but artfully-worded and expertly marketed pro-abortion ballot initiative that enshrines killing unborn children at any time, for any reason, up to the crib. They also cite the power of the abortion issue - the top issue on which Democrats ran in Virginia - for their “success” there. I discussed all this in a recent post.
But the media is trying to Jedi-mind trick you into believing the news was terrible everywhere. It wasn’t. Republicans won every statewide office besides governor in Kentucky by large margins. Republicans also won surprising local races in the Bronx and elsewhere in the New York City suburbs. Louisiana’s governorship shifted to the GOP column, a state now controlled by Republicans.
I guess the abortion issue mattered except where it didn’t.
Meanwhile, many polls from well before and even after November’s election show support for the GOP on just about everything but the ballot test at historic highs. With the caveat that most public polling is dubious, let’s consult Fox News. Whatever you think of their broadcasters, their polling is not known for being pro-GOP.
Repeat: Why are so many voters who prefer the GOP on issues - even abortion, more about that later - voting for Democrats? Or, at least not voting for Republicans?
Most voters may agree with Republicans on most issues, but not when they associate names and faces on the ballot. They may disagree that the southern border is mismanaged, that immigration needs to be better controlled, that the federal government spends too much money, and that our weakness abroad invites aggression.
They don’t like or trust the GOP, their candidates, or their negative messages.
Bombarded by advertising and mailers in the final week - many, if not most, sponsored by independent special interests, they mostly heard this: Republicans want to ban abortion, even though that is demonstrably false. That Republicans are “MAGA extremists.” They may not know what MAGA stands for, but Trump! They reach for their screw-top Chardonnays in the horror of Orange Man Bad, even though he’s not on the ballot.
According to this Harvard Harris CAPS poll conducted just after the elections, fear of Donald Trump was a factor in the polls. I’d like to see the partisan breakdown on this answer (page 37).
Republicans, meanwhile, too rarely talk about the issues that matter to voters at the local level and focus more on fear than hope. They seem to run negative campaigns that don’t resonate with people. Crime may be a problem in urban centers, but not where they live in leafy, well-patrolled suburbs and exurban towns. And like it or not, abortion, unlike inflation and the economy, is now a state and local issue, not a national one. Voters know the difference.
Democrats also know how to scare the bejesus out of voters, even if they have to lie.
Example: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin chose to get out front of the abortion issue with a carefully poll-tested 15-week limit on abortion with exceptions for rape, incest, and life of the mother. It was an intelligent strategy, with 51 percent approval from those polled, and he got the pro-life community on board despite affecting maybe five percent of abortions currently performed.
It was practically a pro-choice-lite policy, not “pro-life.”
It didn’t stop Democrats from prevarication. They persuaded a large number of gullible voters that Republicans were extreme on the issue and wanted to eliminate bodily autonomy, with collaboration and support from the media, no matter what GOP candidates asserted. Too many voters chose fear and falsehoods over facts with zero pushback from so-called “fact checkers.”
And that which gets rewarded will be repeated.
Some observations:
Redistricting was an issue, and it didn’t help the GOP in Virginia. One of the court-appointed “special masters” who helped draw Virginia’s districts, Sean Trende, admitted that they were drawn to make it difficult for the GOP - but not Democrats - to win a trifecta, or control of both houses of the legislature and the governorship. Demographic trends in the government-centric northern Virginia - more than a quarter to the statewide vote - make it challenging for Republicans to win in the cradle of the Confederacy.
Money was an issue. The GOP was severely outspent from Virginia to Ohio, with massive amounts of “dark” money flowing in from out-of-state sources to fund Democratic and pro-abortion campaigns. Even Illinois’ failed Democratic Governor, JB Pritzker, sent $250,000 to woke progressive Democratic candidates for state office in Virginia:
Pennsylvania also featured a highly contentious race for State Supreme Court justice. My friend Matt Brouillette reports: “While Republican candidate Carolyn Carluccio garnered nearly double the funding of the 2015 GOP candidates (and my organization, Commonwealth Leaders Fund, heavily supported her), it didn’t come anywhere close to the backing that Democrat Dan McCaffery received from national interest groups, out-of-state millionaires and billionaires, and dark-money groups that the Left loves to hate – until they don’t. With reports still coming in, the Left spent at least $14 million – outspending Republicans by nearly 2-1.”
Organizations, including one led by Barack Obama and even the ACLU, previously not known for partisan political engagement, heavily supported the Democratic candidate.
And yes, ineffective campaign management, from recruitment to fundraising and diffuse, unpersuasive messaging, was an issue in many places, as we saw in several congressional and Senate campaigns in 2022. Campaigns, with exceptions, didn’t connect with voters where they live. It was never clear to me what the crystalizing case was supposed to be. Maybe there wasn’t one. It wasn’t for a lack of trying in many races.
As a result, abortion and “MAGA extremism” are what stuck with voters when they waltzed into voting booths. Just ask progressive and federal government employee Brendan Martin, who harassed a GOP poll worker (our local Arlington County GOP chairman, Matthew Hurtt) with this bizarre, unhinged, and profanity-laced rant (you’ll have to click the link to watch it. Thanks to the weird war between Substack and Elon Musk, the posting below won’t work).
On the abortion issue, pro-life freshman US Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) posted an insightful analysis on X/Twitter on the landslide win of abortion proponents in amending the state’s constitution.
“. . .we've spent so much time winning a legal argument on abortion that we've fallen behind on the moral argument. I talked to so many decent people who voted yes on Issue 1, and their reasons varied. Some described themselves as "pro life" but hated the lack of a rape exception in Ohio law. Some were worried that Ohio law would prevent them from addressing an ectopic pregnancy, or a late term miscarriage. Some didn't understand the "viability" standard in Issue 1, and thought that of course you should be able to abort a "non-viable" pregnancy as that would be a danger to the mother. You can criticize the propaganda effort on the other side for lying to people about these issues or confusing the populace, but it suggests we have to do a much better job of persuasion. And I'm not just talking about 30 second TV commercials--I'm talking about sustained, years long efforts to show the heart of the pro life movement.”
The Harvard Harris CAPS poll confirms that most voters, Democrat and Republican, are poorly educated and all over the map on the issue of abortion. For the record, a fetus is generally viable between 20-24 weeks of gestation.
Voters did not connect with GOP candidates for many reasons, and pro-life forces celebrated their “victory” in the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning Roe v. Wade without realizing that it unleashed 50 new battlefronts they were woefully unprepared for. The GOP’s grifting consultant class continues to raise questions about the quality of their work in many races.
Add to that the spectacle voters were watching in the US, as eight Republicans - eight - partnered with all 213 Democrats to remove a Speaker of the House, triggering nearly a month of one failed candidacy after another while the world burned around them. And then there’s this. There’s a reason why Republicans are called “The Stupid Party.”
Why trust a party of drama queens who can’t run a two-car funeral?
Post-election pauses are great times for parties to evaluate and rethink everything. The good news is that the voters want to be with them. The challenge is converting that support to votes for candidates they can connect, trust, and resonate with.
One area that may not have been an issue is voter turnout, although it varied by jurisdiction. Using where I reside in northern Virginia as an example, turnout in heavily Democratic Arlington County, home to the Pentagon, Arlington National Cemetary, and many federal government employees, hovered around 40 percent. Where I’m moving to heavily Republican but more sparsely populated and rural western Loudoun County, turnout in my Round Hill Elementary School Precinct almost reached 60 percent. That’s high for an off-year election, but we also had among the Commonwealth's most contentious and hardest-fought elections. Other rural GOP-leaning counties experienced turnouts closer to the norm - around 40 percent.
The GOP needs to face reality. Voters don’t like them very much. They should explore why.
The GOP has a lot of work to do. They’re being outraised, outspent, largely out-organized, and out-messaged in too many key races. And they may have to run with Donald Trump whether it suits them or frightens some voters. He is leading in most of the last ten national and swing-state polls in head-to-head matchups with either Joe Biden and especially Kalama Harris, so there’s that, a year away from the general election with nary a single primary or caucus having been conducted.
Circular firing squads are not the answer. But it’s OK to hold our political parties and their leaders accountable for the lack of fundraising, voter mobilization and turnout, and how party resources are allocated.
Side note: you don’t need that many resources to win. In my new home county of Loudoun County, Virginia, the incumbent Soros-funded county prosecutor, Buta Biberaj, raised and spent. $1.1 million. Her challenger, former county prosecutor Bob Anderson raised and spent $70,000.
Anderson won by 300 votes, overcoming some late shenanigans by local election officials who chose to count the provisional ballots of those whose IDs were not verified as required by state law. I’m surprised Anderson won. Usually, Democrats are masterful at finding “uncounted” ballots magically discovered in the trunks of election officials’ cars and elsewhere after election day, changing the rules when necessary. Democrats cheat, but they can’t steal it if it’s not close.
The dark side of politics - the lying and misrepresentations, even the vote stealing - will always be there. Yet the field remains fertile for quality GOP candidates with the right messages, skills, and discipline sans the drama. And it would be nice if our federal GOP legislators would demonstrate it and a little ballot integrity.
A sobering piece for sure. There is a lot the GOP needs to confront contained here. The sooner they do the better.
While it's true that McDaniel is not personally responsible for all the losses, the GOP poohbahs in general are -- and she's the mascot for all that failure. Bottom line: the GOP does not listen to its own voters! How dumb is that?? And the GOP masterminds have been doing that for more than a decade, starting with the 2010 senatorial elections, when, for example The Turtle sabotaged some Republican nominees in favor of his own awful choices, like Senator Lisa. After years of that sort of BS, R voters are fed up. We don't want those people ruining our party and thus our country! The DC party thinks we'll vote for them anyway because they think we have nowhere else to go. That explains Trump, so they hate him even more than many Democrats do. That's all you need to know.
The GOP bosses have a history of denying support to those R candidates it does not like, and McDaniel is continuing that awful tradition when she says she would not fund Vivek's campaign at all. As chairman, she's supposed to be neutral. She disqualified herself with that one comment, without realizing that's the way her colleagues have been acting for too long. Political inbreeding does that.
We're fed up, and we simply won't turn out for these business-as-usual losers. They would rather lose than listen to their voters, as long as they get to keep the perks at the DC trough. So Dems win, but the only hope for conservatives, traditionalists, and patriots to win is to destroy the Republican Dinosaur Party, the "Stupid Party", first. That organization is hopeless.
The party should present a unified national platform on national issues, like Newt did in '94, and as the R's lamely tried to do last round. Abortion is now a state issue, as is appropriate; federal candidates should avoid it. Congressional calls for a national abortion ban is not only unwise and unconstitutional, it's a sure political loser. The biggest consensus on that issue is anti-absolutist in either direction. We can count on the media, which are really the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party, to demagogue this as all other issues, so it's the national Republican Party (or its truly dedicated conservative successor) which must relentlessly convey the truth. It hasn't done that. And waiting until "election season", like the Rs always do, is too late -- it has to be nonstop -- just like the Dems do on every issue of importance to them. By the time our side starts, the Dems are already nearing the finish line. That's the responsibility of "leaders" like the ineffectual McDaniel and the failed McCarthy. They did not do their jobs. Replacement is necessary.
Issues of national importance include all the ones on which the Rs have majority or at least plurality support throughout the nation. Why not hammer on those issues, year round, 24/7? When the Rs do get power, they fail to give their voters what the latter thought they voted for. So no surprise when some of those voters drift away. The DC GOP, as an organization, is clueless. That's on the leadership, in every branch of the party. Vivek is right.