https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... can-sweep/Opinion How the GOP can win in 2022
By Hugh Hewitt Contributing columnist August 24, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT
Summer used to end on Labor Day. Now, it’s over with the first kickoff of a significant college football game, which we will stretch, for argument’s sake, to mean Nebraska vs. Northwestern this Saturday in, of all places, Dublin. Confused Cornhuskers and Wildcats may struggle to find Dublin on a map (as they have long believed the Irish capital was in South Bend, Indiana). But with the first official play from scrimmage, summer comes to a thudding stop and fall is underway. As are the midterm campaigns. “Election Day” is no longer a moment — Nov. 8 is the official date this year — but a season. Voting in the congressional races gets underway 46 days earlier in Minnesota and South Dakota, 45 days earlier in Virginia and Wyoming and 40 earlier in Illinois and Michigan. That’s late September, just a month away.
Democrats will talk about abortion and run endlessly through their “threat to democracy” talking points, but that’s a hard narrative to maintain in the face of gale-force worries about inflation and recession. The GOP has boiled its message down to a half-dozen themes about what happens when one party — President Biden’s, for the moment — controls both the House and the Senate. The case for every Republican candidate has six paragraphs and a coda. “Affordability” should lead off most ads and speeches. Gas prices are falling with the approach of recession and the end of summer driving but groceries soared 13 percent year-over-year in July and everyone’s got to eat. “Anxiety” covers a host of worries, of course, but serious crime and concern for loved ones tops the list. The concern over violence crescendos with every mass shooting, but it is the fear of crime rising in some suburbs that has the power to boost Republican hopes.
Ordinary Americans’ continuing “anger” with elites — whether inside big companies, big government, big media or big universities — will once again prove to be a surprise factor in voter turnout, inevitably missed by the pollsters and prognosticators. The anger is powered by a sense of things headed in the wrong direction and a resentment at those who label supporters of Donald Trump as fascists, racists and sexists. Futility at enforcing a border and disinterest in the consequences fuels the upset. The scourge of fentanyl has an address and it includes most entry points along the southern border, particularly San Diego. If Republican Senate hopefuls in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Colorado and Washington state have a hidden superpower, this anger is it.
“Energy” is paragraph four of the GOP agenda and part of the larger debate in this country about fossil fuels. The ground may be shifting slightly toward nuclear power in the face of climate change and rising energy prices. The absurd anti-oil policies of Biden that began with cancellation of the Keystone pipeline have not dissipated even as the cost of gasoline declines. “Education” is the sleeper issue for every GOP candidate; so is trouble for school board incumbents who have not stepped forward to renounce mandatory masking or the infusion of critical race theory into primary schools. These issues will define many local elections. Then, there is “ESG” — short for “Environmental, Social, Governance policies” — which usually means that large companies at the very least pay lip service to all manner of leftist aspirations from 100 percent “green” energy to declamations against “transphobia.” The ESG list, from where I sit, shape shifts as required by context and is losing its power in the C-suite. But it has gained a grip in corporate culture and workplaces. While big majorities of Americans favor a broad and welcoming acceptance of people of all sexual orientations and compassion toward people struggling through all sorts of identity crises, those same majorities reject the most extreme demands of the most outspoken activists.
The Democrats gifted Republicans with one last weapon when they voted to add $80 billion to the budget and 87,000 staff to the payroll of the IRS over a decade and bestow a $7,500 tax credit on Americans who can afford to buy and drive electric vehicles. Ford promptly raised the price on its electric-powered “Lightning” 150 pickup. Perhaps that explains why Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm’s message pivoted to “30 percent off solar panels!” And behind it all, the shame of our abandonment of Afghanistan a year ago next week. Fall is arriving. No pivots from these themes. Let the campaigning begin.
And Kurt Schlichter:
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtsch ... p=28393595Wake Up Flaccidcons – It's Not 2005 Anymore
Kurt Schlichter|Posted: Aug 22, 2022 12:01 AM
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
Oh, Mike Pence, you soft, naive little man. Oh, Tim Scott, you kind and friendly gentleman. I like you both. I really do. I would love you to be my neighbors. If I ran short of sugar or charcoal, you'd square me away. Not so much bourbon, but whatever. If I asked you to help me move or give me a ride to the airport, you suckers would be all in because you are nice guys. And that's your problem and the problem of Republicans like you. You are nice guys in a time that calls for ruthless killers who want to destroy our enemies and leave them on their backs, figuratively cockroaching on the floor. We want vengeance and victory. You want hugs. I guess that's nice. Hugworld would be pleasant, but it's the hardcore bomb throwers who get us to that stage by pummeling our enemies into submission. You find that unsavory, disconcerting, unseemly. You would prefer a world of comity, collegiality, and unicorns. And that ain't happening until we warrior cons have broken our enemy – yeah, I used the "E" word – and exacted our payback and thereby ensured that their pain is so great that they will not dare even dream of repeating this nonsense again for a generation for fear of our righteous wrath.*
Your problem is that you live on forever in a world that no longer exists, if it ever did. You live in a world where there are norms. You live in a world of rules and guardrails, where the institutions are at least nominally neutral and where we all share some basic premises that provide common ground. But we don't. They hate America. They hate believing Christians and Jews. They hate the idea of free speech, freedom of religion, the right to due process, and not killing babies three seconds before they poke their heads out. They think kids should be mutilated to conform to gender delusions. They want us normals disarmed, disenfranchised, and, more often than you softies will admit, deceased. You both want to run in 2024, but you think it's still 2005, and you both talk like a pre-failure Weekly Standard article about "empowerment" and "opportunity." Buzzwords like that are worse than meaningless in an environment where our basic liberties are under constant assault by these communist bastards. There's a war on and you people want to sing Kumbaya. That's why you cannot be allowed anywhere near the levers of power in 2024. You just can't accept what time it is. The FBI, Crusty Joe's personal Stasi, invades President Trump's home – they rifle through his wife's panty drawer – and Tim Scott tells CBS News that we need to wait for all the facts. All the facts? Like the FBI hasn't spent the last six years trying to frame our president and everyone around him? "Sure, they made up a lot of things in the past to imprison Trump and his staff, but this time it might be totally true – let's give them the benefit of the doubt!"
Mike Pence then tells us we need to go easy on the Bureau flunkies who did the deed because, after all, the institution is full of good apples. Yeah, good apples. Where are these good apples? Who's the guy who quit because he refused to be part of the Democrats' political hit squad? What's his name? Jim Jordan says 14 whistleblowers have come forward. Awesome – 14 out of 35,000. That's a good apple tart, not even a good apple pie, much less a good apple barrel. You always want to give the benefit of the doubt to the institutions because to not do so pushes you outside of your comfort zone. You desperately want the system to work. But so do we hardcores. The difference is that our response to the manifest proof that the system is totally broken to the point where only drastic reforms under a ruthless leader like a Trump 2.0 or Ron DeSantis 1.0 can save our country is to accept the harsh reality. We have made peace with the fact that there is nothing left to conserve, that we must loot and pillage and fight to rebuild upon the ruins. But you softies, you cannot get your heads around the truth of the situation because to do so would require you to go hard, and going hard is not in your wheelhouse. It's not your brand. So you simply ignore reality and pretend that it is 20 years ago and that if you are only a good person, good things will happen. Ned Beatty in "Deliverance" was a good person too.
It's time to accept reality and embrace the suck. The suck is that we are in a fight. It's not going to be over when we pass a few laws or overturn some terrible precedents; those are necessary but far from sufficient actions. No, we are in a long and brutal political struggle where the stakes are our liberty, and while you want to figuratively clutch your pearls and worry about whether this is who we are, we know who we are. And we are the guys and gals who want to figuratively don our plate armor, sharpen our broadswords, and get some, Knight Templar-style. Mike Pence, Tim Scott, I like you. And I would love to live in your world. But that world exists only in your imagination, and I and the rest of us in the base are stuck here on Planet Earth. You guys can't be president because you are not wartime consiglieres. You are both Tom Hagan, reliable and soft Tom Hagan, when we are Michael and we need a Sonny to go after the Barzinis and Tartaglias of the left.
It's sad that your dreams of the presidency in 2024 must die, but you don't get it, and you can't fake it. This was a test, and you failed. If you are still imagining that there might be some set of facts awaiting public disclosure that makes it okay to send guys with guns to invade the domicile of your primo political opponent, if you still can't bring yourself to demand that the disgraced FBI be defunded and dismantled so it can never try to frame another GOP politician, then you are not up to the job. You don't get to be president because you don't know what time it is. Sorry about your shattered dreams, but this is our liberty, and to preserve that, we can live with you being disappointed. Maybe someday, after those of us who are based destroy the enemy's ability to make war upon us, you can have your shot and preside over an era of good feelings. But that will only come after someone else does the dirty work you are incapable of. So step aside, and let the warriors do their thing. In the meantime, I need a ride to LAX – pick me up at 5:30 am.
* Interesting, Kurt bullseyes the secret mission of the 699th. See highlighted paragraph above. Thankfully, he clearly has no idea that Lt Col Root Beer, Lt Biscuit, and their troops have been executing virtually this strategy, "destroy our enemies and leave them on their backs, figuratively cockroaching on the floor" to remarkable success (House, Senate, White House) since 2018.
Asking for a favor. Would folks please post bad news and opinions (which are totally reasonable) here and please keep the "Election 2022: Democrats Are Going To Win Again" topic positive, please? The Win topic is my one small place to keep some hope and optimism alive during a really, really rough time in real life.
s titular Mama June in Fogbow's Favourite Show™ Mama June: From Not To Hot! Fogbow's Theme Song™ Edith Massey's "I Got The Evidence!" 
@Orly_licious 38s
x4