Our Democrat and Never Trump friends are giving out squeals of joy over the results from Virginia – it is the harbinger of Trump Doom. Forget it. It’s over. Trump is toast. Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer, here we come…and if Trump doesn’t get impeached after that, then President Kamala Harris will fix all he’s done.
I don’t know. To be sure, the GOP took a shellacking in Virginia – the Democrats seem to have worked out a killer plan to flip State legislative seats where they voted Hillary in 2016, the Democrat candidate for governor benefited greatly from that. OTOH, there are still some seats out there held by Democrats but Trump won the district in 2016…so, the GOP can play the same game. Not as effectively, of course, because given how well the GOP did at the State level the previous 8 years, there’s not a lot left for them to grab. And that is where my mind is going – this is just part of an expected snap-back. A good election cycle doesn’t mean a party is going anywhere. The GOP picked up 81 House seats in the ’38 midterms and it meant absolutely nothing…just a blip in the Democrats 60 year stranglehold on American politics.
What I can’t see is people being so disappointed in Trump that they’d return to power people like Pelosi and Schumer…or anyone like them. It could happen, of course, but I just don’t think it will. As I wrote last year, given that this will be Trump’s first midterm, the cards are stacked against the GOP…only the vast number of Democrats up for re-election makes the Senate pretty secure, while the House actually should be reachable by the Democrats. The Democrats need a net gain of 24 in the House to take a bare majority. There are 23 House seats won by GOPers but which voted Hillary in 2016; there are 12 House seats won by Democrats but which voted Trump in 2016. Only in 3 or 4 of each batch, however, was the Presidential margin a lot larger than the Congressional margin. Outside of a wave election for the Democrats, I think it comes out a wash…with maybe the Democrats netting 4 or 5 House seats.
Without a doubt, the 2018 midterms will be nationalized – the usual caveat that all politics is local will be highly attenuated next year. The United States is deeply divided on partisan lines. The GOP base – especially the Trumpster part of it – is deeply disappointed in the Congressional GOP. But I think that will manifest itself in more primary challenges…and more RINOs deciding to retire. When push comes to shove, the GOP base – and especially the Trumpster part of it – knows that it is political suicide to flip a lot of seats over to the Democrats. Not only will Trump’s agenda grind to a complete halt, but the whole purpose of the Democrat majority would be to go on scandal hunts to try and bring Trump down. The Democrat base is also very much fired up – they hate Trump with a white-hot passion. But my thinking is that the Democrat base is now, for the first time since the 1920’s, smaller than the GOP base. This follows a trend which has been going on for more than 30 years as everyone who isn’t a flat-out Progressive grows increasingly dismayed with the Democrat party. There was no way the old line GOP was ever going to get these people with any sort of consistency…but Trump, I think, can and will.
And that, in the end, is why I think 2018 will be good for the GOP…and good for America. The election will be nationalized, courtesy of the Democrats, and Trump will be able to hit the hustings proclaiming himself besieged by people who want to stop Making America Great Again. With the lower overall turnout always found in midterm years, I think the now-larger GOP base, fired up by Trump, will prevail. I could be wrong, of course; we’ll see. But I look to the future with calm confidence.
Blogs For Victory 
One of the big problems with the GOP, among many, is the fact the Steve Schmidt is still a “Republican strategist”. Wasn’t David Axlerod available?
Today’s chuckle – the progressive media establishment is now worried about ….. wait for it ….. THE DEBT!! Wrap your head around that one for a while ………
Re: 2018 – people who vote for results will vote Trump. Trump is delivering on the economy, on immigration, and his foreign policy is A+. He still has work to do on health care and taxes, but is making progress. He is one of the only GOP politicians to actually walk the walk and in light of that, he has not lost one vote from those who elected him in 2016 despite the media’s non stop divisiveness. All GOP candidates need to know that if you are not willing to push back and take the fight to the media and Democrats, then you will lose. Don’t be a Flake.
Re: Never Trump. I was appalled to see that George H.W. Bush voted for Hillary. I know he’s becoming a little senile,but still……
Just proof that Identity Politics is going strong, evidently overriding alleged conservative values.
This is too funny—you have to look at all the different options for customizing an AR.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/23344/watch-usa-today-warns-people-beware-ar-15-armed-ryan-saavedra?utm_medium=email&utm_content=110917-news&utm_campaign=Actengage
And, of course, there is a snarly comment on one of the linked sites whining that the families of those murdered probably don’t think these are funny. I disagree. I suggest that, being Texans, they are far more offended by USA Today and its garbage-mongering.
My favorites: the banana, tied with the Comfortably Smug attachments—–the first to just terrify people, the second because it is just so darned funny
I saw that and laughed out loud, a work! Friend of mine who is an avid hunter asked what I was laughing about and so I showed him…then we were both laughing.
The double standard that exists in our progressive political environment is mind numbing. MCNBC and in particular Nicole Wallace (who incidentally is the dumbest pundit on all of TV), have indicted, tried, and convicted Roy Moore over an unproven 30 year old allegation. They are openly calling him a pedophile and at one point Wallace mentioned indirectly that he should be shot. Now their new found concern for pedophilia is noble to be sure, but strangely I can’t recall any stories on Bill Clinton’s widely known ventures with Jeffrey Epstein, nor do I recall the outrage directed at Anthony Weiner. In fact, their only concern towards Weiner was that they hoped he wouldn’t hurt Hillary’s electoral chances, and that he “needed professional help”. I am also struck by progressives new found belief that ALL women must be believed when they speak up about sexual abuse …… if only that standard was applied back in 1992.
Now I am not a Roy Moore fan but he may have some legal recourse against MSNBC and I hope he pursues it …..
It also bears repeating that the top two “Republican strategists” leading the John McCain presidential campaign in 2008 were Nicole Wallace and Steve Schmidt. Thank God we lost.
Question – Could Mexican’s pride in Mexico be called “brown nationalism”? Or how about Kenyan’s pride in Kenya? Is that “black nationalism”?
But it’s OK if Mexicans are proud of being Mexican, they can even have their Mexican Pride day (Cinco de Mayo) and drive around with Mexican flags on their cars—because they are not white, and only whiteness is offensive.
It’s OK if Kenyans are proud of their native land, because they are not white, and only whiteness is offensive.
The real question is, what if Americans from Mexico, or Kenya, are proud of being American? Would it be OK to be a “nationalist” if the nation is the United States, if the person feeling such loyalty to the country is not white?
And what about the media spin that a white person who is a “nationalist” is also, by default, a white supremacist? What if he feels kinship with all American nationalists of all colors and ethnicities, linked to them by a shared love of country?
What if color doesn’t have anything to do with it? Just as color has so little to do with how the vast majority of Americans feel, in spite of the media drumroll that this is all that matters?
How many of you have heard about Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore?
How many of you have heard about Democrat Senator Robert Menendez?
Moore is not a favorite of mine, but I take note of the fact that he has been targeted with several vicious attacks, and the timing of this one is suspect. If it had come out during his campaign, it might be different, but it is clear that the Left was holding back this information in case he won and needed to be taken down afterward. I’ll bet if he had lost we never would have heard a word.
I’m disgusted by all aspects of male predation, by anyone of any political stripe, and think they all need to be addressed equally strongly. So I am in no way defending any bad act Moore may have done. I do, however, object to the pathetic eagerness of his party to dump him overboard based on mere allegations. All we are doing is telling the Left, “This is how to undermine the Republican Party—make a claim and then stand back while they do our dirty work for us”.
The Left fully understands this, and uses it against us.
If I were writing a movie script, I’d now have an alien space ship land and have the aliens announce that they were creating a court to hear all such allegations, and that all would be treated with absolute equality and impartiality. At that point, the Republicans would be pushing their accused forward for hearings, and the Dems would be hiding behind the furniture and peeing down their legs.
We’re in a bad place right now when 30 year old or decades old allegations ruins someones career. There is the presumption of innocence right? Or use to be, I have zero sympathy for any woman or man who waits until there could be some upside before exposing their “offender”.
And how about the number of women high school teachers sexually offending the boys??? There has been a whole lot of that lately – is that called toxic femininity?
That “presumption of innocence” does not apply to allegations of sexual misconduct against any conservative.
Republicans, of course, in their herd mentality, encourage this by instantly jumping on the “resign/recuse/just go away” bandwagon, instead of simply calmly stating that any such accusation, if proved, is serious enough to merit punishment, but that mere accusations are not enough to get someone railroaded out of office….and insisting that the same standard be applied to anyone, regardless of political affiliation or public popularity.
Asking too much of them? Evidently so.
Here’s a question to ask of Moore: Did he ever fly on the Lolita Express?
If Alabama wants to vote in a murderous Abortionist for Senate who smokes weed all day long, that is their business. It’s no business of mine. Personally, I think if you have to go back 40 years to find sin in someone, that someone is doing pretty good.
Colorado is an interesting state, politically. It has been traditionally Republican, but was targeted a decade or so ago as an experiment in how to shift a state to the Left. A book was written about this—-I’ll see if I can find something on that.
Anyway, the biggest school district in the state (Jefferson County) ended up with a slate of conservative board members, and in Douglas County a couple of elections ago the slate of conservative candidates ran as a unit, elect us all or vote for the Libs, and won. Both of these districts then became targets for massive infusions of out-of-state money. Literally millions of dollars came in from out of state to defeat the JeffCo conservatives, and teachers let students out of class to stand near major intersections holding professionally printed signs protesting alleged wrong-headed actions by the conservative board—which was then defeated and replaced with Libs, who, among other things, defended Common Core and its mandatory reading of porn like “The Bluest Eye”.
The media spin has always been that these upsets were grass-roots movements by outraged parents who objected to the conservatives on the boards. Now the union influence has been revealed:
https://coloradopolitics.com/teachers-union-twitter
While Colorado has had an influx of Liberals, mostly from California, which has shifted the political balance, geographically most of the state is still conservative, with a few blue cysts in places like Boulder and downtown Denver. I think a lot of the shift for native or long-time Coloradans has been enabled by the lack of awareness of the malignant interfering of outside interests intent on manipulating us. And, of course, the Colorado GOP is hopelessly inept. We have had several good candidates running against weak Democrats in the past few years, and the GOP campaigns would have embarrassed high schoolers running for class president.
Hopefully when awareness of this manipulation by outside interests starts to gain traction there will be some pushback against it.