On Friday, I pondered the question of which direction the Republican Party will take heading into the 2022 and 2024 elections. Over the weekend in Orlando, where the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) took place, Republican stars took to the stage to offer messages on several popular topics such as immigration, lockdown policy, election fraud, and yes, FREEEEEEEDOM (William Wallace emphasis. Skip to 16:38 in the video). It became clear on the first day of the conference which way the Republican Party is headed — Trump.
What this will lead to is inevitable. It will likely lead to a Republican takeover of the House in 2022, the Senate is a toss-up, and the Republicans will lose yet another presidential election in 2024. There is no denying that Trump's messaging is popular (which isn't shocking because he is a populist). Many Congressmen and Congresswomen won their 2020 races simply because they spewed the same messages Trump did, without the Trump character. This trend will translate to success in 2022 House and Senate races (The Senate could very well end up in Republican control).
If anything has become clear in the past two or three decades, a party's control of the House or Senate doesn't translate into policy, but whoever holds the executive branch actually dictates which way public policy goes. This trend is deeply disturbing, and our Founders are no doubt rolling in their graves, but that's a topic for another time. During CPAC, Trump hinted on several occasions of a 2024 run. After repeating his claims he has made for the last several months that he won the 2020 election, Trump said during his Sunday speech, "Who knows? I might even decide to beat them [the Democrats] for a third time.”
If Trump runs in 2024, Republicans will lose another election. I say this for two reasons. 1) Less than 0.5% of people who voted for Biden will vote for Trump in 2024. 2) Many independents and less enthusiastic Republicans will not vote for Trump following his rhetoric and actions post-election.
Many speakers touched on things I agreed on over the weekend, such as President Biden's disastrous first month on immigration policy, the craziness that has surrounded women's sports following the new LGBTQ policies, and the need for reopening public school's throughout the country. These issues are all issues that will help Republicans running for Congress in 2022 because most people center and center-right believe that all of these issues are evidence of far-left policy. However, as has been the case in the Trump era, the overall messaging turned to lunacy and took away from the sane messaging that was actually shared and resonated with the average voter.
Trump, the star of CPAC, took time to announce his hit list of Republicans in Congress that all voted to impeach him.
"The Democrats don't have grandstanders like Mitt Romney, little Ben Sasse, Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Pat Toomey, and in the House, Tom Rice, South Carolina, Adam Kinzinger, Dan Newhouse, Anthony Gonzalez, that's another beauty, Fred Upton, Jaime Herrera Beutler, Peter Meijer, John Katko, David Valadao, and of course the warmonger, a person who loves seeing our troops fighting, Liz Cheney," Trump lavished.
In the same weekend speakers criticized Democrats for cancel culture and not being a big tent party of free thought, Trump and his benefactors who spoke (Jim Jordan, Charlie Kirk, Donald Trump Jr, etc) engaged in the same behavior. They spewed the same nonsense they accused Democrats of. "If you are not 100% loyal to our leader Donald Trump, we will make sure you are gone and ostracized after your primary." Little did they mention that Congressmen such as Pat Toomey and Ben Sasse hold some of the most solid Conservative ratings from The American Conservative Union.
Aside from the cancel culture hypocrisy, they continued on the trail of "The Democrats stole the election from our Great Leader Donald Trump." During Trump's speech, when he stated that the left cheated and stole the election from him, the crowd started cheering profusely, "You won! You won! You won!" This is not the kind of messaging that will win you the voters you need to win the big election in 2024, and it's only drowning the Republican Party more into disarray.
If the Republicans want to be competitive in the years to come, they have to get real, accept the fact that maybe their Dear Leader Donald Trump isn't all that he cracks himself up to be, and get back to actual conservatism (and quit stabbing in the back those people that are actually legislating conservatively).
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