The 1980s Hangover and the GOP

If they ever want to win again—and that’s a big if—Republicans must play by the rules they helped create.

by Julie Kelly for American Greatness

Recriminations about who is responsible for the fizzled “red wave” on Tuesday began as soon as the disappointing results trickled in that night.

Fingers immediately pointed at Donald Trump; the Wall Street Journal editorial board, mouthpiece for the establishment wing of the GOP, on Wednesday branded Trump “the Republican Party’s biggest loser.” NeverTrumpers at the “conservative” Washington Examiner also blamed unexpected losses on the former president. “These midterm elections have made it crystal clear that voters want to move past the chaos and dishonor of the 45th president,” editors wrote on November 9. “They want the security and sanity that a competent and effective leader can provide. The Republican Party needs to recognize that, too, and act accordingly.”

Of course Trump deserves part of the blame for what we are told is a humiliating defeat. He is, by every measure, the leader of the Republican Party. Candidates jockeyed for his endorsement and he hosted get-out-the-vote campaign rallies across the country. 

Trump owns a few duds, most notably longtime quack Dr. Mehmet Oz, who lost the Pennsylvania U.S. Senate race to part-vegetable John Fetterman. But Trump isn’t solely culpable for a midterm election that, for now at least, defies the historical precedent that the party in charge of the White House suffers double-digit losses in Congress. (Republicans are still favored to win the House but by a much smaller margin than predicted.)

Exit polls, however, seem to contradict the idea that Trump played a major factor in the unexpected outcome. According to a comprehensive survey of more than 18,000 voters taken on November 8, 54 percent said Trump was not a factor in how they voted; 47 percent said the same of Joe Biden.

If there was a protest vote—only 28 percent said they voted Democrat to oppose Trump—it appeared to have little impact. For the most part, opinions of elected officials, party preference, direction of the country, and views on the economy were fairly even between Democrats and Republicans, who held a three-point edge when asked which party should control the U.S. House next year. Favorable ratings for both parties hover around 40 percent—ditto for Trump and Biden.

But overall, more than 6 million more Republicans than Democrats voted in the election. So, what happened to the red wave?

If there’s any single culprit, the post-Dobbs political climate was more toxic to Republicans than conventional wisdom suggested. While many pre-election polls indicated abortion was not a top issue post-Dobbs, the exit polls showed otherwise. Abortion was listed as the second most-important issue, only 4 points behind inflation, the top answer at 31 percent. Of those who listed abortion as the most important issue, 76 percent voted for Democrats. Nearly 40 percent said they were “angry” that Roe v. Wade was overturned; 85 percent of self-proclaimed “angry” abortion supporters voted Democrat.

National and state-level Democrats poured resources into scare campaigns. A ballot initiative to protect abortion rights undoubtedly helped Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer win her reelection bid handily, despite her harsh lockdown policies and robotic personality. Early vote totals out of the University of Michigan showed that 93 percent of the student body voted for Whitmer over Republican Tudor Dixon.

Which leads to another problem for Republicans, although certainly not a new one. Democrats won the under-30 cohort by nearly 2-1. While Gen Z and the youngest millennials only made up 12 percent of the electorate, it’s easy to see how that relatively small slice of voters—for example, those ages 45-64 represented 40 percent of the total vote—benefited Democrats in tight areas, particularly college towns. It’s unclear how Republicans courted young voters, if at all.

But something doesn’t add up here. An interesting comparison between 2022 exit polls and the 2018 midterm election—when Democrats picked up 40 seats and regained control of the House—showed Republicans did better this year among every single constituency group including minorities, suburbanites, white women, and even young voters. Independents gave Democrats a 12-point advantage in 2018 but statistically tied between both parties this year.

The major difference between 2018 and 2022, of course, is how Americans vote. Just as Democrats capitalized on lax, pandemic-related election guidance in 2020, the party again took advantage of these rules in 2022. According to Ballotpedia, 28 million Americans voted by absentee or mail-in ballot in 2018. Early data shows 52 million voters requested mail-in ballots for this election; nearly half were Democrats while 28 percent were Republicans.

And therein lies the biggest obstacle—and source of blame—for Republicans. These reckless methods of voting are not going away any time soon and, in fact, will only get more irresponsible and opaque in so-called “swing” states now controlled by Democratic governors and legislatures.

This is clearly an area where national and statewide GOP officials faltered. No matter how much Republicans prefer to vote on Election Day, the party must work to change that habit. Republicans admittedly are at a big disadvantage since mini-colonies of loyal voters on college campuses and public employee union halls don’t exist for the GOP like they do for Democrats, so efforts must get underway immediately. Stubborn adherence to traditional ways of voting cost Trump the presidency in 2020—in addition to the other Democratic Party chicanery and lawlessness—and have now prevented Republicans from gaining a mandate-level majority in the House and any chance to take a slim majority in the Senate.

“Elections are not run anymore like they were in the 1980s,” Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway said on Wednesday night. “There is now [an] extensive period of voting where people who are smart are running get-out-the-vote operations every day, hauling in ballots every day. Republicans keep thinking Election Day is a single day and they think if they get everyone excited for that last day that that will be sufficient. That is not sufficient. There needs to be an effective ground game. That is on Republican leadership. And there’s only so much that everyone else can do with their enthusiasm.”

Indeed.

Republican leaders should also wear the jacket on poor decisions related to overall messaging—do we really need to be reminded each day how much groceries cost?—failure to produce a detailed plan to mitigate Biden-created crises, and a weak sense of commitment to finally holding accountable a vengeful administrative state in Washington, particularly the Department of Justice and FBI, destroying the lives of Trump supporters. The pettiness of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also left some GOP Senate candidates fighting without needed resources.

But mechanics still matter. Republicans are partially responsible for constructing the unreliable election apparatus now in place for the foreseeable future. If they ever want to win again, and that’s a big if, the GOP must play by the rules they helped create.

X22, On the Fringe, and more- Nov 11

 

Case you haven't noticed, I haven't brought up NCIS in quite a while. Well, I finally have a reason to bring it up:

The 'crossover' date was announced for January 2nd. All 3 shows on 1 night. Starting with NCIS and ending with Hawaii. THAT part I got right about this whole thing!

And in LA related news, this question I sent into TV Line weeks ago after seeing that big group pic of everyone in what looked like foreign country gear standing in front of a plane was answered today:

Think I'm convinced? Not really.

Here's tonight's news:

Welcome to Ukrainistan

What is the Biden Regime doing in Ukraine? Given the state of our military, we should postpone conflict until we are better prepared—assuming the Chinese will grant us that time.

by Daniel Oliver for American Greatness

There’s lots not to like about the war in Ukraine, and people should be allowed to argue the case without being demonized by those who have a different opinion. But the more those who urge caution are demonized as pro-Putin by the pro-war people, the more they, and probably their audience, become suspicious, or should become suspicious, of the pro-war faction.

Former defense secretary Robert Gates wrote in his book and repeated afterwards that Joe Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” That suggests that every foreign policy decision Biden makes now is likely to be wrong, too. How many people learn anything at his age? Why should we expect his handling of the Ukraine war to be different from—better than—the poor choices he has made during the last 40 years? Or any different from his disastrous withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan only a year ago? That decision garnered a once-in-a-millennium rebuke from the British Parliament. 

And we also have to note that Biden really isn’t in charge: He is a doddering old man. It’s the Democratic Party that’s running the show, and that is far more disgraceful! It’s also far more dangerous, because those individuals will be around—and may be near the levers of power—long after Biden has gone to rest. 

We should note—to the discomfort of the Democratic Party—that the Russians didn’t invade Ukraine on Trump’s watch. You don’t have to be a Trump lover to notice that: even a Bernie Sanders socialist can see it. Some Democrats and Biden lovers may try to explain that away by noting how the anchovies were running then or the migration of the monarch butterflies was distracting the Russians. Adults will examine how Trump’s foreign policy differed from the Biden Administration’s. 

It was reported early on in the war—how do we tell if anything that comes out of the Biden Administration or the news media is true?—that the Biden Administration had told the Ukrainians they would not be admitted to NATO, but told the Russians that the issue was still unresolved. If true, the administration obviously had it backwards—or at least half-backwards. Whatever they chose to tell the Ukrainians, they should have told the Russians that Ukraine would not be admitted to NATO. 

And probably the same generals who for years told us that we were on the verge of victory in Afghanistan, that we were making interesting progress, steady progress, deliberate progress, significant progress, are telling the administration that victory in Ukraine is just around the corner.

To date, the United States  has spent over $60 billion on the war; the European Union only $21 billion, though the GDPs of the United States and the EU are comparable. Couldn’t that money have been better spent on protecting the U.S. southern border, keeping out the 5 million illegals who have crossed it, bringing with them disease and fentanyl, which is killing more than 100,000 Americans each year?

The Ukrainians have fought valiantly—there can be no question about that. But now what? Winter is coming. It gets cold in winter. The Russians are making every attempt to destroy the infrastructure that provides heat in the country. Then what happens? How do Ukrainians survive the long, cold, dark winter months?

It is estimated that it will take generations to rebuild Ukraine. Who will pay for that? Where will the Ukrainians who are left in the country live during that time? 

Suppose the Russians continue to bomb Ukraine for a few more weeks, and then say, “You know what, guys, we’re tired of this. We’re going home to rest, and to celebrate Christmas, which we believe in, as opposed to you godless, debauched, sexually perverted freaks. But we’ll be back.” 

Then what? The Ukrainians start rebuilding anyway? 

Meanwhile, back at the Pentagon, the United States is reported to be running low on armaments, having shipped so many to Ukraine. The United States is also reported to be low on aircraft and other war materiel because one Congress after another, for decades, has spent so much money buying votes with welfare programs instead of building up the U.S. military. Isn’t it lucky that the Chinese can’t read English? 

Daniel Henninger, an otherwise sensible columnist for the Wall Street Journal, says we should not delude ourselves into thinking that Putin’s only goal is capturing Ukraine. No, no: it’s like the Cold War, he says. Putin has his eye on reassembling the Soviet Empire. And we should make the same effort to resist now that we did in those days.

But we don’t know that. Today’s Russia is not the Soviet Union. Even the Soviet Union turned out not to be the powerhouse that our best spies (who should all have been fired) thought it was. Putin’s military is plainly incompetent. It would take years to train them to be a first-rate fighting force—assuming that could be done in a society as corrupt as Russia’s. Besides, Putin could die. Or be removed. Or fall in love. He may be trying to bring back the old days, but is that what his cronies want? Maybe they just want to live the good life on the wealth they stole from the Russian people.

Given the state of our military, we should postpone all conflict until we are better prepared—assuming the Chinese will grant us that time.

And now, according to the Washington Post, the Biden Administration is reportedly about to pull the rug out from under the Ukrainians: after suffering almost a year of destruction and death, they are being encouraged “to signal an openness to negotiate with Russia and drop their public refusal to engage in peace talks unless President Vladimir Putin is removed from power . . .” You can’t make this stuff up.

Welcome to Ukrainistan.

$66 Billion In, It’s Clear The Realists Were Right About Ukraine

Why were the realist Republicans called Putin’s fascists when they argued for the same thing the Biden administration is doing?

by Dr Sumantra Maitra for The Federalist

U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has been speaking with high-level Russian officials “to guard against the risk of escalation and keep communications channels open, and not to discuss a settlement of the war in Ukraine,” The Wall Street Journal reports, citing anonymous sources.

It appears the Biden administration has been privately pushing Ukraine to come to the negotiation table, while, bafflingly, providing Ukraine with whatever it wants. On-book U.S. spending on Ukraine’s war is so far about $66.3 billion, the largest foreign government contribution to the war by far.

The Washington Post adds, also citing anonymous sources, that the Biden administration is making:

a calculated attempt to ensure the government in Kyiv maintains the support of other nations facing constituencies wary of fueling a war for many years to come. The discussions illustrate how complex the Biden administration’s position on Ukraine has become, as U.S. officials publicly vow to support Kyiv with massive sums of aid ‘for as long as it takes’ while hoping for a resolution to the conflict that over the past eight months has taken a punishing toll on the world economy and triggered fears of nuclear war.

Consider the stupidity of this strategy. Everyone with an IQ greater than an absent-minded jellyfish knows Ukraine as an independent actor and state wouldn’t even exist without American politicians granting it an open checkbook even during crippling inflation and functionally open borders. But America has to privately beg Ukraine because Washington, D.C., is trapped by its own grandiose rhetoric and foolish decision to give Ukraine billions and advanced weapons. The tail now wags the dog.

No hegemon in human history had to face this ideological trap, not even the Soviet Union with Fidel Castro. Just like Zelensky and his supporters in D.C. today, Castro would have readily dragged Moscow and the world into a nuclear war in 1962. But Moscow had the leash of its satellites, including Cuba, in their hands. America had too, during the Cold War. But the post-Cold War U.S. establishment is not manned by nationalists or realists, and to them, the survival of an “order” is more important than targeted U.S. interests.

That gives rise to scenarios such as Europeans demanding the United States share plans with them when the United States practically dwarves them in aid in a war in their backyard. It’s not just rhetoric but the provision of massive amounts of U.S. cash and weapons, without which the war would have long been over regardless of how well the Ukrainians fought.

Source: Kiel Institute for the World Economy

Worse, the American government under President Biden spinelessly accepts such sanctimony from foreign governments, ignoring that smaller powers are fanatical about their own survival. The history of the world is lit with examples of smaller states dragging great powers to catastrophic, civilization-ending wars.

There’s one question left unanswered. Why were the realist Republicans called Putinists and fascists when they argued for the same thing the Biden administration is currently doing?

Elon Musk was recently called a Russian agent on Twitter for arguing for peace negotiations, as were David Sacks and Dan Caldwell. The Republicans who voted against further U.S. spending on Ukraine or against the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are still regularly derided as extremists for their bold stand with the majority of Americans who don’t want to shoulder the overwhelming burden of a failed internationalism.

In a paper during the early days of the war, I argued we should talk to Russia and reach equilibrium quickly because the asymmetry of interest over Ukraine is stark. Moscow has much more interest in her own backyard than America does. Others argued in Politico that our rhetoric and provision of materiel risks trapping us into an escalatory spiral, a sentiment shared in Foreign Affairs.

“Without a strong United States, there won’t be peace,” explained Hungarian Minister of Justice Judit Varga in a recent conversation we had. “It is only Russia and the United States who could hammer out a solution for the long term. The Democrat [Congressional Progressive Caucus] letter didn’t work out, and it was expected they won’t be for peace. If we had President Trump and Angela Merkel, the war wouldn’t have happened or would have been a localized conflict.”

But that is not possible because the media and academia’s “opinion hegemony” is determined to push a leftist social revolution, even at the cost of a great-power war. This is the key issue.

Those who seek to fight fascism in Europe are the same ones who claim Republicans who opposed uncontrolled aid to Ukraine and instead want to fund the southern border are fascists. To this ideological echo chamber, there is no difference between Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, Musk, Putin, and Hungarian President Viktor Orban. It is one whole global crusade.

A nation-building process that started in Iraq and Libya is headed to Ukraine and will eventually head home. Anyone who opposes this leftist crusade will be termed enemies of progress and fascists.

CPI Report – Inflation on Food, Fuel, Home Heating and Essentials Continues Growing – Overall Inflation Moderation Now Claimed as Calendar Cycles

Sundance reporting for Conservative Treehouse 

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) provides the latest data on consumer prices (inflation) [DATA HERE].  We explained in 2021 how inflation would grow on a month-over-month and year-over-year basis until the calendar became more friendly and the government officials could claim “diminished inflation growth.”  Well, we are now entering that phase of economic parseltongue.

October consumer prices increased 0.4% over September.  However, we are now comparing year-over-year (Y0Y) inflation to the period where last year’s prices had already skyrocketed, so YoY inflation seems to be moderating at 7.7%, it’s a false premise. {Go Deep}

As expected, the energy-driven consumer inflation in the food sector has arrived.  The proverbial field inflation is arriving at the fork, and the October CPI now shows the third wave of food price increases we had previously discussed.

Table 2 Details: Egg prices increased +10.1% last month and now 43% higher than last year.  Butter +1.9% last month, 26.7% for year.  Margarine +1.3% for month, 47.1% for year.  Coffee +1.3% for the month, 15.6% for the year.

Heading into baking season we find flour +0.2% for the month, +24.6% for year.  Essentially, as expected, all of the holiday foodstuffs are now rising in price as the increased field and commodity prices hit the store shelves.

Some row crops are starting to moderate in price growth, while dairy products continue rising throughout the fall season.  It is going to be painful on the checkbook grocery shopping this holiday season.

On the energy front, home heating oil increased 19.8% in October and is now a whopping 68.5% higher than last October.  Unleaded gasoline increased another 3.5% and now is now 20.9% higher than last year (Oct ’21), which was already 40% higher than January 2021.

Food, fuel, electricity, home heating and housing costs continue growing monthly, but give the illusion of moderating when compared to last year.

Food away from home (restaurants etc.) are starting to show the cumulative price impacts for restaurants, hotels and cafeterias.  Additionally, as the kids returned to school the lunchroom prices have skyrocketed a jaw-dropping +3.8% for October and +95% compared to last year [Table 2].  Packing lunches for kids is going to become an even more important aspect for the family food budget.

The stock market is happy with the news because the lowered 7.7% (YoY) inflation number, a product of the calendar and nothing else, gives optimism the Fed may moderate the increased federal reserve rate hikes.  However, don’t count on it because inflation is easily identified as embedded now.  Lemons at the grocery store are now $0.99/each.

Think about that.  $1 for a single lemon and roughly 50¢ per egg at the supermarket.  A full shopping cart of groceries now easily exceeding $200.  This is devastating for those on fixed incomes and blue-collar workers.

Wages are nowhere near keeping up with this level of price increase.

(CNBC) The consumer price index rose less than expected in October, an indication that while inflation is still a threat to the U.S. economy, pressures could be starting to cool.

The index, a broad-based measure of goods and services costs, increased 0.4% for the month and 7.7% from a year ago, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics release Thursday. Respective estimates from Dow Jones were for rises of 0.6% and 7.9%.

Excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core CPI increased 0.3% for the month and 6.3% on an annual basis, compared with respective estimates of 0.5% and 6.5%.

A 2.4% decline in used vehicle prices helped bring down the inflation figures. Apparel prices fell 0.7% and medical care services were lower by 0.6%.

“The report overstates the case that inflation is coming in, but it makes a case inflation is coming in,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “It’s pretty clear that inflation has definitely peaked and is rolling over. All the trend lines suggest that it will continue to moderate going forward, assuming that nothing goes off the rails.” (read more)

The Biden energy policy is the root of the consumer inflation. Nothing will happen to moderate overall consumer inflation on Main Street until energy policy changes.

Additionally, with the 2022 election in the rear-view mirror, we should start to see layoffs and unemployment increasing now.  The bureaucrats will now let the recession become evident.

'You Do Not Reward Mediocrity': Calls Grow for Kevin McCarthy and Other GOP Leaders to Be Replaced

Teri Christoph reporting for RedState 

Kevin McCarthy might not want to grab for that Speaker’s gavel just yet.

With election results still trickling in, and the balance of power still to be decided in both the House and the Senate, talk among many in the GOP and conservative media has turned to whether or not the current leadership should remain in place. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), in particular, seems to be in the sights of the conservative wing of the party, with The Washington Times reporting yesterday:

The House GOP’s smaller-than-expected majority increased leverage for the chamber’s arch-conservative House Freedom Caucus to demand concessions from Mr. McCarthy in exchange for support in his speakership bid.

Freedom Caucus member Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) says Republicans “have to have that very frank discussion. Going forward, I don’t know who’s going to end up being the leader. But if it’s Kevin McCarthy, he’s going to have to be far more, a little far more, tough than he has necessarily shown.”

McCarthy has been in this exact spot before with the Freedom Caucus, which blocked his attempt to become speaker back in 2015 in favor of Paul Ryan. Fast forward to 2022: Republicans seriously underperformed in the election and are looking at a razor-thin majority in the House. This, the Freedom Caucus argues, will require a leadership team that will aggressively combat the radical, destructive Biden agenda while also pursuing economic and immigration policies that will benefit American families.

Says Biggs:

“… I think Americans want us to actually bring the budget under control, they wanted to secure the border, they want us to just find a way to reduce oil and gas prices, attack inflation, all of that. And you can’t do that by being a passive sideliner or sitting there acquiescing to the Biden administration or trying to get along, you’re going to have to be tough.”

Tucker Carlson cast the accountability net ever wider on his show last night, and included Senate and RNC leadership in his call for a complete overhaul of the leadership structure of the Republican Party. Despite saying that the current leaders are likely “nice people,” Tucker tore into all of them for accepting tens of millions of dollars in donations to “paint the map red” and failingly spectacularly.

More from Tucker:

“The people whose job was to win and did not win should go do something else now, we’re speaking specifically of the Republican leadership of the House and the Senate and of the RNC.”

The underwhelming showing by the GOP this cycle is all the more frustrating, Tucker argued, because the party had Joe Biden’s terrible agenda against which to run. The election results, in essence, gave the president the green light to move forward with his terrible policies.

Tuckers also noted:

“No one should ever be rewarded for failure. If there’s a truly conservative principle in life, it’s the principle of meritocracy. You reward excellence, you do not reward mediocrity.”

For his part, Kevin McCarthy is reportedly making a lot of phone calls and meeting with fellow Republicans to whip up support for his pending run for Speaker. It is not yet clear if the conservative wing will get concessions and promises in return for throwing their support behind him.

Former President Donald Trump endorsed Kevin McCarthy’s 2022 reelection bid and has voiced his support for McCarthy becoming Speaker if the GOP does end up winning the House. No other Republicans have announced a run for the speakership … yet.

The Case Against Mitch McConnell For Leader

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is making a play for another term in leadership after he sabotaged chances for a GOP majority.

Tristan Justice reporting for The Federalist

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is making a play for another term in leadership next week while control of the upper chamber remains in the balance after the Kentucky lawmaker’s chess game sabotaged chances for a GOP majority.

In September, McConnell inaugurated the fall midterms by undermining Republicans in key races when the GOP Senate chief complained of “candidate quality.”

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” McConnell said on Fox News just before Labor Day, the unofficial start of the fall campaign season. “Senate races are just different, they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”

McConnell’s Money Prioritized Allies, Not Majority

McConnell’s super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, went on to gut desperately needed campaign cash from conservative candidates in Arizona and New Hampshire who refused to kiss the ring of Washington monarchs. In Arizona, McConnell axed $18 million from the race where Republican venture capitalist Blake Masters sought to bring down a well-funded Democrat incumbent. While the Masters race remains too close to call, Gen. Don Bolduc in New Hampshire was comfortably defeated by Democrat Sen. Maggie Hassan, who captured a second term despite multiple polls showing the Republican within the margins of error. Bolduc was similarly abandoned by the GOP leader with $5.6 million cut from the contest. Both Bolduc and Masters signaled support for another candidate to lead the Senate conference if elected to the upper chamber.

McConnell took money from the competitive pick-up contests and redirected resources into Alaska and Colorado, the former featuring a race between two Republicans and the latter featuring a candidate who alienated the base. Alienating the base, however, has become routine practice for McConnell, who boasts a lower favorability rating than President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. In other words, McConnell is the most unpopular politician in the country, a fact Democrats used to their advantage in this election cycle by villainizing McConnell as the new GOP “boogeyman.”

It wasn’t just former President Donald Trump that Democrats ran against, it was McConnell, and McConnell ran just as hard against Republicans who threatened his perch in leadership.

In Alaska, McConnell’s PAC spent more than $6 million to boost Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski over the state party’s endorsed challenger Kelly Tshibaka. The spending that could have benefitted tight races to pick up seats in Arizona and New Hampshire instead earned McConnell a formal censure by the Alaska Republican Party for the Senate leader’s intraparty interference. Meanwhile in Colorado, Republican construction executive Joe O’Dea, who benefitted from $1.25 million of McConnell’s money, lost by 11 points with 88 percent of precincts reporting.

McConnell Surrendered to the Biden Agenda

While Republicans ran on a platform hammering crime and inflation with few specifics, McConnell handed Democrats major wins during President Joe Biden’s first two years in office. In August, Federalist Senior Contributor Chris Jacobs outlined “3 Big Blunders Showing Mitch McConnell Isn’t The Legislative Genius He Thinks He Is.” McConnell capitulated to Democrats on raising the debt limit, passed a colossal infrastructure package with items that have nothing to do with infrastructure, and shepherded the CHIPS Act corrupted by corporate special interests.

“For someone held up as a legislative genius/strategical mastermind, Mitch McConnell sure has had a run of clunkers lately,” Jacobs wrote this past summer. “In reality, Schumer has out-maneuvered McConnell on most of the important legislative packages during the 117th Congress.”McConnell also worked with Democrats to secure passage of gun control legislation in June littered with vague language about “dating partners” and red flag laws.

McConnell’s Legacy on Judges Usurped by Schumer

McConnell’s defenders in the upper chamber often highlight the Senate leader’s strategic wins fundamentally transforming the judiciary as his legacy. After all, it was under McConnell that now-Attorney General Merrick Garland’s 2016 Supreme Court nomination was thwarted and ultimately replaced by Neil Gorsuch. Gorsuch was confirmed in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency, followed by the confirmation of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all under McConnell’s leadership steering the upper chamber in election years. Justice Barrett’s confirmation came within weeks of President Biden’s White House ascension. In June, the new conservative majority on the nation’s highest bench overturned the five-decade precedent inventing a so-called right to abortion in Roe v. Wade, marking a generational achievement for the conservative movement.

On the sidelines of a campaign event in Arizona last weekend, GOP Montana Sen. Steve Daines praised McConnell’s leadership for paving the way to place the judiciary on the ballot in 2016.

“I look back in the masterful way Mitch McConnell navigated through the Merrick Garland nomination,” Daines told The Federalist. “By stopping that and waiting for another election was very helpful I think to get President Trump elected with the conservative voters who knew the Supreme Court was at stake.”

While McConnell’s legacy on judges is one that conservatives can celebrate, the Senate leader is on the verge of being usurped by the successes of Democrats’ two years in power.

“With the longest evenly divided Senate still going, Biden and Schumer have already set a torrid judicial appointment pace,” Politico reported in October, “basically tying Trump and McConnell’s first two years controlling the machinery at 84 total lifetime judicial confirmations, albeit one less Supreme Court justice.”

McConnell also remains far from the only Republican in the upper chamber capable of confirming judges.

An Opportunity For New Leadership

Next week, Senate Republicans will either vote to reelect McConnell and maintain the status quo in Washington or opt for new leadership with a pulse on the conservative movement and some actual respect for the Republican voter. No rival candidates have announced plans to challenge McConnell, but Florida Sen. Rick Scott stands out as the likely frontrunner should one arise and declined to rule out such a bid.

In September, Scott responded to McConnell’s August remarks about “candidate quality” with an op-ed in the Washington Examiner admonishing the top Republican in the country for efforts to undermine GOP voters.

“Ultimately, though, when you complain and lament that we have ‘bad candidates,’ what you are really saying is that you have contempt for the voters who chose them,” Scott wrote. “Now we are at the heart of the matter.  Much of Washington’s chattering class disrespects and secretly (or not so secretly) loathes Republican voters.”

When leaders fail, others should step up. Throughout the midterms, Scott, who chaired the National Republican Senate Committee (NRSC), stepped up, and spent what resources the NRSC could spare in states abandoned by McConnell. The NRSC dropped nearly $10 million behind Masters in Arizona, more than any other candidate this cycle, and put nearly $3 million behind Bolduc. The funding, however, remained short of the spending axed for each race by the top Republican in the country.