Horist: GOP optimism in 2018

At the base of the statue symbolizing “future” in front of the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C. are these word: “What is Past is Prologue.”  This applies in particular if you do not learn from the past, as the Democratic Party seems loath to do.

It would be an understatement to say the Democrats are giddy over their belief in regaining some semblance of power in the 2018 election.  They speak with such certainty about reclaiming the House, the Senate or both that one is inclined to believe that they have lost all sense of reality.

To understand the challenge they face, we need to make an objective assessment of the Democrats’ situation.  In a word, it sucks.  Okay, two words.  Specifically, the Democratic Party has never been in a weaker position since they lost a uncivil war in a vain hope of keeping Negros in slavery.  Conversely, the Republicans have never held so many reins of power in the Party’s 162-year history.

It started after the newly elected Barack Obama abandoned his Reagan-esque campaign speeches to take up the cause of the far left.  While the right-of-center voters of America tended to like the handsome, charming Commander-in-Chief, they were neither enthralled with his policies nor the politicos, such as Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, with whom he held counsel.

In the conflict between personality and policy, style and substance, the American voters trended to the latter in both instances.  That became apparent when voters handed the United States House of Representatives to the Republicans in 2010 in what President Obama fairly described as a “shellacking.”  He got the concept, but not the hint.  It took the Democrats by surprise since the press had come up to Election Day with assurances that the GOP would not and could not take the House.

Even as the personally popular President was cruising to reelection in 2014, those same right-of-center voters were electing thousands of Republicans to governorships, state legislatures and innumerable state and local offices – a fact ignored or unnoticed by a news media too preoccupied with their leg tingling adoration of Obama.

Along comes 2016 and once again the New York/D.C. press cabal assures the Democrats and the American public that there was little chance of the GOP taking control of the Senate.  In fact, they proffered all sorts of agonized theories as to how it was more likely Republicans would lose the House.  In defiance of the prevailing stupidity, the voters handed the Senate to the GOP.

As we approached 2018, the Republican political tsunami that began in 2010 was in full force.  With that kind of momentum, there was little chance that Democrats could hang on to the White House.  That likelihood spurred some 17 A-list Republicans to enter the primaries – a situation that enabled the pugnacious plain-talking populist, Donald J. Trump, to leap frog over the divided pack with a minority of dedicated supporters.

Never before were the Democrats surer of the victory predicted every day by the Party publicist in the press.  Trump had no path to victory, they trumpeted.  Trump did not have enough money.  He had no ground game – not realizing that a party with two-thirds of the governors and state legislatures has a massive ground force.  

On the eve of the 2018 election, many in the press gleefully conjectured whether the Republican Party had a future.  In the grips of media driven delusion, the Democrats seemed to believe that the party of Lincoln was on the verge of irrelevancy.  

Today, however, it is the Democratic Party that is floundering on the edge of the political abyss.  Should the Republicans overcome the Democrats’ ability to filibuster and block legislation by gaining a super majority in the Senate, the Democrats will cease to have any power whatsoever on the national stage.  They will be relegated to a regional bi-coastal party vanquished from what they arrogantly see as that deplorable fly-over America.

Of course, Democrats impotence will be, as it is now, denied by a media too eager to treat their preferred Party like the great Oz on the large screen instead of the puny man behind the curtain. Ironically, it is the mainstream media that may have unwittingly aided and abetted the downfall of the Democratic Party.  The biased reporting over the years gave Democrats a false sense of reality – an optimism that repeatedly turned hope into disappointment.  And they are doing it again.

The Democrats, the radical left, the proverbial political establishment, the deep state and the deeply invested press corps were shocked, stunned, dismayed and horrified by the Trump victory.  The liberals’ policies, power and philosophy were inflicted with unhealable wounds that play out to this day on the screens and streets of America.

Amazingly, the Democrats and their publicists in the press seem to be doubling down on their decade long losing strategy.  The left’s lock on the weakened party is so strong that any moderation seems impossible.  They remain oblivious to that right-of-center tsunami that is still rolling over the political landscape.  They still seem to believe that attacking President Trump’s quirky personality is the best strategy, even though it failed miserably when it was actually his name on the ballot.  

Once again, the Democrats fail to consider the predictive tea leafs.  Their belief in a public wrath descending on the GOP is questionable in view of the fact that the Republican National Committee is being deluged with small contributions.  They point to the low favorability polling of Trump, the Republicans in Congress and the GOP in general, while ignoring, and not reporting, the equally low numbers for the Democrat leaders, the Democrats in Congress, the party in general and the news media that spin to the left.  The Democrats ignore the district-by-district polling that shows better numbers for the GOP and also in statewide races such as Michigan, where one poll shows singer Kid Rock with a four point lead over incumbent Democrat Senator Debbie Stabenow.  They even rationalize away their defeat in four successive special congressional elections.

Attempting to get more mileage out of the Party’s threadbare leaders, gullible acceptance of the partisan puffery of the press and putting lipstick on the pigs of past policies could set the Democrats up for yet another shocking election night.