As the dust settles on the 2022 elections, and dazed Republicans wonder why their party underperformed, they should begin by getting the facts straight.
Conservative commentator Marc Thiessen is a bad person who endorsed torture during the Bush regime, see his profile here, but let’s skip over his moral failings and use him as an example of confused GOP thinking.
I’ll start with what he said as blue confetti floated down on shell-shocked Republicans:
“We have the worst inflation in four decades, the worst collapse in real wages in 40 years, the worst crime wave since the 1990s, the worst border crisis in U.S. history. We have Joe Biden, who is the least popular president since Harry Truman … and there wasn’t a red wave. That is a searing indictment of the Republican Party … [and] the message that we have been sending to the voters. They looked at all of that and looked at the Republican alternative and said ‘no thanks.’”
The conclusion is right; clearly many voters view the Republican Party with revulsion right now. Factually, many of his assertions are fanciful GOP talking points. As Raw Story said here, they “can easily be fact-checked and debunked.” For example, Biden’s popularity is comparable to Reagan’s and Clinton’s at this stage of their presidencies.
I would add Republicans have inflated the crime and border problems; like the “crime waves” manufactured by old-time newspapers to sell subscriptions, they’re exaggerating those problems in order to milk them. While homicides are up — which voters can easily blame on Republican gun policies — overall crime rates are down. And illegals have much lower crime rates than the citizen population; they come here to work and support their families, or escape crime and violence in their home countries. Suggestions: Stop blocking immigration reform in Congress, and we’ll all support good policing — but not bad cops.
Most of important of all, many voters understood inflation is temporary, losing our democracy and fundamental rights is not.
People like Thiessen don’t altogether get it. He’s right that most of us don’t want what the far right is selling — political violence, armed militias, talk of civil war, efforts to overturn the people’s will expressed in elections, disrespect for rule of law, pandemic and climate change stupidity, and a whole lot more.
If Republicans want more public support, they need to clean up their act, stop behaving badly, and quit nominating candidates who belong in zoos. This isn’t rocket science. (See article here.)
Thiessen called his party’s 2022 defeats “an absolute disaster.” The real disaster was nominees like Doug Mastriano, Kari Lake, Tudor Dixon, Don Bolduc, Herschel Walker, and many others. Voters had the wisdom to reject most of these candidates; Thiessen is still struggling to figure out what’s wrong with them — and his party.
Thiessen is on the left in photo below. He frequently fails to get basic facts right, or maybe he’s just a liar; see story here.
