The midterm elections were going to be a red wave akin to something we had not seen in decades, or so we were told by conservatives who were measuring curtains for new offices and lining up impeachment proceedings while shining up their gavels for new committee chairmanships. Some even were tossing out the word tsunami when making their predictions about the outcome following the counting of the ballots. But come the light of Wednesday morning many GOPers were experiencing the walk of shame. Oh, they were screwed all right, having spent huge amounts of cash for the experience of being rejected by the voters in congressional districts and states coast-to-coast. A form of sadomasochism on a national scale that made the majority of the nation feel good. Thus, it was a good night for democratic politicos, but a better night for the nation and democracy, itself.
Early this morning the boorish and vacuous Wisconsin Republican nominee for governor, Tim Michels, conceded his race to Governor Tony Evers. Without any actual governing experience and clearly not able to articulate a policy proposal or add any meat about pertinent issues asked of him, Michels thought bombast and reckless regard for our democracy would carry him over the finish line. I asked myself over and over during the race who exactly schooled him on the issues or offered coherent responses to questions. Clearly, Michels is not a good student. Meanwhile, voters are not policy wonks, but they sure know an empty suit when one is presented to them. Michels proved to be the epitome of a weaselly candidate that sought out any crevice—state–that he could crawl into and seek power.
What happened to Michels was also what Mehmet Oz was dealt by the voters and Dan Bolduc and Tudor Dixon and Paul LePage, and the list goes on and on and on and….. Complete bottom dwellers who proved to be short on policy but long-winded on right-wing crazy rhetoric or angry white male lingo while demonstrating a severe lack of regard for democracy.
Late last night and all-out today reasoned Republican Party voices—and there are some within even that debacle of a political party—stated with clarity what happened to the national wet dream of conservatives.
A former speechwriter for George W. Bush, conservative Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, did not hold back on Fox News Tuesday night, as the Republicans failed to produce the outcome they thought they had conned their voters to produce. He said what the majority of the nation has been warning Republicans about for years. The rubes have aped Donald Trump, but the nation just decided to flush the toilet in many cases.
“That is a searing indictment of the Republican Party,” he said. “That is a searing indictment of the message that we have been sending to the voters. They’ve looked at all of that, and looked at Republican alternative and said no thanks. That is–the Republican party needs to do a really deep introspection look in the mirror right now because this is an absolute disaster for the Republican Party and we need to turn back.”
That means the Republican Party will need to cut the cord with Orange Mussolini. Or keep being rebuked by the vast majority of voters.
Jacqui Heinrich, Fox News correspondent reported a GOP source told her following a very bad night for Republicans at the ballot box, “if it wasn’t clear before it should be now. We have a Trump problem”
This morning National Review lanced the Trump boil on the Republican Party.
“No excuses, Republicans. Everyone thought you had just about the ideal issue environment for a midterm election, and the exit polls verified it. Seven in ten Americans said they were ‘dissatisfied’ or ‘angry’ about the state of the country. Around three-quarters of voters nationally characterized the state of the economy as ‘poor’ or ‘not good,’ and the same amount said that inflation has caused them severe or moderate hardship. About two-thirds said that gas prices have been causing them hardship. You had parents livid about the learning loss in schools because of the long closures for Covid-19 and inappropriate materials in the curriculum. You had an unpopular president, who was such a liability that Democrats couldn’t let him go anywhere near a swing state.”
“And the nation, deeply dissatisfied with the way the Democrats were running things, looked at what the GOP offered as the alternative and concluded, ‘Nope, I’ll stick with what the Democrats are giving me’ in a lot of key places.”
The nation is rightly concerned that the Republicans ginned up the Tea Party crowd and egged on, for their partisan benefit, the Sarah Palin types which then softened the terrain for the ilk of Donald Trump to swamp the party. Vile, nasty, no real education, coarse, not ready in most cases for polite society. It was expected the nation was just supposed to accept this rush into the ditch with a smile. The political landscape should have offered the opposition on Tuesday one of the most fertile cycles in decades. But that nation was instead offered by the Republicans trashy candidates, empty platforms, and just plain bad manners. And we said to them, NO!
CAFFEINATED POLITICS 