Gary Bauer at Campaign for Working Families offers the following (excerpt) regarding just how off many of the transmitters of opinion and political correctness were in predicting this election. We anticipate books will be/ should be written. Our comments follow.
Lots Of Egg
There is not enough space to go through all the people who have egg on their faces following Tuesday’s historic election. But let’s try to name a few of the worst offenders.
The Media. The left-wing media plumbed new depths of outrageous bias this year. In many cases, so-called journalists publicly justified their blatant contempt for Donald Trump and his supporters. If they had any integrity, which they obviously do not, they would all resign immediately.
The Pollsters & Prognosticators — All of the polls were wrong. As were professional political scientists like the University of Virginia’s Larry Sabato. Three days ago, Professor Sabato’s pre-election “Crystal Ball” predicted a Clinton landslide in the Electoral College of 322 to 216. It seems his crystal ball blew a fuse. Yesterday, Sabato apologized, saying, “This is bigger than ‘Dewey defeats Truman.'”
The Pundits — Two weeks before the election, Karl Rove said Trump needed “an inside straight,” adding, “I don’t see it happening.” On Election Day, Republican consultant Anna Navarro said on CNN, “I can assure you that Donald Trump will get historic low numbers among Latinos. It’s going to be probably in the teens, if he breaks 20%. . . It will be sweet, sweet justice. . . if tonight it was the Latino vote that defeated Donald Trump.” According to the exit polls, Trump won 29% of the Hispanic vote, more than Mitt Romney.
GOP Elites — Just after 4:00 PM on Election Day, Senator Lindsey Graham tweeted that he wanted Egg McMuffin. Whoops. No, that would have been preferable. Instead, Graham tweeted, “I voted @Evan_McMullin for President.” A spokesman for George W. and Laura Bush said that they did not vote for Trump or Clinton or anyone else for president. And let’s not forget the 2012 GOP Autopsy, which contained several recommendations for how the party needed to moderate in order to win. Wrong.
Finally, some of the most prominent conservative journals were quick to embrace the #NeverTrump mantra probably because so many of their writers live, work and socialize inside the D.C. Beltway. They spent months telling us that you can’t buck demographic trends. But what I don’t get is why so many on our side are embracing policies — such as left-wing immigration policies — that exacerbate those trends.
Perhaps the most disappointing person in this category is George Will. He quit the Republican Party this summer after Trump won the nomination. A week before the election, Will said on ABC that he hoped for a Clinton landslide so the GOP could free itself from the influence of conservative talk radio. I don’t understand how Will thinks it would help the party to abandon one of its biggest allies, much less lose the Supreme Court for a generation.
As regards the media, a call for soul searching and a mea culpa comes from Will Rahn of CBS News. It is a remarkable article, a must read. The unbearable smugness of the press . (excerpt)
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that, with a few exceptions, we were all tacitly or explicitly #WithHer, which has led to a certain anguish in the face of Donald Trump’s victory. More than that and more importantly, we also missed the story, after having spent months mocking the people who had a better sense of what was going on.
R Mall
There are so many, but certainly among the top ten biggest losers, is the Reverend Glenn Beck. He may well have, appropriately, destroyed his declining ’empire’…the “Church of the Sanctimonious”. The “church’s” beatification of Evan McMullin is currently on hold.