- Stunning set back, but round eleven and twelve yet to come
- One bright spot – and this if sustained will seriously inhibit Dem designs in Iowa — Amendment requiring supermajority for income tax increases passed, just about everywhere in the state. Combined with unpopularity of property taxes there may be some constraints on them psychologically anyway.
- More analysis in coming days
I do not know what all went wrong. I encourage everyone to pray for faith, wisdom, perspective, resilience, contriteness and in short order good humor. Let the after action reports be insightful. I greatly appreciate Townhall and all of Salem media, the Federalist, American Thinker, Gateway Pundit, Watts Up With That and more. Keep them going as they are our sober connections. Without their sort we would be at a loss.
We must continue to use clear analysis and positive presentation and mature moral judgements which does not eliminate ridicule as approriate. People respond to it over time. I am sure there will be lots of opportunity to subtly or otherwise shame the left, those still subject to it, but also new voters and the confused that did not vote or voted on superficialities. We owe it to the founders and their warning of constant vigilance.
We had some weak candidates in key places that absorbed a lot of oxygen. Machine politics of the left explains fanatic winners. There was also the common theme in more marginal districts whereby Democrats successfully hid their radicalism and advertised themselves as moderate. All of them feined that they want border control and that all can have more goodies if only the billionaires would pay their fair share. In Iowa that was particularly the gambit and I think we were undermined by powers more concerned with protecting their own grafts and to those RINO would apply.
I am not blaming Trump as much as the utter lack of discernment from boomers, my age group, down to the youngest voting “gen”. Trump personally had serious problems projecting a message in his off the cuff remarks, any dalliance with that was undisciplined and wholly unnecessary for a president. But the chickens that came home to roost were not our policies but the widespread breed of selfishness that Trump did not create. The educational institutions and media have long been coopted by leftist thought patterns and that got traction largely through the church and its failures at weeding out the corruptions of the social justice gospel which has been coopted by Marxism. The stalwart exceptions need to be exalted and renewal encouraged.
In practical applications Republicans cannot capitulate on immigration or other key cultural defenses as doing so will guarantee that this was not just a setback. That would guarantee last night as the victory (however pyric for our country) of the left. We survived Obama and Biden, recovered and have shown the way in spite of this reckless veer the “kids” we allowed to be conditioned have taken.
