Stay focused, preach the message relentlessly
An effective executive charts a course, identifies two or three major goals, and then pursues them relentlessly. In politics, Democrats are very good at this. Republicans are terrible.
Of course, Democrats have help from their partners in news and social media, entertainment, academia, and multinational corporations. Everyone is on the same team, pursuing the same goals. There is no dissension. There are no Wrong-Way Corrigans. The company line is the only line.
If you don't believe this, try a non-Google internet search some time. Even those search engines that purport to be neutral or even conservative throw up roadblocks to learning, for example, what Breitbart has to say on any given topic. We searched Brave this week for stories on the top 2022 campaign issues. Brave – touted as a fair-minded alternative to Google – buried Breitbart reporting beyond more than two pages of CNN, Yahoo News, ABC, NBC, Axios, Politico, Pew Research, Five Thirty-Eight/Ipsos, the Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post, Time, The Hill, AARP, Brookings, and the Wall Street Journal. None of these are offering deals on Trump gear with free shipping and a 20 percent-off coupon for your next purchase.
On Hugh Hewitt's Salem Radio program Tuesday, Rep. Jim Banks, the presumptive Majority Whip if Republicans retake the House, promoted the reprised version of Newt Gingrich's successful 1994 Contract with America, now called Commitment to America. He said Republicans must stay focused on what matters.
Inflation and violent crime are voters' top concerns and have been all year, according to Rasmussen Reports. Running close for constitutional conservatives (as opposed to Uniparty or McConnell Republicans), are illegal immigration, election integrity, and parents' rights.
Abortion is, or was, a manufactured issue made possible by Democrats having the upper hand in messaging. Major online publishers and many lower-tiered ones like The Friday Letter did their best to explain that the Dobbs decision is about the proper venue for debating abortion and not about abortion itself, but the argument got buried by the behemoth establishment, state-friendly media. Republicans, as usual, found themselves bewildered and frustrated at their inability to communicate the message.
As if that weren't bad enough, along comes Sen. Lindsey Graham demanding that abortion be outlawed across the country. We just got through correcting a flawed Supreme Court ruling of 49 years. We constitutionalists naively thought the derailed Constitution was getting back on track.
Lindsey's proposed law is just as wrong as Roe v. Wade. And he's handed the left its dream issue. Just when at least some voters were beginning to understand that abortion indeed was not outlawed everywhere, Lindsey says wait a minute. What a gift to Democrats.
That is why it's disturbing to have a self-styled conservative like Matthew Boose support Sen. Graham's proposal. To argue that the 10th Amendment applies to one side of the debate but not the other is gross political hypocrisy. This mucking up of the midterm election is precisely what Republicans don't need.
Boose is a fellow of the Center for American Greatness and a columnist for the Conservative Institute. He says Senators who oppose Graham's proposed law are cowards. He sounds like a leftist: They label anyone who disagrees with them a coward, traitor, white supremacist, you name-it. This doesn't help us stay focused on what matters, and it makes our side look just as bad as the name-calling Democrats.
The Dobbs decision gave pro-life a major victory. Now the movement moves to the states where it belongs. California and New York voters are perfectly within their constitutional right to allow abortion right up to the moment of birth, disgusting as that prospect is. Through the soft-on-crime policies of their elected prosecutors, they already allow other forms of homicide. When voters get sick enough of this societal decay they might do something about it – at the state level, where it belongs.
If Lindsey Graham wants to outlaw abortion, he should run for a seat in the South Carolina General Assembly. All he’s doing now is inflaming the Democrat base and creating a distraction.
Short takes on the news
Determined to control Senate Republicans even at the cost of losing the majority, McConnell directs his PAC to pull another $9.6 million from Blake Masters' campaign to unseat liberal Democrat Mark Kelly in Arizona. This comes less than a month after McConnell canceled $8 million from Masters, who says he won't support McConnell as Republican leader. Polls show Masters in a tight race with Kelly, who is outspending the conservative by 9 to 1 with millions donated by Big Tech moguls, George Soros, and hedge fund operators. . .
A University of Georgia's School of Policy and International Affairs poll finds that only 5% of Georgia voters rank abortion as the top campaign issue of 2022, 10% as their second choice, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports. Number 1: inflation and the cost of living. . .
Save this graphic for Nov. 9 (or whenever Democrats decide to stop counting votes). This is the Real Clear Politics polling average for Sept. 21 of Senate races in competitive states. If the polls are correct, the Democrat-Republican balance would remain at 50-50.
Wisconsin Johnson (R) +0.5
Ohio Vance (R) +2.2
Pennsylvania Fetterman (D) +4.0
Nevada Laxalt (R) +1.0
Arizona Kelly (D) +3.3
Georgia Warnock (D) +0.3
New Hampshire Hassan (D) +5.6
North Carolina Budd (R) +1.6
Colorado Bennet (D) +8.0
Florida Rubio (R) +2.8
Washington Murray (D) +6.
In holdup school, Za’Lill D’Chelle Patterson, 16, wasn't told that shopkeepers might shoot back. She tried to knock over a popcorn shop in a Mississippi mall last week, The Blaze reports. The store owner greeted her with a gunshot to the leg. Police first escorted her to the hospital and then the slammer, where she will be charged as an adult. . .
Are woke culture and easy bail catching on in red-state North Dakota? An intoxicated man who admitted he ran down and killed a pedestrian and then left the scene was released from jail after posting $50,000 bail, Fox News reports. Shannon Brandt, 41, said he struck 18-year-old Caylor Ellingson because he thought Caylor was a member of an “extremist” Republican group.
Investigators may want to know (but probably won't ask) if the homicide was incited by Biden's speech calling MAGA supporters extremists and semi-fascists. Brandt said it's important he be released because he needs to be at his job and with his family. Meanwhile, protesters who demonstrated at the Capitol more than 20 months ago languish in the D.C. Gulag without trial dates, and in some cases without contact with their attorneys. . .
The Democrat majority of the House Oversight Committee blocks a resolution to investigate Hunter Biden and Biden Crime Family corruption. . .
Scott Adams introduces a politically-incorrect black character to his “Dilbert” comic strip and is canceled by 77 newspapers. . .
How great lawyers are made. At least eight student organizations at the University of California Berkeley School of Law have put a clause into their bylaws banning Jews from speaking on campus. The bylaws attack Israel and state that nobody who supports “Zionism” will be invited to speak. The organizations also pledge to boycott “institutions, organizations, companies, and any entity that . . . supports the actions of the apartheid state of Israel,” Campus Reform reports. . .
House Oversight Republicans say they have documents proving that Joe Biden “was deeply involved in the family business of selling American natural gas to the Chinese – while he was planning to run for President,” American Greatness reports. If the story is true, Biden could (but won't) be charged with treason, punishable by death. . .
How to maintain air superiority. The Air Force Academy tells cadets in its political indoctrination course to avoid using terms like “mom and dad,” “guys,” “colorblind,” and “girlfriend,” Fox News reports. . .
Breitbart News accuses Sen. Cruz of caving to Democrats by supporting a bill “that would allow media organizations to create formal cartels to negotiate with Beg Tech companies.” If Cruz succeeds, Breitbart says, “then he will immediately become one of the biggest enablers of the establishment media and Big Tech giants and he could seriously jeopardize his political future.”
Quotes for today
Headline at The Blaze: “GOP Senator John Kennedy points out that we already had a plan to repay student debt. It's called a job”
“We invested an additional $12 billion into community banks, because we know community banks are in the community, and understand the needs and desires of that community as well as the talent and capacity of community.” – Kamala Harris, in a speech
Recommended reading
“Sure, Let's Pay Reparations”
Tim Young at American Greatness
Astonishing but true: Don Lemon at a loss for words. The recently-demoted CNN propagandist got snookered when he tried to lecture Hilary Fordwich, an expert on the royal family, on why Britain should pay reparations to black people for slavery. Lemon must have been pleased when Fordwich agreed with him – until . . .
“I think you’re right about reparations,” she said. “If people want it, though, what they need to do is, you always need to go back to the beginning of the supply chain. Where was the beginning of the supply chain? That was in Africa.”
She then subjected Don to a smack down of propaganda disguised as a history lesson on slavery, noting that Britain was the first to stop it, for which his only response was to thank her for her interesting explanation. Excerpt:
Which was the first nation in the world that abolished slavery? The British . . . Two thousand naval men died on the high seas trying to stop slavery. If reparations need to be paid, we need to go right back to the beginning of that supply chain and say, "Who was rounding up their own people and having them handcuffed in cages?"Recommended video
The working man supports bailouts for rich Democrat kids.
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