September 26, 2022
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Want a Real Red Wave?
By Rick Manning
The latest ABC/Washington Post national poll is a disaster for national Democrats. The headline is that the GOP holds a five-point (51-46) advantage amongst likely voters, but that is not the worse news from Democrats.
Not surprisingly, the economy remains the dominant issue on the minds of voters with a net 84 percent saying it is important with 50 percent more people having a negative view of the economy than a positive one.
And voters by an overwhelming 17 percent trust the GOP on the overall economy with 16 percent trusting Republicans on the inflation issue.
Additionally, Joe Biden’s upside-down approval rating has hardened over the past year with a consistent disapproval rating between 51-55 percent in every ABC/Washington Post national poll since September 1, 2021. Biden’s current disapproval rating lands at 53 percent with his approval stuck at 39 percent.
Even former Biden press secretary Jen Psaki was caught telling the truth on Sunday’s Meet the Press when she admitted, “If it is a referendum on the president, they will lose. And they know that. They also know that crime is a huge vulnerability for Democrats, I would say one of the biggest vulnerabilities.”
She is right.
Skyrocketing crime rates are problematic for the Democrats as their on-going push to release offenders with little to no bail along with choosing to not prosecute property crimes has resulted in scenes of mobs invading stores in mass thefts and criminals going from the police station to assaulting and even murdering people hours later.
2022 is the first national election where people across the nation have the opportunity to vote after feeling the insecurity of left-wing pro-criminal policies, and as Ms. Psaki notes, this is very bad news for the Democrats as it continues the dissolution of their race-based electoral coalition in many communities.
Renowned political pundit Dick Morris boldly declared on his Newsmax show on Saturday that the GOP would win four seats in the Senate giving them a 54-46 advantage and ending Vice President Harris’ ability to break ties on issues decided along partisan lines.
The subtext to all of the predictions is built around the idea that voter turnout will be much higher amongst those who are out of power than it will be for those who currently hold the reins. Historically, this is true and a chartist would show graphs of elections going back to World War II making the case.
But while momentum is certainly on the side of the GOP in 2022, the size of the wave will be determined by who votes, and this is where people who care about liberty come in.
If you want this election to be truly transformative and a rejection of the left’s economic and cultural assault on America and our ideals, the 2022 election cannot be a squeaker. The Biden administration must face an overwhelming rejection, where new members of Congress arrive on January 3, 2023, from districts that GOP leadership did not heavily target.
The difference between the tepid leadership that one can expect from the House GOP with a 235 to 200 majority and what can be achieved with a 255 to 180 majority matters when confronting Biden over whether to defund his 83,000 IRS agents. It matters when it comes to vigorously confronting his attempts to change Title IX education policy to a full-blown federal government mandated inclusion of biological men competing in women’s sports. And it matters when it comes to forcing our immigration laws to be enforced by the Biden administration, staunching the flood of illegals who are entering our nation every single day.
Winning has consequences, but winning big creates more pressure on the D.C. GOP leadership to actually fight, as the larger the new class of incoming freshmen, the more they will demand that something gets done.
And it all comes down to maximizing voter turnout amongst voters who don’t traditionally vote in off-year elections.
Want a true red wave? Volunteer today to begin contacting low propensity Trump voters, because their turnout percentage will determine if Republicans just try to cling to a slim majority in 2023-2024, or if they use that power to neuter and reverse the Biden administration’s extreme policy proscriptions.
Rick Manning is President of Americans for Limited Government
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2022/09/want-a-real-red-wave/
Italy shows 2022 is a ‘time for a change’ year as Meloni wins
By Robert Romano
Giorgia Meloni and a coalition of center-right parties have won the snap elections in Italy after Mario Draghi’s consensus government fell apart amid crippling 9 percent inflation fueled by high energy costs as Europe falls into recession.
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy won 26 percent of the vote, and Mateo Salvini and Silvio Berulsconi’s parties won 8.8 percent and 8 percent each, respectively. With 44 percent, they mark the largest party coalition, and should win about 235 seats of the 400-seat lower house and 115 seats of the 200-seat senate, according to a YouTrend projection.
Meanwhile, the center-left Democrats only won 19 percent of the vote along with 7 percent for the remainder of the left-wing coalition, winning just 26 percent of the vote. The breakaway Five Star Movement, which triggered the snap elections when it withdrew from the Draghi government, garnered about 15.5 percent of the vote, losing half its support from 2018, when it won the general election with 32 percent of the vote.
After initially forming a coalition with Salvini’s center-right League, that arrangement soon fell apart and the Five Stars instead governed with the center-left coalition instead. Then, Draghi was appointed in early 2021 after the collapse of Giuseppe Conte’s Five Star-led government, with both the center-left and the center-right supporting Draghi, but Five Star was still the crucial kingmaker with the largest plurality of seats in parliament. Without the Five Stars, Draghi did not command the support of anything close to approaching a legislative majority.
Now, the results seem to follow a pattern in 2022 as Italy’s voters said it was “time for a change.” After years of narrowly fought elections and no party able to form a solid majority in the nation’s parliament, here, Meloni seems to have won a decisive result with 44 percent of the vote. In 2018, the center-right garnered just 31 percent of the vote.
The 14-point improvement by the center-right implies heavily that Meloni was able to win over about half of the voters from the Five Stars with her Italy first platform that opposes European Union regulations, particularly those that increase immigration. Also, unemployment remains at 7.9 percent, which is actually a 3-year low from being north of 10 percent during Covid, amid a slower recovery in southern Europe from the economic lockdowns that crippled the global economy in 2020.
Now, high energy costs are the problem, and with another recession immediately on the horizon along with another drop in demand for labor still to come, Meloni’s attention will surely turn towards economic matters once her coalition government is formed.
Across the pond, in the U.S. voters will also be voting in legislative elections via the Congressional midterms, with Republicans favored to pick up seats at least in the House of Representatives. After President Joe Biden’s narrow win in the 2020 presidential election, usually it is the opposition party with the wind in its sails.
In 1994, 1998, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018, the result was mixed government, with one party in control of the White House and the other with control of the House and/or the Senate. Both Barack Obama and Donald Trump maintained Senate majorities in their first midterms. Obama lost the Senate in his second midterm. Bill Clinton and George W. Bush lost both the House and the Senate in 1994 and 2006, respectively.
Such a U.S. outcome might stand in contrast to the result in Italy, but electorally the results are actually similar, with similar forces at play. The difference is the unique feature of the American system as a non-parliamentary model, where the legislature was designed to check the power of the executive, who is elected separately. Whereas in Italy and other parliamentary systems, the legislature is led by the prime minister, the leader of whichever party has the ruling majority from the legislative elections.
Meaning, in Italy, for once, the outcome will be clear majorities in the parliament and a mandate to govern. There, the legislature can be more powerful—provided it can achieve the critical legislative majorities, something that eluded the Five Stars in 2018, and compelled it to fenagle governing coalitions, first among the center-right parties, and then the center-left. In this case, Meloni can govern simply with the Salvini and Berlusconi center-right parties in tow.
Which, is definitely a change from the administrations that preceded it. Time will tell if similar winds are blowing across the Atlantic as the American people go to the polls in November. Stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2022/09/italy-shows-2022-is-a-time-for-a-change-year-as-meloni-wins/
Video: Republicans May FORCE Biden To Build Southern Border Wall
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMO8qGsp818