The 2022 U.S. Congressional midterm elections are entering their home stretch and, as usual, the opposition party that last lost the White House in the presidential election—in this case, the Republicans—have jumped out to a big lead in polls, this time a 3-point spread, according to the latest average of national polls by RealClearPolitics.com, 47.9 percent to 44.9 percent.

The shift in the race for Congress, where it appears highly likely Republicans will pick up at least the six seats needed for a House majority—the opposition party picks up seats about 90 percent of the time in a Congressional midterm election, and in those cases, about 35 seats—comes as high inflation and concerns over the war in Europe are weighing on voters.

The latest New York Times/Siena poll taken Oct. 9 to Oct. 12 shows that the economy (26 percent) and inflation (18 percent) combine for the top issue in the election, or 44 percent, while concerns like abortion after Roe v. Wade was overturned only account for 5 percent of voters, including just 9 percent of female voters. It also gave Republicans a four-point lead over Democrats, 49 percent to 45 percent, in the generic ballot.

And the latest Economist/YouGov poll shows that, thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a full 50 percent of voters say that the likelihood of nuclear war is greater now than it was five years ago, including 38 percent who say that it is either very likely (7 percent) or somewhat likely (31 percent) that Russia will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine in the war. That poll has Republicans up one-point in the generic ballot, 47 percent to 46 percent among likely voters.

Usually, in a recession, voters will turn against an incumbent party, often resulting in defeat, particularly in presidential elections but also midterms, like Herbert Hoover’s 1930 midterms as the Great Depression took hold, where Republicans lost a whopping 52 seats in the House, barely holding onto what had just recently been more than a 100-seat majority, 270 seats to 164 seats.

And in wars, voters can sometimes experience a “rally around the flag” effect, as in the 2002 Congressional midterms where George W. Bush and Republicans actually picked up seats in the House despite being the incumbent party as they forced tough votes authorizing the use of military force in Iraq that split Democrats.

So, there could be two potential predictive models—economic model and the “rally around the flag” model—colliding with one another on Election Day, but on the other hand, it is hard to see what political benefit President Joe Biden and Congressional Democrats have obtained from the war in Ukraine, which has exacerbated the post-Covid global supply crisis, causing rampant energy inflation as Russia oil and gas exports have been restricted via sanctions.

Besides the $6 trillion Congress and the Federal Reserve borrowed and printed, respectively, for Covid, which was already pushing inflation above 5 percent since June 2021, the war in Ukraine, which began Feb. 2022, has been a major contributor to the inflation that has voters so irate.

It is possible that the prospect for another world war, combined with President Biden, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky all discussing the use of nuclear weapons and Armageddon openly, has frightened voters, who might be wondering how this mess could have been avoided. If a logical potential outcome of rallying around the flag is nuclear war, voters might be more reluctant to support that war because they don’t think it’s survivable.

Probably because U.S. nuclear doctrine since the end of Harry Truman’s second term of office has always been something along the lines of the idea that a nuclear war cannot be won and so must never be fought, which President Biden also expressed recently. If not war, then, diplomacy remains the means of resolution. Perhaps that is what voters are hoping for.

In fact, whenever this issue ever came up during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, it was always resolved somehow via diplomacy, especially beginning in 1962 with the Cuban Missile Crisis, which required concessions on both sides to diffuse, in that case by removing missiles from Cuba and Turkey. Surviving that crisis led to an age of nuclear summits across presidents of both parties and the ABM, SALT I, SALT II, INF, START I, START II and New START treaties.

Instead, voters have to consider what appears to be a rush to war they are not being asked to opt into. Biden hasn’t made the case, and has taken troops in Ukraine off the table in a bid to tamp down escalation.

In 1962, there is some thought that John Kennedy and Democrats avoided a midterm wipeout because of the crisis — they only lost four seats that year — but that was only achieved after the U.S. naval blockade of Cuba visibly managed to turn Soviet ships bearing more nuclear weapons from making their way to the island. There was a sense of relief that a global calamity had been averted. Whereas today, the crisis has been ongoing for months and so long as the war continues and will apparently not be resolved anytime soon. If so, voters might do what they usually do in midterms and say, “Time for a change.”

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2022/10/republicans-jump-to-3-point-lead-in-generic-congressional-ballot-as-inflation-war-concerns-weigh-on-voters/

Video: Leftist Policies Are Endangering Innocent Lives

To view online: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=653367333055978

 

 

Elizabeth Stauffer: The 'Big Lie' is closer to the truth than many would like to admit

By Elizabeth Stauffer

Special counsel John Durham’s trial of Igor Danchenko, the primary sub-source for the debunked Steele dossier who has been charged with lying to the FBI, delivered more evidence of the Democratic Party’s concerted effort to destroy former President Donald Trump.

FBI supervisory analyst Brian Auten testified that in October 2016, the bureau offered ex-British spy Christopher Steele $1 million to prove the allegations made in his dossier. The FBI desperately wanted the dossier to be true because it was about to use it as the basis of a “verified” application to the FISA Court for a warrant to spy on former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

But, of course, we already knew much of this. In October 2020, Fox News reported on declassified notes taken by former CIA Director John Brennan following a July 28, 2016, meeting in which he’d briefed former President Barack Obama on then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s plan to tie Trump to a Russian intelligence operation. Please note the date. The FBI opened Crossfire Hurricane, better known as the Russia-Gate hoax, two days later. Brennan wrote:

“We’re getting additional insight into Russian activities from [REDACTED]. CITE [summarizing] alleged approved by Hillary Clinton a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security service.”

The FBI cannot claim ignorance because we also have a September 2016 CIA investigative referral about Clinton’s scheme to then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, which read:

“Per FBI verbal request, CIA provides the below examples of information the CROSSFIRE HURRICANE fusion cell has gleaned to date. An exchange [REDACTED] discussing US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning US presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering US elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private email server."

Danchenko was clearly an important part of this scheme. In a September court filing, Durham revealed that Danchenko was on the FBI’s payroll from March 2017 through October 2020 for work as a confidential human source. A December 2019 Department of Justice inspector general report stated that during a January 2017 interview, Danchenko told the FBI the stories in the Steele dossier had been made up in a bar. So why did they hire him two months later as an informant and continue the arrangement for nearly four years? Were they paying for his silence?

Despite their extraordinary efforts, Democrats and their enforcement arm, the FBI, failed to prevent either Trump’s victory or his removal from office. So they turned their attention to the 2020 election. There are many ways to skin a cat, and the Democrats employed every one of them to ensure Trump’s defeat.

According to the Constitution, changes in election law must be ratified by state legislatures. Ahead of the 2020 election, however, the secretaries of state in crucial battleground states bypassed the legislatures entirely and changed rules pertaining to signature requirements, ballot collection, and more in the name of the pandemic.

The explosion of mail-in ballots made vote counting and accountability a nightmare. Approximately 1,000 poll workers signed sworn affidavits claiming they’d witnessed fraud in battleground state vote-counting centers. These allegations have never been proven because not a single court was willing to hear any of the cases. Whether enough fraud was committed to change the results of the election is questionable, but the fact is that it is still a question.

Democrats also found ways to interfere with the will of the people. We’ve learned from whistleblowers that the FBI scuttled an investigation into Hunter Biden to protect then-candidate Joe Biden ahead of the election. Additionally, Big Tech and the liberal media colluded to censor the New York Post’s October 2020 bombshell report about Hunter Biden’s laptop. Moreover, 51 former top-ranking intelligence community officials signed a letter claiming the story had all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. Days later, this letter provided cover for Biden in a debate with then-President Donald Trump.

Polls have shown that had Biden voters been aware of the Post’s story, many would have switched their votes. Could this have changed the outcome of the election? It’s a distinct possibility.

Given the FBI’s brazen attempts to undermine Trump’s campaigns in both 2016 and 2020, it is remarkable that his claims of malfeasance haven’t been taken more seriously. Indeed, the more we learn about the establishment’s meddling, the more it seems likely that the “Big Lie” is a bit closer to the truth than many would like to admit.

To view online: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/the-big-lie-is-closer-to-the-truth-than-many-would-like-to-admit