March 15, 2023
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
When Winning Elections Means Actually Winning On Policy, We Celebrate
By Rick Manning
People often say that elections have consequences. But that doesn’t always feel true when you are a conservative. We rarely feel like we get real conservative policies even when we win against the left’s underhanded political machine. Instead we often get status quo, do-nothing fecklessness from the people we send to fight for us.
That said, this week we have reason to celebrate, as Brenna Bird, the new Republican Attorney General in Iowa, and Kris Kobach, the new Republican Attorney General in Kansas both tossed overboard the left-wing trial lawyers from Morgan & Morgan.
You’ve likely seen a Morgan & Morgan billboard or one of their ads on television (the tagline is “Bigger is Better”). What they don’t bother to tell you in their ad campaigns is about their millions upon millions in federal political donations, or how 99% of their federal donations go to Democrats and their allies, or how the firm owner flew Frank Biden, Joe’s brother, to the inauguration on the firm’s jet and then bragged about it in the pages of Politico.
Make no mistake, when you hear the phrase “left-wing trial lawyers,” Morgan & Morgan might as well be the reference image you see in the dictionary. They are the classic billboard, personal-injury lawyers who bankroll the left and buy friends and allies among the Democratic elite.
Before the midterms, I wrote about how infuriating it is to watch our side’s lawyers help the Left when the Left is so obviously unified against us.
It is contracts with firms like Morgan & Morgan that are exactly what I was talking about.
Too few of our side bother to step in and clean house when they come into office. Just consider how Republican Attorneys General inherited contracts with Cohen Milstein, a firm that presses forward with a lawsuit to impose personal liability on President Trump for January 6, yet no one has bothered to toss the firm aside.
The Biden DOJ is currently running interference for Cohen Milstein’s case, and it is absurd that taxpayers in conservative states are providing this partisan firm business.
Let’s be honest, Cohen Milstein or Morgan and Morgan don’t provide any better service to these states than a dozen other firms would, so there is no reason not to replace them.
That is what makes the news out of Iowa and Kansas so exciting.
Brenna Bird and Kris Kobach have each only been in office a few weeks. Bird took down a long-serving Democrat, and Kobach shifted Kansas much further to the right. Each inherited a Morgan & Morgan contract. And neither wasted any time in terminating Morgan & Morgan, putting this liberal outfit to the sword rather than continuing to funnel money from conservative taxpayers into the pockets of left-wing super-donors.
It is incredibly refreshing to see this kind of swift, principled action by newly elected members of the conservative team. Seeing our votes translate into action is exhilarating, not just because the bad guys took some ordinance this week, but also because the moves in Iowa and Kansas offer a glimmer of hope that more conservative officials will start to act this way, and clean house when they take over an office.
As I said before, it is impossible to imagine left-wing attorneys general signing up a Pro-Trump legal team for a big payout, or any half-conservative lawyers for that matter.
It is high time that we be as ruthless as they are. And Brenna Bird and Kris Kobach are showing how that is done.
Now, the rest of the conservative lawyers need to wake up and follow suit, starting with the rest of the attorneys general that just came into office. The fight for freedom is hard enough without conservative run agencies continuing contracts with law firms who tithe to the Left.
The Left is playing for keeps, with a united front. There is nothing stopping us from doing the same. Iowa and Kansas just gave us a masterclass. So, game on!
Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://townhall.com/columnists/rickmanning/2023/03/14/when-winning-elections-means-actually-winning-on-policy-we-celebrate-n2620551
Video: QAnon Shaman: Sentence TOO HARSH For Jan 6th Riot?
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKYMEF8xhEk
Democrats are on Dangerous Ground with Non-College Minorities Too
By Bill Wilson
The Democratic party’s issues appealing to working class white voters are well documented, but new analysis shows the radical left is isolating itself from working class minorities without a college education too.
There have been warning signs for years now that the disastrous economic and social agenda adopted by party elites lacks mass appeal, especially to working class voters concerned about inflation and the economy. The assumption that Democrats could make up for the departure of working-class whites with working-class minorities is proving to be harder than expected and may be outright false.
Recent elections indicate that as the globalist left becomes increasingly detached from the working class, it will become more difficult to attract middle class voters – white and non-white. This is a massive issue for the left, because despite rising educational attainment, Americans without a college degree still far outweigh those with one – and this is especially true with minorities and in swing states.
According to exit surveys, Americans without a college degree made up 59% of the total electorate in 2020. In the midterms last year, the electorate leaned slightly higher educated than in the General, but non-college voters still made up 57% of the midterm voter pool. This is not a group the left can afford to write off entirely, and evidence shows non-college voters are moving toward the right, regardless of race.
The last time Democrats won non-college voters was in 2012 when Obama won this block 51%-47%. However, by 2016 Clinton lost non-college voters 44-52%. In 2020, Biden did slightly better than Clinton but still lost non-college voters to Trump by a margin of 48-50%.
As for minority non-college voters, minorities still favor Democrats, but non-college-educated minorities are starting to drift toward the GOP just like whites. According to exit polls, the Democratic Party’s share of the non-college minority vote dropped 11 points between 2008 and 2020.
While Biden did win non-college minorities by 46 points in 2020, Trump increased his share of their vote by six points between 2016 and 2020. In 2016, Trump won 20% of the non-college minority vote and in 2020 he won 26%.
Non-college minorities also moved eight points to the right between the 2018 and 2022 midterm elections. In the 2018 midterms Democrats won minorities without a college degree by 76% to 22%. In the 2022 midterms Democrats won this block by 68% to 28%.
Of note is the fact that while education is growing among minorities, minorities without a college degree make up a substantial share of the electorate. In the 2022 midterms, minorities without a degree made up nearly a fifth of the electorate (18%) while those with one made up just 9%.
General elections historically attract a large proportion of non-college educated voters compared to mid-term elections, and 2020 was no exception. Minorities without a college degree made up a full quarter of the 2020 electorate, while college-educated minorities made up a tenth.
While Democrats have largely failed to recoup the white non-college vote in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, they have also lost with non-college minority voters in these pivotal states. What is more, the pool of non-college minorities is far greater than the pool of college-educated minorities in battlegrounds.
In Pennsylvania in the midterms last fall, minorities without a degree made up twice as many votes as those with a degree (12% compared to 6%).
In Ohio, non-college minorities made up almost twice as many votes as those with a degree (11% compared to 6%).
Minorities without a college degree made up a full 22% of voters in Florida in 2022, while minorities with a degree made up 14%. Florida saw a massive swing in minority voters toward the GOP between 2018 and 2022, but the largest shift occurred among minorities without a college degree. The GOP won minorities without a degree by a whopping 18 percentage points more in 2022 than in 2018 going from 26% to 44%.
In the Virginia governor’s race in 2021, Americans for Limited Government Foundation showed how lower-income and minority voters played a pivotal role in the precincts that shifted away from the Democrat candidate between 2017 and 2021 and contributed to Glenn Youngkin’s victory. Precincts that became significantly less Democrat had higher Hispanic and Asian populations, and an average income nearly 50% lower than those which became more Democrat.
The ten precincts that shifted away from the Democrat candidate by the greatest margins had an average Hispanic population of 35.9%, an average Asian population of 24.9%, and an average household income of $1,042,961. The average Democrat shift in these precincts between 2017 and 2021 was -23.91%.
Recent also shows a steep decline in the share of Americans saying a college education is worth it, with less than half of Americans saying a college education is a good idea. Just 45% of Americans now say a college education is a smart investment, down from 55% in 2016. Among whites, the belief that a college education is a good investment has dropped 11-points, from 52% in 2016 to just 41% now. Blacks have seen an 8-point decline, from 56% in 2016 to 48% now, and Hispanics have seen a 14-point decline, from 68% in 2016 to 54% now.
The modern Democratic Party’s disastrous economic policies, refusal to stay out of foreign meddling, and unhinged social agenda are just a few reasons why this shift could be taking place. However, like the slow stream of non-college whites away from the left, these trends take years to fully manifest.
Minorities as a whole still favor Democrats by a significant margin, but what we are seeing continually is the division between the ivory tower elites and the working class. Race is on track to become less of an important distinction than the educational divide when it comes to partisanship, and this could be an issue for the left considering belief in the merits of the college industrial complex is plummeting.
Bill Wilson is the former President of Americans for Limited Government.
To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2023/03/democrats-are-on-dangerous-ground-with-non-college-minorities-too/