Op-Ed

The GOP’s Best Defense Against A Massive Blue Wave In 2018 Is A Good Offense

blue wave Shutterstock/EpicStockMedia

Peter Parisi Freelance Writer
Font Size:

Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who doubles as Senate majority leader (though perhaps not for much longer), certainly has a keen grasp of the obvious.

In the midterm elections in November, Mr. McConnell said in an interview earlier this month with Kentucky Today, a Baptist publication, “We know the wind is going to be in our [i.e., the GOP’s] face.

“We don’t know whether it’s going to be a Category 3, 4 or 5.”

What’s even less clear is what Mr. McConnell and the rest of what passes for the Republican congressional leadership is doing to avert the Democratic “blue wave” — to mix a meteorological metaphor — that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker sees on the horizon if his fellow Republicans don’t go on offense, and soon.

Mr. Walker raised the tsunami warning after Democrats won an election for a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court on the same day Mr. McConnell sat down with Kentucky Today.

“I’m hoping we can hold the Senate,” Mr. McConnell said. “And the principle reason for that [is], even if we were to lose the House and be stymied legislatively, we could still approve [presidential] appointments, which is a huge part of what we do.”

Kentucky is well inland, of course, so Mr. McConnell may not understand, but as anyone who lives in the hurricane belt along the coast from the Carolinas to Texas would tell you, you don’t just sit and wait for one to hit and hope for the best.

The GOP panic will only ratchet up to Category 5 if Republicans were to lose the April 24 special election in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in Arizona-8 by 21 points, 57 percent to 36 percent. But even if the GOP holds the seat, it shouldn’t cause complacency about the midterms.

Panicking and curling up in the fetal position is not an option, especially not when you’re up against the party of Planned Parenthood. Neither is resting one’s hopes on a wing and a prayer (although Kentucky Today would surely recommend praying as a good starting point).

Since the Civil War, the president’s party has lost an average of 32 seats in the House and two in the Senate in midterm elections.

Democrats need to net just 24 seats in the House to hand the speaker’s gavel back to Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and that alone should serve as smelling salts for congressional Republicans fainting all over Capitol Hill as they look toward November.

It calls to mind 18th-century essayist Samuel Johnson’s observation, “When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”

Whether that will be enough to hold the House remains to be seen, but Mr. McConnell’s finger-crossing on losing the Senate is more perplexing, because it really shouldn’t be a serious threat.

While Senate Republicans currently hold a razor-thin 51-49 majority, it will be exceedingly difficult for Democrats to net two seats, given that they are defending 26 of the 34 seats that are up in November, including 10 in red states won handily by President Trump in 2016.

Moreover, Democrats don’t have any winning issues to run on. Their recent string of victories in state and local elections — 40 seats flipped, by CNN’s count since Mr. Trump’s election — has been driven almost entirely by an energized far-left base beset by Trump Derangement Syndrome.

That’s not much to base a campaign on substance-wise, but it’s something, and you can’t beat something with nothing. Republicans need to go on offense if they hope to hold midterm losses to a minimum in the House and retain their Senate majority.

Republican candidates need to put the Trump economy front and center in the campaign, including the Labor Department report from April 5 that the total number of people receiving unemployment benefits fell to the lowest level in 44 years in March.

More importantly, they need to put a human face like that of Jessica Hodge on the benefits of the Republican tax-cut bill signed into law by Trump in December.

Their TV ads should juxtapose footage of Mrs. Pelosi referring to the tax cuts as “crumbs” and vowing to repeal them if Democrats reclaim Congress alongside that of the Hurricane, West Virginia, woman on April 5 effusively thanking Mr. Trump for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

“I just want to say ‘thank you’ for the tax cuts,” Hodge tearfully told the president at a tax-cut roundtable event in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.

The tax cut saved Hodge and her mail carrier husband Tony $2,417. “This is a big deal for our family,” she said.

It’s still the economy, stupid, and Republican campaigns this fall need to pointedly ask voters whether they really want to return to the policies that wrought economic stagnation during Barack Obama’s presidency, because that’s exactly what they will get if Democrats reclaim control of Congress.

The bottom line is, in electoral politics as in football, the best defense is a good offense.

Peter Parisi is a former longtime editor at The Washington Times.


The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.

PREMIUM ARTICLE: Subscribe To Keep Reading

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!

Sign Up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
Sign up

By subscribing you agree to our Terms of Use

You're signed up!
BENEFITS READERS PASS PATRIOTS FOUNDERS
Daily and Breaking Newsletters
Daily Caller Shows
Ad Free Experience
Exclusive Articles
Custom Newsletters
Editor Daily Rundown
Behind The Scenes Coverage
Award Winning Documentaries
Patriot War Room
Patriot Live Chat
Exclusive Events
Gold Membership Card
Tucker Mug

What does Founders Club include?

Tucker Mug and Membership Card
Founders

Readers,

Instead of sucking up to the political and corporate powers that dominate America, The Daily Caller is fighting for you — our readers. We humbly ask you to consider joining us in this fight.

Now that millions of readers are rejecting the increasingly biased and even corrupt corporate media and joining us daily, there are powerful forces lined up to stop us: the old guard of the news media hopes to marginalize us; the big corporate ad agencies want to deprive us of revenue and put us out of business; senators threaten to have our reporters arrested for asking simple questions; the big tech platforms want to limit our ability to communicate with you; and the political party establishments feel threatened by our independence.

We don't complain -- we can't stand complainers -- but we do call it how we see it. We have a fight on our hands, and it's intense. We need your help to smash through the big tech, big media and big government blockade.

We're the insurgent outsiders for a reason: our deep-dive investigations hold the powerful to account. Our original videos undermine their narratives on a daily basis. Even our insistence on having fun infuriates them -- because we won’t bend the knee to political correctness.

One reason we stand apart is because we are not afraid to say we love America. We love her with every fiber of our being, and we think she's worth saving from today’s craziness.

Help us save her.

A second reason we stand out is the sheer number of honest responsible reporters we have helped train. We have trained so many solid reporters that they now hold prominent positions at publications across the political spectrum. Hear a rare reasonable voice at a place like CNN? There’s a good chance they were trained at Daily Caller. Same goes for the numerous Daily Caller alumni dominating the news coverage at outlets such as Fox News, Newsmax, Daily Wire and many others.

Simply put, America needs solid reporters fighting to tell the truth or we will never have honest elections or a fair system. We are working tirelessly to make that happen and we are making a difference.

Since 2010, The Daily Caller has grown immensely. We're in the halls of Congress. We're in the Oval Office. And we're in up to 20 million homes every single month. That's 20 million Americans like you who are impossible to ignore.

We can overcome the forces lined up against all of us. This is an important mission but we can’t do it unless you — the everyday Americans forgotten by the establishment — have our back.

Please consider becoming a Daily Caller Patriot today, and help us keep doing work that holds politicians, corporations and other leaders accountable. Help us thumb our noses at political correctness. Help us train a new generation of news reporters who will actually tell the truth. And help us remind Americans everywhere that there are millions of us who remain clear-eyed about our country's greatness.

In return for membership, Daily Caller Patriots will be able to read The Daily Caller without any of the ads that we have long used to support our mission. We know the ads drive you crazy. They drive us crazy too. But we need revenue to keep the fight going. If you join us, we will cut out the ads for you and put every Lincoln-headed cent we earn into amplifying our voice, training even more solid reporters, and giving you the ad-free experience and lightning fast website you deserve.

Patriots will also be eligible for Patriots Only content, newsletters, chats and live events with our reporters and editors. It's simple: welcome us into your lives, and we'll welcome you into ours.

We can save America together.

Become a Daily Caller Patriot today.

Signature

Neil Patel