Opinion

LANDRITH: Make No Mistake, Tucker Carlson Won Big In Ohio

(Photo by Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Politicon )

George Landrith Since 1999, George Landrith has served as the President of the Frontiers of Freedom Institute – a pubic policy think tank devoted to promoting a strong national defense, free markets, individual liberty, and constitutionally limited government. The Institute maintains offices in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Wyoming and has thousands of grassroots supporters in virtually every state. The Institute is recognized as a national leader on the most important issues facing America today, including: national security, market-based environmental solutions, energy, property rights, taxes and regulation. Previously, he served as the Vice President and General Counsel to the National Legal Center for the Public Interest. Mr. Landrith is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, where he was Business Editor of the Virginia Journal of Law and Politics. He also graduated, magna cum laude, from Brigham Young University studying political science and economics. Mr. Landrith is admitted to the bar in Virginia and California and is a member of the United States Supreme Court bar. In 1994 and 1996, Mr. Landrith was a candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Virginia's Fifth Congressional District. He served on the Albemarle County School Board. He was appointed by then Governor George Allen and confirmed by the General Assembly to serve on the Virginia Workforce 2000 Advocacy Council. Mr. Landrith is an adjunct professor at the George Mason School of Law. Mr. Landrith has appeared frequently on television and radio news programs and his work has been printed in over 100 newspapers across the nation, including: Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, LA Daily News, National Review, Sacramento Bee, Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, Providence Journal, and Human Events. He has been quoted in many of the nation’s leading papers, including: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. Mr. Landrith lives in Virginia with his wife, Laura, and their seven children.
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The left loves to hate on those who speak truths they’d rather not hear. Elon Musk was once their darling until he came out for free speech. Extremists also hate Tucker Carlson, the popular news and opinion host at Fox News, because he has been particularly effective in pointing out the hypocrisy, inconsistency and outright insanity of the far left. They want his show cancelled and him silenced. They’ve even staged protests at Tucker’s home in hopes of intimidating his family. That is how the left works — notice the recent protests at the homes of Supreme Court justices.

Despite all the hate from the left, Tucker Carlson and the ideas he advocates had a very good night this past week in Ohio. One doesn’t have to agree with every opinion expressed by Tucker — he’s expressed literally thousands and thousands of opinions, so it would be normal to have some differences with even like-minded people. But no one can deny that Ohio’s primaries showed that Tucker is on to something big and that conservative, America-first ideas are popular.

Ohio is broadly seen as a bellwether because the state has historically been representative of the nation’s voting patterns in several ways. So what do the Ohio GOP primaries tell us? Twenty-two out of 22 candidates who represented a conservative, America-first political approach won in the primaries. Additionally, GOP voters outnumbered the opposition by 2 to 1 in the US Senate primary. Simply stated, the Make America Great Again (MAGA) approach batted a perfect one thousand and energized voters, proving that the MAGA agenda is far more supported than the Left is willing to admit.

Tucker was also the first major supporter of J.D. Vance’s Senate candidacy — a political newcomer who easily won the GOP primary. While Vance garnered other endorsements, including Trump’s, most came at the last minute, and Tucker’s early support helped build Vance’s support and credibility. Tucker’s endorsement of Vance not only hit back at the left but also dealt the more establishment, anti-MAGA Republicans in the state who had endorsed more moderate candidates a stinging defeat.

The left continues to contend that a conservative, America first economic and foreign policy doesn’t represent what most Americans think and that while Donald Trump may have been the president from 2017 to 2021, he only won because of the so-called Russian collusion. And as a result, he wasn’t that popular and his MAGA agenda was illegitimate. But Ohio’s GOP recent primary proves the lie of the left’s absurd propaganda.

While President Trump on occasion alienated voters with his brusk no-nonsense manner of speaking, his policies were actually widely supported. The economy was strong, wages were growing, America and its friends were safer and less threatened by totalitarianism and terrorism.

And while some voters may have assumed that the economic boom and safer international climate were just good fortune before the COVID pandemic struck, the last 15 months have provided a sharp contrast to the good times that the MAGA agenda brought. The evidence has been mounting that while Trump may have offended some, his policies benefitted everyone and made the country freer, more prosperous and more secure. Ohio’s primary results — with record turn out and a strong and consistent showing for MAGA oriented candidates — prove that Americans have woken up to the destructive mischief caused by the left.

Virtually every night, Tucker Carlson is exposing the left and showing that they seem more interested in expanding their power and prestige than in helping make America stronger, freer and more prosperous. So we should expect the attacks on MAGA candidates and Tucker to become ever more shrill and intolerant. The extremists on the left are losing the political debate — being beaten on the airwaves and at the ballot box.

These are very difficult times for the extreme left. Tucker Carlson will continue to draw their ire as one of the most articulate proponents of America First principles. Anyone who effectively advocates for American values can expect to be the target of increasingly shrill attacks and demands that these “dangerous people” with “dangerous ideas” must be silenced.

The extreme left sees time-tested truths and basic facts as dangerous to their political aims. And since they cannot win the debate, they hope to silence their opponents. If you disagree with Tucker or with an America First agenda, that’s your right. But it isn’t your right to silence those with whom you disagree.

Those who seek to silence others are admitting the inferiority of their own ideas and their ability to advocate for them. Those the left seeks to silence are typically the most effective and fact-based advocates of conservative principles. So watch who the extremists on the left attack most vociferously and seek to silence, and you will know who is advocating most effectively for making and keeping America strong, prosperous and free. I suspect that Tucker will continue to be one of those at the top of their list.

George Landrith is the president of Frontiers of Freedom.