Joseph Bast | November 19, 2022
The “red trickle” on November 8 was a great disappointment to conservatives everywhere. It’s tempting to pick up our marbles and go home. But there is a better path forward. This article describes some things everyone reading it can do to help save the country.
Okay, So We Lost
Nationally, Republicans appear to have won a majority in the House that will aid in stopping the Biden liberal agenda, but the margin is so small it is likely to require compromises with the Democrat minority that cut the heart out of what conservative Republicans hoped to achieve in 2023. It will be a painful two years.
The failure to win back the Senate is another blow to the national conservative movement. A divided Congress will be a weak opponent to the Biden Deep State. There will be no impeachment of President Joe Biden, even though he so richly deserves to face it.
Here in Wisconsin, Republicans kept the U.S. Senate seat and their majorities in the House and Senate, but lost the crucially important races for governor and attorney general. This means the ambitious measures passed by the legislature during the past two years but vetoed by Gov. Evers are likely to remain dead for four long years. That means no expansion of school choice, no election reform, no pro-life laws, and no push-back against the sea of wokeness flooding the state’s executive branch.
Playing the Blame Game
Many conservatives are angry. They say the election results prove national and state Republican leaders are out of touch with grassroots activists, squandered the billions of dollars raised in this election cycle, and withheld financial and organizational support from conservative and Trump-backed candidates. Others blame Donald Trump for not sharing more of the cash he has raised since losing in 2020 and for being, well, Donald Trump.
Autopsies on this election cycle will likely reveal some bad leadership decisions, some poor candidate selection, some incompetence, and lots of wasted money. But honestly, that’s the case after every election and on both sides of the political aisle. Politics attracts the worst kinds of people, not the best. It’s an ugly business.
Grover Norquist once told me that on a battlefield, it is safer to shoot the guys in your trench or fox hole than to stand up and shoot at the other guys. That explains why some Republicans seem more inclined to attack fellow party members than Democrats.
It’s also useful to keep in mind the old saying that victory has a thousand fathers while failure dies an orphan. Had there actually been a “red wave,” today we would be celebrating the great skill and wisdom of the very same people who are now being denounced as idiots or worse.
It feels good to assign blame, even to blame the wrong people, but we have to be smarter than that.
Who Are the Real Enemies?
Our real enemies, the people who prevented the genuine political realignment that many of us thought was going to take place this year, are not Republicans. They are election officials who changed or broke the rules to steal a few or perhaps many points from Republican candidates in close races on election night.
They work for left-wing front groups funded by George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and other liberal billionaires whose innocent-sounding names and professed missions hide a deeply partisan and anti-liberty agenda.
They work for Google, Facebook, and Twitter, where they block and censor conservative messaging and amplify liberal propaganda. They work for CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS, where they ensure that 90% of the “news” coverage of Republicans is negative while 90% of coverage for Democrats is positive.
And they are educators and administrators of schools and colleges who submerge future and young voters in the sick ideology of cultural Marxism.
What is remarkable is not that Republicans lose against such a powerful opponent, but that they occasionally win. It was naïve to think that our David could take down this Goliath with a single election, and just two years after Goliath had attained its height of power.
That Republicans can win against such odds is a tribute to two things. The first is the intelligence and hard work of countless grassroots activists who see through the fog of disinformation and run for local office, knock on doors, show up at campaign events, and vote. One conservative activist is worth $10,000, maybe $100,000, of a billionaire’s cash.
The second is the fact that the truth really does win out in the end. Democrat policies have terrible consequences, while Republican policies at least point the way to peace, prosperity, and justice. Democrats, even with all the institutions they control, cannot hide from the truth forever. Unfortunately, it often takes a long time for the truth to prevail.
The Path Forward
So what do we do now?
We need to focus on the real enemies of freedom, expose them for what they are, and then reduce their influence on the next election. My list of the “real enemies” should be on conservatives’ “Most Wanted” poster for the next 24 months.
We now know that election integrity is even more important than we thought after 2020. We need to insist on voter ID, same-day voting, paper ballots, and clean voter registration lists. We need to meet with municipal clerks, replace those who are corrupt or inept, and recruit more poll watchers and workers who can prevent election-day corruption.
We need to investigate and expose the left-wing groups posing as nonpartisan or trust-worthy civic organizations, and then subject them to sharp and repeated criticism and ridicule. No one should ever trust the League of Women Voters, Sierra Club, AARP, Greenpeace, or the Center for American Progress. They should be laughed at, denounced, and put out of business.
We should stop using Google, Facebook, and Twitter, as well as Gmail, YouTube, TikTok, and all the rest of the social media that the left has captured and weaponized against Republicans. There are alternatives to each of these services you can use. A backlash against these tech giants is already underway. Facebook lost more than $232 billion in value in a single day back in February, the biggest drop in stock value in history.
Stop watching television, or at least television news and commentary. The corporate media is so biased against conservative ideas that it is barely watchable anyway. Ratings for shows on CNN and MSNBC are falling fast, which means less ad revenue for them and mounting pressure on the networks to move from the far left to the center-right, where the majority of Americans say they are.
We must take back schools and colleges from Woke educators and administrators. We can do this by supporting laws supporting parents’ rights in education, such as the right to see all curricula being used, to be present as observers in classrooms, and to know what is being said to students on sensitive issues such as gender and race. More conservatives are attending school board meetings and running for school board, resulting in real change at the school level.
If you are a parent of children preparing to enter college, you absolutely must not send them to colleges that preach transgender ideology, Critical Race Theory, and other elements of cultural Marxism. Do some research. There are colleges out there, such as Hillsdale, that specifically avoid Woke indoctrination of students. Don’t pay tuition just to turn your kid into a socialist zombie.
(Grandparents and wealthy aunts and uncles who are asked to chip in to help with college expenses should take a greater interest in what is being taught, and simply refuse to help pay tuition at colleges known for their left-wing bias, which is most colleges. If they come back from their first year of college spouting leftist nonsense, tell them you’re done financing their miseducation.)
You Are Not Alone
The majority of Americans are conservatives, or at least the majority of parents, people who work, and people who obey the laws of the land. Liberals may win some elections by brainwashing some voters, bribing others, or even by using outright voting fraud, but this doesn’t change the fact that they are a minority voice.
A good place to find allies in this battle to save America is a website called the Wisconsin Patriots Toolbox, at www.wipatriotstoolbox.com. The site walks you through how to vote, how to contact elected officials, where you can find reliable information, and even how to sign up for free online classes on how to run for office … and win!
There are hundreds of think tanks and advocacy groups all across the country devoted to saving the country. They exist to help you become a more effective patriot and citizen. Don’t hesitate to use them!