The 2020 election has come and gone and, while there are races yet to be called, Democrats are being dubbed the winners. Officials say that Democrats held onto the U.S. House of Representatives, won the presidency, and may yet impose their will on the Senate. (Georgia will have two run-off elections for senator in January, as no candidates had a majority of the vote in the general election.) Even without a clean sweep, if Biden gets into office, Democrats would have enough clout to enact much of their agenda. The question is, “Why?” It seemed as if the elections should have easily gone the other way: Around the country, Trump had huge rallies, while Biden’s rallies often saw more Trump supporters than Democrats, and prior to the COVID lockdowns, Trump was building a strong economy, with record-low unemployment.
Granted, there is much evidence that vote fraud gave Democrats a huge boost — with Post Office workers being told to collect illegal ballots after the election and hand-stamp them so they appeared to be legitimate and with mail-in ballots that were meant to be delivered to Republican-leaning areas not getting delivered and with eye-witness accounts from polling places documenting instances where ballots with missing information were still counted for Democrats, and much, much more. Also, granted, the major media was in the tank for any and every Democrat running, asserting that Trump’s talking points were false (especially when they weren’t) and validating Biden/Democrat talking points, even when they were gross lies. But there is just no reason that with all of the sheer absurdities being spouted by Democrats that they should have even come close in this election, certainly not close enough for fraud to make a huge difference. Democrats should have had next to zero votes outside Democrat-controlled large cities where fraud flourishes.
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How Republicans Could Have Won Big
In truth, probably the biggest reason that Republicans didn’t do better at the polls is because Republican politicians and party big-wigs often are stupid.
Sound over the top? I assure you it’s not.
To clarify, I don’t mean that Republicans are mentally deficient. Look at Donald Trump: Using the positive news coverage he garnered when the news media wanted him to win the 2016 Republican primary (the media were trying to set up Republicans to lose the presidential race, thinking he was the weakest candidate), he was able to prevail in that election by largely campaigning via tweets, even as media vilified his every gesture and word during the general election run-off.
No, I mean that Republicans seem to mainly refuse to embrace wise political strategies and liberty and constitutionalism and truth — and that refusal is both un-American and stupid.
A few examples are in order.
The first time Republicans’ losing strategies really smacked me in the head was during Wisconsin’s 2018 political campaign, wherein there was a race for the governor’s office and a U.S. senatorial spot. In that year, there were several Republican candidates running for the U.S. Senate primary, and Republican Governor Scott Walker was running against Democrat Tony Evers. The Republicans failed miserably in that campaign as a result of their strategy.
Through the summer prior to election, one of the Republican candidates for U.S. Senate, Kevin Nicholson, spent a lot of money on ads to get elected, with ads airing regularly and often, yet when the state primary election came along, the state Republican Party backed longtime establishment Republican Leah Vukmir — a reward for her years of service — who had until that time spent little on ads. And the party faithful elected her.
After the primary, Vukmir’s Senate campaign seemed mainly to consist of the party distributing lawn signs and buying a handful of commercials, even as her opponent, Democrat Tammy Baldwin, had people going door to door and the Baldwin campaign widely vilified Vukmir in ads as being against affordable healthcare (though Vukmir is also a nurse). Vukmir’s effort was negligible at best. On election day, Walker, a popular governor, lost to Evers by the slimmest of margins, and Vukmir was soundly thrashed. It is safe to say that if another Republican candidate had run for the U.S. Senate seat — a Republican who would have actually run a competitive race, with ads — he’d have had a legitimate chance at being elected, and he’d have assured that Scott Walker was reelected. But Republicans at the top virtually assured that both races were lost.
This year’s election saw a similar sort of failure by Republicans, though admittedly, absent vote fraud Trump likely would have won by a substantial margin, as he did in the rust-belt state Ohio after that state enacted measures to protect election integrity.
In the 2020 elections, in Wisconsin, where I live, the most prevalent Biden ads claimed two things: that under the Biden plan no person in the country who makes under $400,000 would see his taxes raised and that Trump destroyed the economy. Neither claim even resembles the truth, yet neither claim was really disputed by the Trump campaign. (And most Republican U.S. representative candidates did little mass advertising on TV or radio, instead seemingly planning to ride Trump’s coattails into federal office.)
Yet, in truth, even if Biden’s tax plan included Americans who make $200,000 or more a year as “rich,” he’d end up way short of the funds needed to fund any of his multi-trillion-dollar programs. Americans who earn $200,000 take in a total of about $3.5 trillion per year (and are taxed $840 billion, paying 58% of all federal income taxes per year). And even if we taxed away fully half their incomes, we would merely add approximately $950 billion to federal government coffers — an amount that falls short of even balancing the country’s yearly deficit (the deficit before the huge coronavirus bailouts), let alone providing spending for new projects.
So there’s no new income to be spent from that source. And Biden’s other planned source for tax money — higher corporate taxes — are mainly paid by employees, consumers, and stockholders (who tend to be old people who buy stocks for their retirement). As corporate taxes rise, the companies generally cut labor wages, increase prices of products, and cut back on dividend payment to stockholders — meaning those are largely paid by the middle class and poor people. But did the Trump campaign point out any of those facts? Not that I ever saw. The campaign merely said Biden was lying, leaving it to voters to decide whom to believe.
As to Democrat claims that Trump destroyed the economy while in office, before state governors instituted lockdowns because of COVID-19, unemployment in this country was at lows not seen for 50 years. It was at 3.5 percent in the fall of 2019. Then the lockdowns happened. At its highest point, unemployment reached 14.7 percent in April. Democrats blamed Trump for the unemployment though it was clearly the state governors who were to blame. And despite the pervasiveness of lockdowns in Democratic-run states, the country’s unemployment rate was already down to 6.9 percent in October thanks largely to Trump administration efforts to calm fears about COVID. Compare that to the Great Recession of 2008: Obama/Biden took two years to get employment levels halfway back to pre-recession levels, and four years to make it all the way back. And even that doesn’t tell half the story. Obama and Biden tried to hurt fracking by impeding its use on public lands and by creating costly rules and regulations, yet studies show that “The dramatic increase in oil and gas production [from fracking] spurred the creation of 4.3 million direct, indirect, and induced jobs in the United States between 2009 and 2015,” according to a report by the Heartland Institute entitled “Fracking Boom Masks Obama’s Horrifying Economic Numbers.” That equates to nearly half the jobs produced during Obama’s time in office and, as the report says, “without the jobs created or supported by hydraulic fracturing, Obama would have the worst record on job creation of any two-term president in recent history.” So the country succeeded despite Obama/Biden, not because of them. Again, that info didn’t come out in any Republican ads I saw.
Too, in response to COVID, it is unarguable that Democrats wanted to enact more widespread lockdowns, for longer periods, meaning they would have made our economy worse, not better. Did any of this info show up in ads where I live? Not that I saw. Though Trump’s speeches — speeches that were undoubtedly mainly watched by Republicans — referenced his good economy, the ads in my area allowed Joe Biden’s lies about Trump destroying the economy to stand, seemingly assuming Americans knew the truth.
Moreover, Biden ads blamed the Trump administration for hundreds of thousands of deaths from COVID — claiming he didn’t institute enough restrictions to stop the spread of the disease — yet no Trump ads that I saw used facts and logic to refute the claim.
If the Trump campaign had chosen to dispute Biden’s claim, its ads could have pointed out that more Americans are set to die from the lockdowns, owing to suicide, undiagnosed and untreated cancers and heart problems, and other causes, than they are from dying of COVID. Or the campaign could have pointed out the failure of the lockdowns in Europe, where despite lockdowns and mask-wearing, COVID is spreading like wildfire, or that Wisconsin saw soaring COVID rates only weeks after a mandatory mask mandate was instituted. The ads could have mentioned countries such as Spain and Belgium, which have higher death rates from COVID than the United States or pointed out a major study that showed that the vast majority of people who became ill with COVID said they always wore their masks. Or they could have noted that our country’s COVID death rate is as high as it is because of deaths in New York and New Jersey, which are areas where mask-wearing and lockdowns have been king. The Trump campaign also could have placed ads pulling on heartstrings about all of the families who lost their businesses because of lockdowns or show CDC studies indicating that cloth masks lead to more viral respiratory illness, not less. But they didn’t. Trump campaign ads didn’t do much at all to defend Trump’s plans to deal with COVID, with Trump’s speeches mainly lauding the new vaccines his administration has been bankrolling and backing. Or he could have pointed out that he is not allowed to institute mask mandates and lockdowns under the Constitution — that is up to the states.
But neither the Trump campaign nor any of the campaigns for Republican representatives in my area pointed out any of these Democratic fallacies, and that’s likely why Democrats could get enough votes via fraud to be able to claim victory in the 2020 election.
Where the Stupidity Stems From
Republicans follow such failed strategies for several reasons. First, it has always been done that way. Republicans, in other words, still run their party and campaigns 1950s-style against 21st-century, do-anything-to-win opponents.
Over the years, politicians on the campaign trail from both sides of the political spectrum used to either speak in glittering generalities or tout accomplishments that they can logically attribute to themselves, simply trying to excite their bases and get a few undecided votes. And over the years, for the most part, voters have mainly put into office the candidates with the most realistic-sounding promises or the ones who came across as most honest — outside of fraud-ridden Democrat centers such as Chicago, New York, Detroit, etc. wherein the fix was always in, of course.
In recent decades, however, the strategies have changed somewhat. Nowadays, Democrats tell the general public that the party will give them everything: free college, daycare, home healthcare, medical care, housing, food, and spending money, and the Democrats try to generate division in the nation to segregate Americans into distinct voting groups: blacks, Hispanics, whites, homosexuals, old people, young people, rich, poor, men, women, etc. Candidates often tell horrific lies about their opponents. They denigrate and demean opposing candidates, calling them racist, sexist, homophobic, selfish, and more, hoping some of the dirt sticks.
Republicans, on the other hand, usually run on their perceived accomplishments and political promises that could be dubbed socialism-lite: necessary free healthcare, reduced-cost housing, reduced-cost schooling, and more, hoping that voters realize that full-blown socialism always brings poverty and often brings violence at some level. And the Republicans still speak in glittering generalities — even as schools, social media, TV, and movies are propagandizing America’s children to hate America and praise socialism, changing the culture.
Unless Republicans change their strategy, they will become increasingly marginalized. Fewer and fewer Americans have lived during a time when communists were killing millions in China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, Cuba, and elsewhere, and voters are increasingly ignorant of world happenings, claiming that Cuba and Sweden are examples of successful socialism — though they’re not — and that previously wealthy countries such as Venezuela weren’t actually destroyed by socialism, though they clearly were.
The furthest Trump ventured into campaigning in 21st-century style was giving an unflattering nickname to his opponent: Sleepy Joe.
Because any political message that isn’t fully consistent with the latest social-justice movements or full-blown socialism is swimming against the tide of the conventional wisdom of propagandized Americans, Republicans need to take a different tact while campaigning. They need to fight lies with truth — truth backed by specific facts, not glittering generalities.
While it’s true that election campaigns can only do so much educating of constituents, even many Democrats have a hard time stomaching obvious lies and would vote for Republicans if it were obvious that a Democrat were promoting corruption and poverty. (Remember, Democrats cannot win without taking a large segment of the Christian vote — a demographic that Republicans should be able to influence.)
There are lots of political areas where Republicans could have pressed their message. For instance, Democratic politicians are almost unanimously on board with passing the Equality Act, which would take free-speech protections from Christians across the country and punish Christians for hate crimes, though American Christians have historically supported free speech for everyone, even those they disagree with morality-wise. Republicans should have asked viewers to protect free speech — and vote their espoused beliefs.
Republicans also could have highlighted the numerous studies that show that open borders hurt black and Hispanic employment and wages — pointing out that promoting open borders is inherently racist.
They could have pointed out that there is a reason that businessmen have not transformed our country into a green utopia with renewable energy despite many decades of government subsidies encouraging that very thing: There’s no less-than-astronomically-expensive way to store green energy for times when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine — explaining the concept of “spinning reserves.”
The list is practically endless, but it would mean taking a stand on issues and not trying to cater to everyone. And that leads to reason number two as to why Republicans haven’t done better: The Republican Party itself largely chooses which candidates get funded and which don’t. Funding determines the candidates’ ability to compete, and the party big wigs are often on board with the failed creed of globalism, hence favoring less-than-stellar candidates who need to take wishy-washy positions because otherwise their hypocrisy would scream out loud, rather than candidates who can stand on popular and politically powerful ideas of Americanism and truth.
For instance, in Georgia, the campaign of Republican Johsie Cruz, a Venezuelan native who is pro-freedom and anti-socialist and a strong Trump backer reportedly saw little in the way of aid from the Republican Party in her state, though a huge push behind her could have had the side effect of solidifying many Hispanic votes for Trump.
Too, Trump himself has been vilified by many Republicans, including former president George W. Bush, because Trump has been taking an America-first tact.
Until our elections see measures to improve election integrity, if Republicans who believe in liberty and individual rights want to have their candidates succeed at the polls, they have to back Republican candidates who buck present trends and pressure the party to back them also. They need politicians who can make a case to the public that socialism and globalism are harmful, thereby appealing to such a large constituency that they can overcome the fraud in most cases.
If Republicans abandoned the failed creeds of socialism and globalism and used specific facts to prove their opponents wrong, not only would Republicans then be on the right side of history, they would likely win their elections.
Anything less will mean failure.
