By Monica Showalter
Well, the red wave wasn’t.
But there were bright spots for Republicans and trying to parse why they won is probably key to winning the next election for conservatives.
Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis drew a lot of attention as the night’s big Republican winner in last night’s race, knocking out his Democrat opponent, former Gov. Charlie Crist, with a 19.4-point blowout.
But there was Sen. Rand Paul, who won with an even higher margin. At last count, Paul won with a 22.6-point lead over his Democrat opponent, Charles Booker.
What explains these incredible margins of victory? DeSantis won his original governor’s chair on the barest of margins, and then won huge numbers of Florida voters over.
Paul, who won his first Senate election by 11 percentage points in conservative Kentucky two terms ago, has since doubled his margin of victory on term three, meaning he, too, has persuaded more voters.
It may come down to the rule of scandals also applying to why candidates win big in elections.
What is the rule of scandals? Well, conventional political wisdom holds that if the average voter can recite a politician’s scandal in a sentence or two, the scandal sticks to the politician. Candidate A uttered a racist statement. Politician B took a little envelope full of cash from a developer in exchange for a favor. Politician C seeded nursing homes with COVID patients. If a scandal is so tangled and complicated that it can’t be uttered in one sentence, the politician skates. This explains a lot about why Bill Clinton got away with as much as he did on Whitewater, the Clinton Foundation, all the corrupt things he was involved in — and why he didn’t on Monica Lewinsky. The latter scandal was easily recitable. The others were not.
Ron DeSantis won his voters over by his performance in office. His crown was full of stars, all of which could be described in a sentence. One of the brightest was his stellar performance during and especially in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian — ordering the evacuations, getting the aid to the needy, getting the place cleaned up, and restoring the bridge to Sanibel Island ahead of time and under budget. Voters are accustomed to chaos and incompetence in situations like these and often give politicians a wide margin for error. But DeSantis got the job done and the message sent is that he will get all jobs done when they need doing. He’s a good man in a storm.
He also challenged corporate Disney, which sought to impose its transgender morality onto the Florida voting public as a wokester corporation. The fuse was lit over a reasonable law passed in the Florida legislature that sex education not be shoved in the faces of seven-year-olds in public schools. Disney twisted that into a phony claim of “don’t say gay” which wasn’t what the law was about and vowed to bankroll opposition politicians who would repeal that law. DeSantis not only refused to back down in the face of that coercion, he yanked Disney’s privileged corporate tax status as a sort of self-governing entity, which had been put into place when its Disneyworld park was built some 50 years ago, and made Disney live by the same laws as the rest of the state’s companies. That was effective action that could be recited easily and the wokester company shut up after that.
He also was defiant and effective on COVID restrictions at the height of the COVID pandemic, protecting and saving Florida’s elderly and vulnerable citizens from the fate of the elderly suffered in Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, New York and California, where COVID patients were forced by government order into nursing homes where they infected and killed thousands. He also defied the mass lockdowns seen in those states, which severely damaged those economies. DeSantis kept Florida safe without the lockdowns, the business shutdowns, the killings of old people, by focusing on protecting the vulnerable while also protecting the healthy. He took amazing hell from it from the Washington establishment and COVID industrial complex with big money interests demanding vaccines and hospitalizations, but stood firm in the storm and his state came out of the pandemic far healthier than other states which embraced lockdowns. Again, a good man to have during a storm.
Lastly, he (and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott) shifted the momentum on the migrant surge, after the Biden administration failed to enforce the border, allowing some two million unvetted illegals into the country. He launched the famous Martha’s Vineyard “publicity stunt” transporting a planeload of migrants to the tony sanctuary city, which indeed was a small, but memorable act, driving home the point that the border crisis was the country’s crisis, it wasn’t fair to just shove the flood onto the border states to pay for, which was the Biden administration’s replacement-theory approach. He was screamed at in the press for it — but he didn’t back down, and it sure as heck didn’t hurt him in this last governor’s race. Again, a very nameable act with very concrete results.
Rand Paul was pretty much the same way.
He is known for his early challenge to Obamacare during his earlier terms.
The nameable things he did as Senator during his current term, which is a little trickier to do as a Senator given that the Senate is a talk shop, are nevertheless very comparable in quality to that of Ron DeSantis.
Rand Paul made headlines by being the most important challenger to Dr. Anthony Fauci and his lockdown mania. He pressed Fauci on his business dealings, and even more important, on his claims to be the embodiment of science, hauling him in for hearings. He pressed Fauci about the most obvious anti-scientific view held by Fauci who was demanding mass vaccinations, even of those who had had COVID: What the heck did he know about natural immunity? Paul asked. He exposed the hypocrisies. That made an impact.
https://twitter.com/alexbruesewitz/status/1590403098799116288
Anthony DeLuca takes a win in PA, he is a perfect representative for all his voters.
The biggest midterm loser is Donald Trump. He single-handedly killed the “Red Wave” by foisting several unelectable candidates on the GOP in place of more moderate Republicans who likely could have won.
Hey. No hard feelings! I don’t feel at all bad about Stacy Abrams losing to Brian Kemp, who is an honorable and honest conservative republican. Georgia voters also made their feelings known by retaining Brad Rathsperger, who wouldn’t buckle to Trump’s pressure or threats. If you’re looking for a possible 2024 weathervane, that might serve as one.
AZ State Representative-Elect Austin Smith In Victory Speech: “What Happened In Maricopa County Is CRIMINAL” – “Get Rid Of These STUPID Dominion Voting Machines”
NOTHING happened in Maricopa County, despite Trump and Kari Lake’s mindless blather. Initial tabulation problems haven’t affected the accuracy of the count in any way. Ballots were failing to read at all in tabulation machines due to misalignment. The mechanical setting was corrected, the ballots were run through, and all were accurately tabulated. No voters were denied their say because the tabulation machine problem had no effect on the voting process itself. It only delayed the counting process. Would anyone argue that the process of casting votes had been delayed if several human beings responsible for subsequently hand-counting them didn’t show up for work because of unexpected illness?
Likewise, it isn’t unusual for final results not to be known by the end of Election Day. As much time as necessary is taken to assure ACCURATE results.
Election deniers are simply exploiting ignorance about how the process works.
Florida has four times the population of AZ. Your argument lacks credibility.
It’s the county population that’s relevant, not the state population.
You missed the point entirely
Republicans took the House.
They now have enough rope to hang themselves.
People will expect them to actually ACCOMPLISH something useful.
BIG DAY for Trump-Endorsed Candidates that Fake News Media Will Not Report – 9 Losses and 174 Wins So Far!
We will get the usual load of Malarkey from the M.S. Media gutter dwellers over his election like we did in 2016 over Trump winning the Peoples Vote