I’ve written a lot of op-Eds, but none have elicited the number of responses I incurred from my article titled “Postmortem Analysis of the Red Puddle.” I triggered Republicans, and maybe that’s necessary. We are losing, folks, and if we don’t identify the problem, we can’t fix it.
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Since losing my election, I wasn’t exactly sure what my next move was, but in the short term, it might be trying to wake up the local Republican base. My goal is to focus us as a party, so we stop being distracted by shiny things.
I seem to have evoked a reaction from three main groups: The Trump die-hards, the election deniers, and the pro-lifers. I have personal friends in all these camps, and my mission isn’t to offend anyone but to force us all to look in the mirror. My observations aren’t the only elements of the larger issue, but I believe they are part of it, and I want us all to put our heads together to see the bigger picture.
TRUMP DIE-HARDS
Trump may not be the entire problem, but he certainly isn’t the solution, and I am under no obligation to carry water for a man whose antics fundamentally turn off a purple state like NH. I received a lot of replies that were a generalized counter that Trump isn’t responsible for the hell this country is in. I didn’t make this point in my previous article, but since you’re asking, he is very much responsible for the following:
The birth of Covid fascism, where he cowardly handed this country over to evil medical bureaucrats and viciously attacked any governor attempting to buck lockdowns.
The out-of-control spending that resulted in inflation, and Trump punished any Republican who tried to stand in his way (Thomas Massie, for example).
He distracted the base from what really happened in 2020, so we never learned from all of the issues in 2020.
He was the primary GOP fundraiser, but he hoarded the money.
He led with personality instead of policy, resulting in a distraction from policy.
Trump did many good things, and I know that all presidents make mistakes and rarely own up to them, but Trump BRAGS about his failures. If I have to hear his gloating about Warp Speed vaccines again… Trump is a shiny thing, and he is not the second coming who will save us.
ELECTION DENIERS
I don’t know exactly what happened in 2020 in every corner of this country, but I know this: election fraud isn’t new, and we cannot go another two years talking about machines. Both sides have fixed elections at some level for decades, and we all know it. But here in NH, the obsession with the machines distracted us. The NHGOP was panicked into pacifying the election deniers by focusing energy on “poll challengers” instead of coming up with a real campaign strategy.
We centered in on what was happening inside the polls while the Democrats ran a sophisticated, on-the-ground GOTV strategy to get people to the polls, and they probably laughed at us the entire time. Primary recounts in 2022 were dead on to the machines. But we were so obsessed with the machines we didn’t realize the Democrats were on to their next scheme: same-day registration. Was every person who registered same day legitimate? Maybe yes, maybe no, but this type of fraud isn’t new either. What is new is Republicans completely failed during a midterm year with a disastrous Democrat president.
Believe whatever you’d like, but please recognize there are many issues, not just election integrity. Machines are shiny things.
PRO-LIFERS
The last group has been gentle, but persistent. No less than a dozen people sent me this response from the good people at Cornerstone Action: https://www.nhcornerstone.org/latest-news/when-they-blame-pro-lifers-ask-them-this-one-question/. It’s quite true that NH Republicans didn’t attempt to counter the abortion messaging from the left. They ignored it because polling suggested they could, and they didn’t want to be in defense mode.
A positive message Republicans could have employed was to celebrate the 24-week abortion restriction as being popular with the vast majority of the state. I contend this would have worked in any other year, but pro-lifers are failing to see just how monumental the Dobbs decision was to both the fundraising efforts of the left and the emotional response from the general population.
I contend that even the best pro-life message in NH would not have made any difference in the year of Dobbs. Pro-lifers embrace it just as the Democrats embraced Obamacare. They willingly sacrificed an election for Obamacare and their long-term goals. We sacrificed an election for Dobbs and those long-term goals. Take ownership.
Another point, the message of celebrating the 24-week abortion restriction would not have worked on Gen Z or any of the low-information voters I discussed in my previous article. It’s too nuanced of a message. Democrats fed them the line, “Republicans want to ban abortion.” Nothing less than a counter message of “Republicans will never ban abortion” would have worked on these people, and we know that most Republicans could never abandon a platform issue like that.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. We can’t do what we have been doing the last two years and expect to win again. We lost in a year where every historic metric meant we should have won big. Let’s put out heads together, figure out what the Democrats are doing that we are not, and stop being distracted by shiny things.
