Imagine what would happen if Republicans seized this key opportunity to hold a sustained national debate on issues like inflation, crime, national security threats and the costs of Joe Biden’s border policies. With a majority of voters opposed to Biden’s policies, no political analyst would argue that Democrats could withstand such intensive scrutiny on the nation’s biggest concerns.
So instead of avoiding the September budget fight, why not face it head on? The timing of early voting on September 30th may be strategically ideal for a cross-border budget fight. Why not use your greatest strength when it matters most?
Employing a strategy of “running out the clock” based on the ignorant belief that this election can be won is political malpractice.
Many of us have lamented in recent months that Republicans have given up influence over all the bills that the Biden administration must pass for the remainder of its term. But that assertion is not strictly true. The FY24 budget surrender has continued into the new year, and the FY2025 government budget deadline is just a few months away on September 30. We have never considered FY2025 as a factor, based on the assumption that Republicans would never launch a government shutdown fight right before the election.
But shouldn’t the assumption be just the opposite?
Why won’t Republicans dangle funding for border invasions over the heads of Democrats right now, as Americans are about to start voting? After all, we’re not talking about cutting Social Security or the popular programs Americans depend on. We’re talking about funding foreign invasions by squatters, gang members, murderers, rapists, and, increasingly, Middle Eastern terrorists and military-age Chinese men.
Republicans will have enough news stories to flood the government budget debate with the many reprehensible consequences of Biden’s invasion, forcing Democrats to either concede or face electoral backlash. 42% of Democrats I support mass deportation. Simply driving back the new invaders would be an easy way to get supermajority support.
The fact that no one is pursuing this strategy exposes the mistake that conservatives, including Trump, are making in this election. Trump is politically attuned to the establishment way of thinking: all he needs to do is delay the election, give the Democrats everything they want, and avoid any internal party infighting or drama. If he wins the election, somehow everything will be fixed. This explains why Trump supports Mike Johnson’s speakership and the “clear the deck” strategy, and why he is backing all the lower-ranking establishment candidates in the primaries.
But this strategy incorrectly assumes that Trump is a sure winner and won’t need to launch a major operation to win. It’s certainly possible for Trump to beat Biden, but given his losing streak since the 2017 Virginia elections, it seems pretty odd to assume we have an insurmountable lead and opt for a “run until the clock runs out” strategy.
Have we learned nothing from the 2022 election? Or from nearly every special election since? Or from the Wisconsin Supreme Court election? Or from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court election? Is no one even remotely interested in why Democrats won in 2022 and continue to win the most contentious special elections?
Polls are internally contradictory and inconsistent. Polls have predicted a Republican surge in 2022, when for the first time in history (except after 9/11) the party in the White House won a midterm election in the midst of a terrible economy. Why repeat the same lazy, self-satisfied “look at the polls” mantra while rejecting policy debate and assuming things will change on their own?
To understand why President Trump must demand a border dispute on his budget proposal, it is instructive to look at why Republicans keep losing elections.
The current electoral climate runs counter to 200 years of history. Even when the world is relatively calm, the economy is booming, and the incumbent president is charismatic and popular, the party that occupies the White House always loses in midterm elections, to one degree or another. Consider 2010 and 1994, when Republicans won landslide victories against popular presidents in reaction to the Democratic Party’s extreme policies, despite far less political and cultural malaise.
But they have a president plagued by incontinence and dementia, record housing prices, border encroachments, rising crime and a string of radical policies that clearly are unpopular with swing voters. And still Democrats hold leads in nearly all Senate races.
Every conservative should ask themselves why Republicans will lose in 2022 (and most elections after that) and not make the wave elections of 1994 and 2010 look like red spurts. Until that question is answered, it is political malpractice to adopt a “time out” strategy based on the ignorant belief that this election is guaranteed to be won because “this time is different.”
The dichotomy between the Democratic Party’s poor approval ratings for its policies and jobs and its electoral success makes it clear that we are failing to bring these auspicious political issues to the forefront of voters’ minds. The modern Republican Party is a combination of internal weakness, destructive elements, and Trump’s personal and image-related baggage that has made the election more about drama than about substantive issues.
With that in mind, the best way to focus the election on the issues that plague Democrats is to draw a line under our most popular issue in the middle of the budget fight, right when voting begins.
Does Trump want to shut down the government because Biden refuses to give up funding for Venezuelan gangs? Middle Eastern terrorists storm our US Marine Corps base More than the discussion about Stormy Daniels and his recent court hearing?
If we don’t take a stand and do nothing to highlight Biden’s unpopular policies, voters will remain in the status quo and the Republican Party will lose again.
Democrats have superior ground operations, first-rate vote-by-mail and early voting operations, and far out-resourced Republicans in almost every election. Unless Republicans make a big move and win over enough of the safety-and-security-conscious suburban swing voters, they are unlikely to overcome the ground-built blue firewall that has defied political science in recent elections.
