Okay. The terrible midterm election is three days in our rear-view mirror, and my innate toughness, optimism and just the right dose of medicinal bourbon has gotten me through the dark night of the soul. (i.e. Tuesday)
My instinctive reaction now is to take a page from one of my favorite stoic philosophers, Marcus Aurelius. (Call me Martus Aurelius if you’d like.) Even a junior-grade stoic would never whine and mope after a defeat; instead, he’d bind up his wounds (and Tuesday has left a few!), get back up and get back at it, saying, “Let’s never speak of this again.”
But a master stoic would recognize the need to analyze what caused the defeat and learn from it, even as he was busy with the wound-binding and the getting back at it, and also a bit of Eastwoodian spitting into the dirt and squinting at the vile Dem takeover of congress on the horizon.
Fortunately for me, I don’t need to do that, since CI already did that in his piece on Wednesday. (Call him Cautious Aurelius if you’d like.) I think he hit the right notes – it’s uncanny with that guy – so I will just add my two cents to his take.
Three of his most valuable points were that the Dem victories do not mean that the American people are embracing socialism (or communism, Jew-hatred and radical Islam); that while there is plenty of blame to go around, it is untenable to exempt Trump from that blame, as many on our side would like to do; and that we should be more loyal to conservative principles than to any politician.
On the first point, it’s especially painful that what seem to be the two most significant factors driving the pro-Dem vote – high gas prices/Iran and growing aggravation at the grating parts of Trump’s personality – are both obviously temporary. Assuming Bessent keeps the economic stranglehold on Iran and Trump lets our military blast any feeble attack attempts they are able to make, the war will be over soon, and gas prices will almost certainly be considerably lower again in a very few months, regardless. And Trump will be out of office in two years no matter what.
But we’re going to be stuck with a number of blue senators in red and purple states for six years!
Everybody can see that Thune and the do-little GOP contributed greatly to the defeat. Refusing to push the SAVE Act despite it being an 85-15 issue is the best example. Even if they didn’t want to kill the filibuster to pass it – there are solid arguments on both sides, though I think the definitive point is the absolute certainty that the Dems will do it the minute they control all three branches, and then we’ll have wasted an opportunity – it was still a win-win issue to take up. Our base would be motivated by the fight, and the Dems would be forced to fight and vote against a very popular bill and thus aggravate 85% of the electorate.
But Trump has to get a lot of blame too, and his recognizing that can make him a more effective president for the next two years, and inform our choice of his successor, too. As regular readers know, I’ve been a strong supporter of his (and still am), but I’ve also recognized his flaws. Even though he has a lot of conservative instincts, he’s more of a conservative-leaning populist than a consistent, committed conservative.
For example, a populist would eliminate taxes on tips, while a conservative would lower taxes on all workers, instead of picking and choosing winners and losers. A populist might love tariffs in general (as leftists have traditionally done), while a conservative would use targeted tariffs as a strategy to achieve free and fair trade by forcing other countries to drop their tariffs on our goods. Etc.
His impulsivity and lack of message discipline and consistency are also well-known bad habits. The tariffs have achieved some successes, but they would have achieved a lot more if they had been clear and consistent. (Tariffs shouldn’t pop up, be doubled, then lowered, then raised, then eliminated based on whether a foreign ambassador or politician criticized or praised him in a speech, or snubbed or sucked up to him at a summit!)
His energy level and motor over the last several months were amazing, even for someone half his age. And yet every minute spent talking about the Kennedy Center or the reflecting pool – or the arses of male politicians or female celebrities (!) – was a minute not spent on pushing out his core message. Endorsing Lindsay Graham’s sister to fill out the last 6 months of his Senate term was a nice gesture, and a cost-free one. But pushing her over experienced conservatives with established track records in a red state cost us a badly needed Senate seat.
I won’t dwell on his one crucial and inexplicable mistake for very long, since I’ve talked about it before: pushing the IRGC to the brink of collapse by mid-May, and then pulling back and wasting 4 months on naïve “negotiations” that were bound to fail, giving the Iranians the ability to inflict the damagingly high gas prices on us. His usual boldness has produced such good results in the past: taking out Soleimani; helping to drive Hamas to their knees and forcing their release of the hostages; the quick grab of the Venezuelan commie dictator and the resulting great oil deal; blasting every drug-running boat we could find to kingdom come; getting a good Greenland deal; closing the border in 27 minutes, etc.
And yet when he was on the verge of victory against Iran, he turned to the wussified Obama approach of relying on endless, toothless negotiations that transformed a quick, dramatic victory into a lethargic, stumbling one that will only come to fruition after the midterm disaster. Even worse were his constant refrains of “We’re putting the final touches on a cease fire/treaty, which will be announced tomorrow. Or the next day. But definitely by next week.” Months of that damaged his credibility and gave ammo to his enemies while vexing his supporters. I still don’t get it.
But let’s turn to a few silver linings in this election:
1. The free state of Florida ekes it out. It should never have been this close, but even in the midst of a blue tsunami, we held the line.
2. A few of the Dem winners in red states – I’m thinking of Iowa, Kansas and maybe South Carolina (not sure of that last one) – posed as moderates, and will have to either behave as moderates and provide at least a weak check on the far-left Dems, or get stomped at re-election time.
3. Most of the Dem winners are far left, and out of step with purple state electorates, and possibly even in some light-blue states, and if they govern like the extremists they are, they will set themselves up for a counter-sweep next time. (That’s much less painful with those in two-year House terms than with those senators who we’ll be stuck with until at least 2032!)
4. The Dems are their own worst enemy, and their natural intramural hatreds, plus their congenital arrogance and zealotry will damage their own candidates for 2028. Between that and their unhinged pursuit of impeachments and harassment, they are going to remind Americans why the Dems’ approval ratings (29%, even during an election they won!) are so dismal.
5. Even a few races that RINOs lost can produce good results in the future. For example, I don’t think that picking Paxton over Cornyn in the TX primary was the egregious mistake that many on our side believe it was. First because Cornyn likely would have lost too, since his fecklessness led the conservative base to reject him even before Trump endorsed Paxton at the 11th hour. (Abbott was great and he lost, so I don’t think that a non-Paxton conservative was likely to win either.) Second because RINOs whom you can’t count on when you really need them aren’t much better than Democrats, and way more aggravating for their betrayal. Third, because ending a spineless RINO’s career is a good lesson, “pour encourager les autres,” as the French say.
6. In a perverse way, I’d prefer that if we were going to lose some of the Senate races, I’m glad that we lost by a pretty wide margin instead of a razor-thin one. At least we don’t have to be tortured by the idea that we actually won but were cheated out of it (since the Dems are cheating as much as they can, always), and it’s better for us to face the unpleasantly reality when we got whipped. (The Alaska race is a good counter-example; the latest results suggest that the Democrat Peltola is “winning” by around 700 votes, while 3600 votes went to the fake Dan Sullivan. If it’s true that her campaign induced the faker to run, I think the only fair way to resolve that race would be to add the fake Dan Sullivan’s votes to the real one, giving him the win. To do otherwise is to reward the most blatant kind of cheating imaginable. That might not be possible, but either way, we need to hammer this story between now and ’28!)
I started with Marcus Aurelius, and I’ll end with him. One of his best sayings is one that I have minor reservations about: “The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.”
My reservations arise because sometimes our enemies still have admirable qualities. Rommel was bold and had great tactical instincts; Robert E Lee’s cleverness and elan were inspiring. Many generals in most wars love their men, and many soldiers on both sides courageously risk their lives for their comrades and their country.
Similarly, many on our own side often have glaring flaws of their (our) own. As mentioned above, many in the GOP regularly aggravate me.
But I think conservative principles – economic and political freedom, free speech, love of America and the West, respect for law and order, and our patrimony from Athens and Jerusalem – are the building blocks of a great society.
And our opponents’ base now has very little of that. Their default setting appears to be making dishonest and bad-faith arguments, deploying hypocritical double standards and trying to cheat, and being motivated by unrelenting malice toward all conservatives and normal people.
We’ve got to dust ourselves off and get back in the fight, but we can’t let ourselves be consumed with the darker side of politics the way that they have been.
So I guess I’ll tweak Marcus Aurelius’ noble sentiment, and say…
The best revenge is not to be like the Democrats.
Hamas and the DSA delenda est.
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