Now in the autumn of this critical political season, a midterm loss of Congress for Republicans feels inevitable, as the last five midterm elections saw the party in power lose seats in Congress.
This trend goes back even longer than the 2000s. Since 1946, the president’s party has lost seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in 18 of 20 midterm elections (90% of the time).
President Donald Trump ran into this trend in his first term when, in 2018, Republicans lost 41 seats in the House — though they did gain two seats in the U.S. Senate.
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Despite the pattern, a loss is not inevitable. Consider Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election eve address “A Vision for America.” This speech came at a time of great national peril and discontentment, so, to give clarity to his positive vision, Reagan drew on American heroes from astronauts to John Wayne:
“Last year I lost a friend who was more than a symbol of the Hollywood dream industry; to millions he was a symbol of our country itself. And when he died, the headlines seemed to convey all the doubt about America, all the nostalgia for a seemingly lost past.
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“‘The Last American Hero,’ said one headline, ‘Mr. America dies,’ said another.
“Well, I knew John Wayne well, and no one would have been angrier at being called the ‘last American hero.’
“Just before his death, he said in his own blunt way, ‘Just give the American people a good cause, and there’s nothing they can’t lick.'”
Republicans have done a poor job giving the American people a good cause. The thing is, the right cause is what led to the two exceptions.
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The last exception to the party in power losing seats in a midterm was in 2002, when Republicans under George W. Bush gained eight seats. This occurred during a time of high presidential approval ratings after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The other modern exception was in 1998, when Democrats gained five seats under Bill Clinton during a time of high presidential approval thanks to a strong economy (ironically, in part because Republicans, under Speaker Newt Gingrich, balanced the budget and strong-armed a temporarily weakened Clinton into agreeing to welfare reform).
So, both of these exceptions came at times of strong national unity. But, to be more precise, the exceptions came when voters rallied to the party in power for largely nationalistic reasons.
This, if articulated cleanly, could and should benefit Republicans, as the Democrats have turned so far left that the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) official platform now feels like it could be the next platform for the party of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.
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But how can Republicans not only show this stark contrast to voters, but also unleash a national fervor for truth, justice, and the American way, as the American comic book hero Superman once put it?
As Reagan did, the best way to do this is to herald our heroes.
America has innovators, entrepreneurs, capitalists, and heroes in blue and green; we have armed citizens who defend themselves and others; we have civil-rights champions like Harmeet Dhillon; we have explorers who would go back to the moon and then to Mars thanks to entrepreneurs like Elon Musk… these and other heroes can also be juxtaposed beside the so-called heroes of today’s left (the deep-state bureaucrats, anti-Israel activists, open-border politicians, proponents of allowing men into women’s sports, gun grabbers, and more) to show who is actually for American freedom.
Do voters want the low taxes, pro-freedom agenda of, say, Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis, or do they want the high taxes and increasing special-interest squalor of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s California? Do voters want our heroes in blue to maintain what is now the lowest violent-crime rate America has seen in more than half a century, or do they want George Soros-backed district attorneys to give criminals get-out-of-jail-free cards again and again so they can prey on us?
Do voters want Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement to let us know what is in our food and more, or do they want big food to go back to writing our guidelines?
Do voters want to be led by an elite class of “experts,” such as we were during Covid by Anthony Fauci, or do they want the individual autonomy to freely decide for themselves?
Each issue needs to be shown in vivid and very human terms. Reagan, again, understood this. Near the end of his “Vision for America” speech, Reagan spoke of American astronauts who had lost their lives in the quest to reach the moon before saying, “These were not the deeds of men who set out to be heroes. In many ways, they were ordinary Americans whose spontaneous response to time and circumstance gave us a glimpse into the soul of this country and the enduring vigor of her people.”
Americans right now are not getting enough of this kind of pro-American vision of our future, but the vast majority of them want it so badly.
