“When I joined the Marine Corps, I was still a Jamaican. But this country has done so much for me, I was willing, willing to die for this country.” – Virginia Lieutenant Governor-Elect Winsome Sears on Election Night.
Election 2021
Last month I wrote about how We the People are awakening in America. I talked about how the rumblings of the Silent Majority are getting louder, and on Election Day 2021 we heard loud and clear the voices of people standing up in opposition to the progressive agenda.
Across America, union-favoring leftist school boards were voted out and reform candidates were voted in. In Colorado, the Douglas County voters elected 4 reform candidates to oust the terrible union-favoring school board that was in place.
This is largely due to the fact that school boards have not only been unresponsive to parents, they have made so many decisions that are actually harmful to children, from unnecessary mask mandates, to teaching Critical Race Theory, to squelching parents at school board meetings to calling concerned parents “domestic terrorists”. As if that weren’t bad enough, Attorney General Merrick Garland sent out a “directive” to the FBI and U.S Attorneys to “intervene” by “…using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate.”
Between the COVID pandemic, mask and vaccination mandates and school closures – which produce real harm to learning – parents have had enough, and made their voices heard through the ballot box.
The disasters of the Biden presidency are many and manifest. From rising energy costs to supply chain disruptions, we are seeing just the beginning of economic turmoil unlike anything we’ve seen since the 1970s. In foreign policy, Biden has lost Afghanistan and made a laughingstock out of our country. We are objectively less safe now than we were one year ago.
While Democrats are doing everything they can to put American oil and gas companies out of business, they are begging OPEC to increase oil production to bring gasoline prices down. I’m old enough to remember when weaning our country off of foreign oil was an impossible dream. Now, thanks to American ingenuity we ARE energy independent. Biden and the climate cult Democrats want to undo all that.
Speaking of climate change, at the recent COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland (to which many attendees flew in private jets, emitting over 1,000 tons of carbon) a group called Like-Minded Developing Countries presented a paper demanding that wealthy countries (meaning primarily the U.S.) give them $1,300,000,000,000 annually starting in 2030 to fund renewable energy in developing nations. That’s up from the $100,000,000,000 we are already supposed to provide from 2020 to 2025.
This is unconscionable – not only can we not afford it, it is just the “gimme” attitude so prevalent on the Left in full. Interestingly, last year those deadbeat developed nations fell $20 billion short. If it’s difficult to pay $100 billion, paying 13 times as much will be impossible.
Joe “The Big Guy” Biden (D) is a deeply unpopular president and is a man who belongs in an assisted living facility enjoying his retirement, not the leader of the free world. People wonder just who is in charge at the White House. After campaigning as a “moderate” Democrat (whatever that means), he has taken a hard left turn and is letting the crazy progressives in his party run the show.
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia showed the rest of America just how tired we are of Democratic governance. Despite going for Biden by 10 points in 2020, on Election Day the voters decisively elected Republican Glenn Youngkin as governor and Winsome Sears as lieutenant governor with over 50% of the vote. In addition, voters booted Democrats from office, electing a Republican as Attorney General and giving the GOP control of the House of Delegates.
Governor-elect Youngkin showed the Republican Party how to navigate the post-Trump era successfully. By focusing on issues of importance to the voters of Virginia – education, the economy and jobs – instead of running a negative campaign like his opponent did, he showed us that when Republicans stay true to the values of our party, they can defeat Democrats in what was considered to be a solidly blue state.
Now, it’s up to them to govern by conservative principles and demonstrate that Republican governance is indeed better.
Defunding the Police
Last year, after the death of George Floyd, most major cities were overtaken by violent rioting. Property damage and several deaths took place as leftists ran amok. Highways were blocked by protestors, endangering lives and imposing illegal restraint on commuters.
As several large cities cut their police budgets, many police chiefs – many of them minorities – resigned. Democrats in Colorado passed a bill attacking law enforcement with the result that violent crime in Colorado, particularly Denver, has skyrocketed, as indeed it has across the country.
This insane idea of defunding the police actually made it onto the ballot in Minneapolis where the violence began in May 2020. The ballot in that city had a measure that would have amended the city’s charter to replace the Police Department with a nebulous Department of Public Safety. After seeing an increase in violent crime of 17% across Minnesota, the voters wisely voted 57% to 44% against the measure, according to Fox News.
In Austin, the progressive city council voted in August 2020 by 11-0 to cut up to 1/3rd of the police budget with an immediate cut of $20 million. Now, the police force is down by over 13% and losing 15-22 officers a month due to retirements and resignations. The result? Violent crime in that Texas city has skyrocketed with record numbers of homicides, aggravated assault, robbery, battery and rapes. Hoping to reverse this trend, a group of citizens put a measure on the ballot to #MakeAustinSafe. Unfortunately for them, it failed.
People will not tolerate higher crime levels for long. Democrats, who are often more sympathetic to the criminals than to victims and law enforcement, have long been soft on crime. This aspect of big city life will most likely harm the Democrats at the polls next year.
The Midterm Election
In the years since World War Two, the president’s party has lost an average of 26 seats in the House and 4 in the Senate. With abysmal poll numbers, it is quite likely that in the election next year the Democrats will lose the House and very possibly the Senate. It can’t come soon enough.
To put it quite simply: the Democrats’ tax, borrowing and spending plans are a recipe for disaster. This past week, the House passed a $1,000,000,000,000 “infrastructure” bill – a very pricey infusion of funding for roads, bridges, broadband and water systems. This bill was passed on a bipartisan basis, and while it could be argued that the nation’s infrastructure is a legitimate function of government, it’s going to strain an already bloated budget.
To make matters worse, the Democrats are still wrangling over the $2,000,000,000,000 social and climate change bill (down by $1,500,000,000,000) that, if passed, would be the largest expansion of the federal government since the Great Society of the 1960s.
That’s why this election is so important on a national level and also for blue states like Colorado. Finally, for the first time since 2007, the Republicans have an excellent chance of unseating incumbent governor Jared Polis (D) and retaking at least the state senate. This is not an impossible dream because we can see, from real world results, that Democrats are unfit to govern.
As I’ve written elsewhere, Republicans in Colorado face an uphill battle. Why? In large part, because of the entrenched progressive infrastructure that has been in existence for almost two decades. The people that run these organizations are committed to “progressive” values, very well financed and very well organized. They’ve developed a playbook that includes media domination and disinformation, social media dominance, especially on Twitter, boots on the ground activists who show up for rallies, protests and the occasional riot. They are good at turning out their base and harvesting ballots. They own the cities of Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins.
But what we have on our side is this: a growing disgust with the president in particular and Democrat governance in general.
This is the election to get involved. Walk for candidates and donate! Another part of the progressive advantage is their access to large sums of money. As I talked about in The Progressive Advantage – Money, in 2018 when the Democrats flipped the state senate, the so-called “Fab Five” candidates (including the winner of Independence Institute’s “Californian of the Year” Faith Winter (D-Westminster) outraised their Republican opponents by almost 3:1. The five candidates (Danielson, Donovan, Pettersen, Story and Winter) raised over $2 million, averaging $400,000 each with 17% of their money coming from out of state. It takes money to win elections. Republicans need to recognize this and donate to their candidates.
It’s time to raise your voice! Stand up for your right to keep what you’ve earned. Stand up for your right to make your own medical decisions. Stand up for your children’s education. Stand for modern life, which is powered by fossil fuels. Stand for freedom. Stand for America.
This next election and the presidential election in 2024 have the potential to reverse the course of America’s decline. Let’s take our country back.
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