The Real Question Is Whether The GOP Is Capable Of Leading
One of the things we’ll come back to again and again here at RVIVR is a notion I talk about quite a bit in my book. In fact, here’s a short excerpt…
Right now, whether you’re a Democrat, Independent, or Republican, you’re likely scoffing at the idea today’s Republican Party is capable of making a majority that can govern—politically, culturally, and economically—for the next three generations. And you aren’t wrong.
But the revolution has to start within the GOP. It has to fundamentally change the nature of conservatism and Republicanism. It has to inject a strong dose of testosterone and human growth hormone into the American Right. I’d suggest giving the movement a new name better reflective of the challenge it seeks to meet, and demanding that it go on offense and stop losing ground to the Hard Left.
In context, that quote comes at the end of a recitation of the abject failures of the Democrat Party where it comes to public perception.
The book is just days away from publication, so I’ve been going back through it searching for errors and things to change at the last minute. Obviously, this close to the finish line you don’t want to change much. Thankfully, what I’m finding is a lot more amplification of the points it made in events since the principal production was completed than anything else.
But this question of whether the Republican Party is worthy of the power the public looks willing to entrust it with is fundamental to our future. Not whether that power is forthcoming.
It’s forthcoming.
You don’t keep power when these are your numbers.
Things are so bad that Power Line’s John Hinderaker reported the results of a Democrat poll in Minnesota of all places which had Biden drowning by TWENTY POINTS…
Change Research (I assume a Democrat-affiliated pollster, given MinnPost’s orientation) has Joe Biden’s approval in Minnesota deeply under water at 35% approve, 55% disapprove. A whopping 48%–including an astonishing 61% of men!–have a “very unfavorable” view of our president.
On the issues, Biden fares poorly, as you would expect. His favorability on inflation is 30%/70%, with a 57% majority strongly disapproving and 30% lying to the pollster.
Minnesota is no longer as uniformly Democrat as it used to be, but it’s definitely blue. And a 35-55 number is a catastrophe. It’s an unmistakable sign the Dems are facing an existential beatdown this fall.
Not just because they’re going to lose the midterms. They’ve lost a massive number of seats before. They lost big in 1994 and in 2010 and managed to survive. In fact, in both of those years the Democrat president responsible for the annihilation managed to get re-elected (Bill Clinton in 1996 and Barack Obama in 2012).
But things are a little different now.
For all of the manifest deficiencies of Clinton and Obama, neither of whom were good presidents, they at least were recognized as skillful politicians. Neither had much of a record of losing elections.
Joe Biden has lost a lot more national elections than he’s won, plus he’s a potato-brained octogenarian who can’t remember who he is half the time. Worse, Biden is handled by a B-team cabal of clown leftovers from the Obama administration who mistake their current offices, won in an election of suspect integrity, as a mandate for “fundamental transformation” of a country which didn’t ask for that and doesn’t want it.
The transformation is coming, of course, because America’s current status quo isn’t survivable and won’t continue. Runaway inflation as the economy crashes into stagnancy and the markets go bearish, and as crime suffocates our cities and the public loses what remains of its confidence in key institutions, won’t be rewarded.
No, the GOP is getting a new opportunity to lead.
But what GOP?
Not the Republican Party of Mitch McConnell and the Bushes and Mitt Romney and Bill Cassidy, that’s for sure. Americans are not turning over the reins of power willingly to those moribund milquetoast mediocrities. They’ll vote Republican to fire the Democrats, but what they want is leaders who are willing to exercise power for the public good rather than hold fast to a status quo which sucks.
And that’s going to be a difficult position to be in when a GOP majority on Capitol Hill is canceled out by an intransigent, if lame-duck and publicly despised, Biden regime.
But a will to exercise power, act boldly, take calculated risks and seize the initiative can turn the DC gridlock engine into an asset if there is suitable leadership to do so.
At RVIVR, we’re going to spend our time talking about what that leadership is made of and what it can do. We welcome the conversation, and most of all, we’re optimistic that a new Republican Party not wedded to those old notions of surrender and stagnation will lead the way into a new political era.
