When Will the GOP Learn? Never I Suspect

I'll admit that I really didn't follow this election too much. Where I live all we had on the ballot was some school board and water district seats where the candidates were essentially carbon copies of each other and some Constitutional Amendments that are worded so carefully that it is nigh impossible for people to vote against them (of course they never talk about how they will pay for all of these things). For example:

PROPOSITION NUMBER 1 (HJR 126) THE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT PROTECTING THE RIGHT TO ENGAGE IN FARMING, RANCHING, TIMBER PRODUCTION, HORTICULTURE, AND WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT.

This passed 79% to 21%

Of the 14 Amendments proposed, only one failed to pass. That was the one that proposed to raise the mandatory retirement age for State Justices and Judges.

Evidently, elections in other places were more interesting and intense. In Ohio, the voters passed an Amendment to legalize abortion at a Constitutional level. They also passed by a similar margin the authorization of the recreational use of marijuana. The usual suspects are out today saying that abortion is a losing issue for the GOP, and Trump is a losing issue (though one person pointed out that in KY you see two candidates one who was anti-Trump GOP and one who was pro-Trump GOP and both won, the pro-Trump one likely because of turnout by Trump people). Still, reading X today almost every pundit is saying that if only the GOP would abandon Trump then the GOP would own the issues and win handily.

Of course, this ignores two major issues. The first is that the GOP was outspent in KY, OH, and VA.

Ironically, I saw a Xeet today that blamed this on Trump as well, saying that if only the ignorant rubes of the party would get rid of him, the donors would open up their wallets.

The second problem is even worse. That is ballot harvesting that the Dems perfected in '20 and continued in '22. The GOP continues to focus on election-day turnout, completely missing that these elections are not about voting, but collecting ballots.

In this race, the GOP candidate turned out 860K on election day, winning by a healthy 180K, but the mail-in ballots were skewed so heavily to the Democrats that he lost by 200K. Then think about this Xeet and what it means:

The Biden administration is using the Federal gov't to register voters and get them to apply for mail-in ballots. Here is part of EO 14019:

Sec. 3. Expanding Access to Voter Registration and Election Information. Agencies shall consider ways to expand citizens' opportunities to register to vote and to obtain information about, and participate in, the electoral process.

(a) The head of each agency shall evaluate ways in which the agency can, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, promote voter registration and voter participation. This effort shall include consideration of:

(i) ways to provide relevant information in the course of activities or services that directly engage with the public—including through agency materials, websites, online forms, social media platforms, and other points of public access—about how to register to vote, how to request a vote-by-mail ballot, and how to cast a ballot in upcoming elections; (ii) ways to facilitate seamless transition from agencies' websites directly to State online voter registration systems or appropriate Federal websites, such as Vote.gov;

(iii) ways to provide access to voter registration services and vote-by-mail ballot applications in the course of activities or services that directly engage with the public, including:

(A) distributing voter registration and vote-by-mail ballot application forms, and providing access to applicable State online systems for individuals who can take advantage of those systems;

(B) assisting applicants in completing voter registration and vote-by-mail ballot application forms in a manner consistent with all relevant State laws; and

(C) soliciting and facilitating approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and State officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises;

(iv) ways to promote and expand access to multilingual voter registration and election information, and to promote equal participation in the electoral process for all eligible citizens of all backgrounds; and

(v) whether, consistent with applicable law, any identity documents issued by the agency to members of the public can be issued in a form that satisfies State voter identification laws.

Each Agency was given 200 days to implement these provisions and further allowed States to request that an Agency act as a "voter registration agency" and if they cannot, they have to tell the President directly why they cannot. Do we really think they didn't?

I ask, when will the GOP learn? They haven't yet, and I doubt '24 will be any different. The pundit class very much wants the GOP to dump Trump so that they can go back to being the leaders of the party, without ever actually realizing that they lost that role long before Trump. If they could articulate sound reasons and policies that the people supported and actually thought would help them...and the Banana Republicans actually enacted those policies, then Trump would never have been possible because instead, the conservative movement would be winning elections at a national level like they have tended to at a State level. Of course, much of that State-level momentum was a backlash against President Obama as opposed to brilliant pundits and politicians capturing the gestalt of the people and working towards solutions. Some of these State-level efforts have been successful, but a lot of it, especially in places like Texas, has been politicians promising what the voters want and then not delivering.

Will the GOP lose every election? No, but they will lose the ones that really matter until they actually learn how these elections are being won. Very little implies to me that anyone in the GOP, the political class, or the pundits has learned a thing about anything since 2015. If they had, then they might be wondering how Trump can lead in five of six swing states over Biden and yet Ohioans still voted to legalize pot and abortion. Alas, it is way too easy for them to just say it is all someone else's fault, never mine...if only they would listen to me (and pay me lots of money) everything would be great. We might not actually enact any conservative policies that voters want, but I'd still get paid.