If the Republicans don’t keep the House on November 3, it won’t be for lack of effort — on their part or the Democrats’ part.
Rather than taking their medicine by treating the traditional midterm thumping as a fait accompli, the Republicans have instead chosen to go down swinging — blood, fangs, slobber, the works. As the Appropriated Press reports, “Republicans are gathering in Dallas on Wednesday for a highly unusual midterm convention, a ‘Trump-a-Palooza’ that will put President Donald Trump at the center of this fall’s midterm elections — whether the candidates running like it or not.”
Trump-a-Palooza is the unfortunate construction of Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters, who seems to think that his party has nothing to trumpet besides Trump himself. And while it’s true that Donald Trump is the animating force of the Republican Party, and while it’s also true that many Trump voters sat out the 2018 midterms because he wasn’t technically on the ballot, the party itself has much to talk about in comparing and contrasting itself with the Democrats and their Democratic Socialist fellow travelers.
One high-level point of contrast, for example, might be: You might not particularly like us, but at least we’re not bat-guano crazy like the Democrats. That sorta thing.
The Democrats have, indeed, been doing their part to keep the Republicans in power. Whether they’re nominating naked socialists and commies in their party primaries or simply obstructing the passage of wildly popular legislation, the would-be Trump-impeachers are doing their level best to make centrists and moderates throw up in their mouths.
This past week, in Barack Obama’s hometown of Chicago, the Socialism 2026 Conference held its four-day Weird-a-Palooza with a bearded female rabbi denouncing Israel and a porcine young black man decrying Ozempic and the other GLP-1 weight-loss drugs as “fascistic,” because the world is “fixated on genociding fat people.”
Heck, I had no idea that “genociding” was a word, nor that the fascistic nature of these weight-loss drugs can’t be fully understood without considering Frantz Fanon’s account of “black flesh under colonial surveillance.”
Then there was Hasan Piker — you know, the vile, Mao-worshipping, America-blaming California-streaming bestie of Michigan’s Democrat Socialist Senate candidate, Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed — proudly accepting a ball cap emblazoned with “Satan’s School of Gay Communism.”
And here I thought regular folks were concerned with high gas prices and our ongoing war with Iran.
I know, I know, this socialism confab wasn’t a DNC-sanctioned event, but socialism sticks to Democrats like skunk spray sticks to dogs. Just as Trump and Trumpism are the animating forces within the Republican Party, socialists and socialism are the animating forces within the Democrat Party.
Trump, though, has a serious list of accomplishments to run on — which is something the Democrats can neither say nor dream about. Think about it: When was the last time the Democrats did something meaningful for the American people. I’ll wait.
As for Trump, presidential historian Conrad Black offers an impressive laundry list that includes everything from an airtight southern border to historically low crime rates to historically high stock market numbers.
I will say this, though: If House Republicans are being asked to cough up as much as $25,000 for tickets and lodging, it’s no wonder they’d rather, ahem, spend more time with their families.
“I had stuff already planned in my congressional district or I would be there,” said Kentucky’s less-than-convincing James Comer, one of the leaders of the Republican caucus.
“Well, unfortunately,” Georgia’s Buddy Carter confessed, “I have a family obligation, so I won’t be able to be there.”
Trump will be speaking on both nights, “delivering a keynote address on Wednesday night and speaking again Thursday after [Vice President JD] Vance to close out the event,” according to the AP. “Also addressing the convention will be members of the Republican congressional leadership and Cabinet members including Attorney General Todd Blanche and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The president’s oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is on the roster, too.”
Suffice it to say that the Republicans’ goal at their two-day convention will be to energize the MAGA grassroots by promoting the accomplishments of both Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The question: Is Donald Trump’s charisma transferrable to House and Senate Republicans? Moreover, can the Republican Party run on Trump without energizing the Democrats’ base? That’s the needle-threading calculus facing the GOP in Dallas.
There’s some good news, too, for the Republicans. A new Harvard-Harris poll shows Republicans are leading Democrats among likely voters in the all-important generic ballot question. Sure, it’s a tenuous 51-49 lead, but the Democrats typically need to be up by three or four points if they’re going to retake the House. That’s a really remarkable poll because the Democrats were up six to eight points in the generic ballot just ahead of the 2018 midterms.
I’m not sure the Republicans can capture the bearded-female-rabbi vote or the fat-black-genociding vote, but still, the question is worth pondering: Could Trump and the Republicans be stuck in Iran with gas prices way too high and still hold the House? It’s possible.
