The Patriot Post® · The Red Ripple

I’ll begin with the obvious — Tuesday’s election was not a Red wave. One media outlet described the election as more of a “pink splash.”

The president’s party historically suffers major losses in its first midterm election — four Senate seats and 28 House seats on average. That did not happen Tuesday night.

Throughout the year, I repeatedly warned party leaders against being overconfident in “historical trends” that usually happen. These are not normal times, and Tuesday night the unusual happened.

Do they get it now? Do they appreciate how late the hour truly is? I’m not holding my breath.

Polling just before the election that indicated the enthusiasm gap between Republican and Democrat voters was gone appears to have been correct. Polling that suggested Republicans were competitive in deep Blue places was obviously wrong.

Many races remain undeclared and many ballots are still being counted. But here’s what we know right now:

• Republicans are on track to take the House majority. With 218 seats needed for the majority, the current breakdown is 205 Republicans to 187 Democrats. When the dust settles, it will be a very slim GOP majority.
• Republicans held toss-up Senate races in North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin.
• Democrats survived in Colorado, New Hampshire and Washington State.
• The parties appear to be trading seats in Pennsylvania (R to D) and Nevada (D to R), so the balance of power in the Senate is 50 Republicans to 48 Democrats.
• The Walker/Warnock contest in Georgia is going into overtime. It will be decided in a December runoff, meaning Republicans could still pick up a seat.

In the meantime, all eyes are on Arizona, which is still very much in play.

Masters For The Majority?

According to Charlie Kirk, whose organization is based in Arizona, as many as 500,000 ballots remain outstanding in the Grand Canyon State. So far, these outstanding ballots have been breaking for Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters.

If they continue breaking this way, Masters could win, giving the GOP a 51-seat majority in the Senate, and, in my view, Kari Lake will win the governor’s race.

Lake winning the governorship in some ways is just as important as Masters taking the Senate seat. What happened Tuesday in Maricopa County infuriated Lake. She is determined to stop the shenanigans there and to guarantee election integrity in Arizona.

If she succeeds, Arizona may no longer be a “toss-up state,” which is huge in the Electoral College vote count for 2024.

By the way, in the days leading up to the election, the left-wing media claimed that Republicans would prematurely declare victory, but you shouldn’t believe it because it could take days to count all the ballots.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre urged Americans to be patient. Well, we’re taking their advice, which is why I am telling you that Arizona is not over.

The Good

While results are still coming in, here’s my analysis of the 2022 midterms. I’ll start with the good news.

Democrats lost the House of Representatives. Ironically and perhaps appropriately, Rep. Sean Maloney, chairman of the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee, conceded his own race Wednesday morning.

That means Republicans will control the House majority. Biden’s radical socialist agenda will be dead on arrival next year on Capitol Hill.

Republicans will control key oversight committees. That means conservatives like Rep. Jim Jordan, not Jerry Nadler, will have subpoena power.

The Biden White House, Attorney General Garland, FBI Director Wray and Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas have a lot to answer for, including the weaponization of federal law enforcement against conservatives, pro-life activists and Christians.

The January 6th Committee is finished.

Republican candidates for state supreme court seats in North Carolina and Ohio won their races Tuesday night. These are huge victories for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that both states will likely end up redrawing their highly-contested congressional maps, potentially yielding more GOP House seats in future elections.

Ohio voters overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional amendment banning non-citizens from voting in elections. They also approved an amendment giving judges more authority to set bail amounts so that more criminals remain behind bars.

Nebraska voters overwhelmingly approved a new statewide voter ID law.

Conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education expanded their majority.

Stacey Abrams and Beto O'Rourke lost — again — and, hopefully, for good this time.

The Bad

Clearly, the election was a disappointment. We were all talking about what kind of soul searching the Democrats would be doing today. Well, Republicans must do some soul searching of their own after these results.

Many Republican candidates were massively outspent by their radical opponents. The left has a fundraising juggernaut, and it matters.

Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were out on the campaign trail. Where were George W. Bush and Mitt Romney? They were AWOL, while Democrats had additional help from turncoats Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

But do not fall for the fake news by the GOP establishment that moderates would have won in a landslide. There’s no evidence of that. Just look at Colorado.

That was the one race where the GOP establishment celebrated a moderate, anti-Trump nominee. George W. Bush held a fundraiser for him. He got trounced Tuesday night by 12 points.

We mocked Joe Biden’s disgusting Independence Hall speech, which he later repeated on Capitol Hill, in which he smeared conservatives and Christians as “semi-fascists.” But it worked.

It rallied the Democrat base and scared a lot of low information voters. That guarantees Democrats will double down on this obscene smear tactic, further dividing the country.

Our outrage in response to Biden’s vile attack should have been much stronger, and we should be much more forceful in describing his radical allies as what they truly are — neo-Marxists.

Sadly, none of the leading progressive pandemic tyrants lost their elections Tuesday night.

We laughed at the left’s lies about cutting Social Security, but it dominated Democrat messaging over the past week. It’s not a new tactic. They’ve done this over and over again because it works.

And I must say that Sen. Rick Scott, who is a good man, unfortunately made it easier for the left.

He and his people were not thoughtful enough to exempt Social Security and Medicare from a list of programs to review and possibly eliminate every five years. Donald Trump repeatedly vowed to protect Social Security, and the left could not pin that lie on him.

State Libertarian parties should be ashamed of themselves. The Libertarian candidate took more than 80,000 votes in Georgia. The Libertarian candidate who dropped out of the Arizona race still received nearly 40,000 votes. These wasted votes only divided the conservative vote and helped the Democrats.

And The Ugly

Five states voted Tuesday night on ballot measures directly related to the sanctity of life. Three were explicitly pro-abortion and two were pro-life. We lost all five.

California, Michigan and Vermont voted to enshrine abortion on demand in their state constitutions, while voters in Kentucky and Montana rejected pro-life initiatives.

Again, the pro-abortion left vastly outspent pro-life forces in order to ensure the destruction of even more innocent babies.

The left is guaranteed to push more of these pro-abortion ballot initiatives in 2024. We must be ready for them.