2018 Midterms – RESOLVE

The Awakening

By Jim Lexo

I am a lifelong Republican, starting with helping my parents campaign for Dwight Eisenhower. I was very young. Throughout the years I embraced the Republican principles of balanced budgets, strong national defense, individual rights and the other common sense principles that make for a strong, viable Republic.

When Donald Trump came on the scene I thought there was no way this guy could win, and no way will he be capable of representing Republicans. One of the Republican Governors or Senators will surely win the nomination went the conventional wisdom. Having worked in the “traditional” wing of the party I was not tuned into the growing conservative bloc of voters who felt there was little difference between the parties. No matter who gets elected, they concluded, we keep drifting to the left.

Surf to Victory cap So Trump is elected and does and says things that initially appear to be outrageous. He tells our NATO allies they need to start carrying their weight on the cost of defending Europe. He starts what looks to be trade wars with China, Mexico, Canada and Europe (free trade Republicans go crazy). He calls the leader of a rogue nation (North Korea) that has nuclear capabilities “Little Rocket Man”. He kills the Iran nuclear “deal”. He tells the U.N. we are not going to give foreign aid to nations that do not support our goals. On and on. You get the idea. Finally, a President who says things we all think about but are too afraid to say out loud.

Despite the second guessing, negative reports and high drama, it turns out Trump has been right on all the issues. We are getting better trade deals; rogue nations are falling in line; allies are not taking advantage of us like they used to; mortal enemies are afraid to make a move because they don’t know how Trump might respond, and so on.

My point is that Trump has awakened me to the fact that “business as usual” had us on the path to socialism and basic ruination. Would a Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio or Scott Walker been able to achieve all of the accomplishments Trump’s administration has in less than two years? I doubt it. Trump’s bold moves have resulted in positive outcomes that may very well allow America to remain the greatest nation for another century.

What it took was someone who knew what he wanted to accomplish and how to make it happen. This bold, new Republican era must be sustained by a red wave of voter turnout, both during early voting and at the polls, through November 6. Trump’s achievements can not be repeated too often as we work in our communities to get out the vote.

Wave goodbye to “the wave”

The far-Left media (AKA, the media) was gleeful after seeing turnout numbers for Minnesota and Wisconsin primaries on August 14. Democrat voters surpassed Republican voters by more than 250,000 in Minnesota, and outvoted the GOP by more than 80,000 in Wisconsin polling places. Overall voter turnout also was higher compared to recent primaries.

The numbers aligned with an ongoing narrative that a “blue wave” is coming this November with Democrat voters rising up to regain control of the U.S. House of Representatives, which would stall President Donald Trump’s agenda indefinitely and allow House Democrats to stir up scenarios under which Trump might be impeached.

Buried amid the chest pounding the morning after the two primaries was an astute analysis by Professor David Canon at the University of Wisconsin, a liberal bastion. He warned against reading too much into Democrat turnout “given several hot contests” in the state. The same can be said for Minnesota:

“Competitive races for open seats, and partisan enthusiasm for many of the candidates in a highly polarized climate, fueled the high turnout,” said Kathryn Pearson, political science professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

As primaries continue toward setting the stage for November, many tuned-in Republicans have rejected the threat of a “blue wave” because most Democrats (such as political novice Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York’s 14th Congressional district) are running on a “resist Trump” platform, nothing more.

Ocasio-Cortez is pushing a Socialist agenda amid a booming U.S. economy. Brilliant.

Further rejection of the blue wave theory is provided by none other than a CBS News pollster whose newly released book, “Where Did You Get That Number?”, examines why 2016 polls never saw Trump’s stunning victory coming.

Pollster and author Anthony Salvanto points out that two polls forecast the possibility of a Trump victory in 2016. Both were tracking polls. Salvanto told The New York Post he is “relying more on CBS’s ongoing tracking poll and less on random-sample telephone polling ahead of this year’s midterm elections.”

One of the key findings of Salvanto’s tracking poll suggests Democrats are unlikely to find conditions suitable for wave surfing this November. He tells the Post:

“Voters say the Democrats need to do more than just oppose Trump. They’re asking, ‘What are they arguing we’ll get if they take the (House) majority?'”

For now, the Post reports, Salvanto’s polling indicates that few House seats will change hands in November — and that the GOP could very well hold its majority in the House. Of the nation’s 435 House districts, fully 85 percent will almost certainly stick with its current party affiliation come November, Salvanto projects.

If the tracking polls hold up, surf’s up this fall, and the waves will be red.

Backing McInnis

At last, we move on down the path to the Fall mid-term elections. More than a few Moore County Republicans surely harbor lingering resentment about the lengths to which the state GOP establishment sunk to sink a primary challenge by Whispering Pines Mayor Michelle Lexo against incumbent Tom McInnis in NC-25 (although McInnis was no incumbent in Moore due to haphazard redistricting).

But in conceding defeat last week, Lexo took the high ground and graciously thanked her supporters. Republicans must now rally, reunite and take the high ground in embracing McInnis. Maintaining a GOP supermajority in Raleigh is priority one.

Although McInnis is facing a first-time candidate in Helen Probst-Mills, she is widely known in the community and not long ago hosted a fundraiser attended by Gov. Roy Cooper in her Pinehurst home. And that’s not all.

In its analysis of “races to watch” in 2018, the non-profit public policy web site RealFactsNC.com, makes the chilling observation that “the voters who sent (McInnis) to the General Assembly are gone (our emphasis) from his redrawn district.” Furthermore, fewer than half of NC-25 voters “have seen McInnis on their ballot before.”

Given that Moore County accounts for just under half of all voters in the district, this ostensibly means that Probst-Mills can legitimately make the same argument voiced by Lexo: I live in Moore; McInnis does not. (He counters by saying, legitimately, that he has owned property and paid taxes in Moore for 40+ years, and does, in fact, own a Pinehurst home).

The bottom line is that getting out the vote for McInnis is absolutely vital, and we must now leverage his backing from NC GOP heavyweights. Probst-Mills has fundraising chops, too, due to her status as a member of the Sandhills Community College Board of Trustees (and her alliance with far-left SCC President John Dempsey), and ties to Cooper’s inner circle.

But she embraces several positions that will encounter fervent resistance in Moore County. Probst-Mills echoes the baloney from the left that North Carolina teachers are underpaid and that our schools are neglected. (Some are and yet school boards are not held to account). She favors further expansion of Medicaid, fueling the entitlement engine Democrats always seek to expand. And her campaign web site makes the unsubstantiated — if not false — claim that “people’s ability to vote is being curtailed” in our state. What a whopper!

Sen. McInnis holds a significant advantage that can be a double-edged sword for politicians. He has a voting record in the NC General Assembly. Opponents can use this as fodder. Unless, of course, a majority of Moore Republicans support McInnis’s positions on jobs and the economy, education and vocational options, and Second Amendment preservation.

These issues, if communicated effectively, will re-elect our Republican Senator. Get to know the issues and get to work!

Stave off the wave: Vote!

A “blue wave” is inevitable in 2018, the Democrats tell us, because Americans will reject surging economic prosperity and the restoration of our status as the indispensable world superpower. If this seems fundamentally illogical, you must remember that this is the party that supported a $1.7 billion cash ransom payment to Iran, and blindly backed deeply corrupt Hillary Clinton as the presumptive 45th President.

Early voting data in Moore County (through mid-day May 7) indicates Democrats will not be crowing, “Surf’s up!” after the May 8 primaries, which makes forecasting a blue wave (transferring power in Raleigh to Democrats) in the fall mid-terms equally tenuous.

In fact, the numbers to date forecast a “red wave”. A total of 2,718 voters requested a Republican ballot during early voting, compared to 1,158 who requested a Democrat ballot. We reported last September a statewide surge in unaffiliated voters since 2009. That trend is holding up this year loud and clear, and continues to bolster GOP support. The number of unaffiliated voters (UNAs) who have come out in Moore’s early voting will be at least 1,309, according to data compiled by CarolinaTransparency.com. They can request any ballot they desire. UNAs requested 246 Democrat ballots and 103 unaffiliated ballots. The remainder (960) requested Republican ballots.

These totals also reflect an increase in early voting participation across the board when compared to the most recent mid-term primaries in 2014. Four years ago, there were 1,642 Republican early voters and 638 Democrats. The comparisons are slightly skewed because early voting ran four days longer this time. But expectations that Republicans are unmotivated to vote in 2018 are not panning out so far.

Not only is a “blue wave” failing to build locally, but Democrats are seeing diminishing likelihood of a big national tsunami this November. On January 1, RealClearPolitics’ aggregated 2018 Congressional vote polling showed Democrats holding a 12.9% lead over Republicans. In other words, four months ago prospective voters indicated a preference for Democrat candidates in the ’18 mid-terms, 49% to 36.1%. As of May 1, that gap has been reduced by more than half, with the RCP average giving Democrats a 6.3% lead.

There are many votes yet to be cast on Tuesday, May 8. Be sure your’s is one of them.

Maybe GOP is too ‘hinged’

Until Saturday evening, members of the media and Democrats (and some establishment Republican elites) held up President Donald Trump as the living embodiment of a person who has become unhinged. That was before an obscure, marginally talented and vile so-called comedian named Michelle Wolf was invited by the White House Correspondents Association to spew one-liners during its annual gala. Wolf took “unhinged” to new extremes, and, in doing so, exposed how unhinged, dare we say deranged, our left wing mainstream media remains since the unthinkable happened last November 2016. Wolf exposed them because she had them laughing uproariously at her mean spirited monologue.

Trump arguably is more unfiltered or uncensored (by Washington standards) than unhinged, but he continues to irritate even some members of the media who retain a few threads of credibility. Columnist Peggy Noonan, to name one. In her weekly Wall Street Journal column April 27, Noonan railed against Trump’s “latest unhingement” during last week’s call-in to the Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” morning show. She took issue with Trump ranting about James Comey, the FBI, the vicious take down of his nominee to head the Veterans’ Administration, the “crazy Stormy Daniels deal”, and fake news.

Presidents traditionally have not spouted off. Everything was scripted and focus group tested before it was uttered. But consider the contrast between a wide ranging Trump rant, such as the one Noonan scolded about, and a well-crafted Barack Obama, fully hinged speech.

Trump: James Comey is “liar and a leaker”. Unhinged again. And true by all accounts.

Obama: “If you like your healthcare plan, you will be able to keep your healthcare plan. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor.” Not unhinged. Completely untrue.

There are numerous additional examples. The point is that when Trump goes off script he nearly always does so to further expose hypocrisy, media deceit and corrupt Washington insiders. And now there is new polling strongly suggesting that tightly hinged Republican lawmakers will be the reason Democrats could win back Congressional seats in the 2018 mid-terms. Writing for Townhall.com, Timothy Daughtry reports:

“A new poll of 1,000 likely voters by McLaughlin and Associates … (indicates) that the ‘Blue Wave’ so hoped for by the liberal media is not at all inevitable and that there is still a possible path to Republican victory in November. (The bad news in the polling results is) Republican voters are wanting results, and many in the GOP base see Republican leadership as supporting the swamp they were sent to Washington to drain.

There are but a few nuggets of encouraging data in the McLaughlin poll for DC Republicans, one being that “the generic ballot for Congress in the November election is essentially tied at 44% for Democrats and 43% for Republicans.”

Other poll results:

Among Democrats, 65% trust their party to do what it says it will do. By contrast, only 15% of Republicans trust their own party to carry out its promises, and that dismal percentage drops to 9% among the conservative base.
Overall, 46% of voters polled say the Republican leadership is “supporting the swamp that President Trump promised to drain.”
Trump’s job approval rating of 45% (in this poll) is higher than the job approval of the GOP Congress. Overall, 84% of Republicans and 73% of conservatives approve of Trump’s performance.

Different polls reveal different trends. The McLaughlin poll “dispels the … narrative that President Trump is a drain on the ticket.” But another poll released April 30, by Reuters/Ipsos, finds that a generally negative view of Trump among millennials does not predispose them to lean heavily in favor of Democrat lawmakers.

“The online survey of more than 16,000 registered voters ages 18 to 34 shows their support for Democrats over Republicans for Congress slipped by about 9 percentage points over the past two years, to 46 percent overall. And they increasingly say the Republican Party is a better steward of the economy.”

The report did not find a surge of millennials who’ve shifted to “overt support of Republicans (at 28% it’s about the same as a similar poll two years ago). Yet, heading into the 2018 mid-terms, these millennials also say “they were undecided, would support a third-party candidate or not vote at all.”

Polls ebb and flow, but almost all point to hapless Washington lawmakers in both parties who fail again and again to get out of their own ways, and thereby continue to sacrifice trust and voter approval. Meanwhile, Trump soldiers on despite the black cloud of the Mueller investigation and daily media attempts to diminish his administration.

But nothing can diminish the successful nomination of Supreme Court Judge Neil Gorsuch, the defanging of the Obamacare mandate, restored relations with Israel, historic tax cuts and reforms that are changing American citizen’s lives and lifting their optimism, the hope of fairer trade with China, and, suddenly, the prospect of a denuked North Korea and a unified Korean Peninsula.

That strikes many as more unparalleled than unhinged.