We Wake Up in A Whole New World

“To everything, there is a season.”

And so it went for the GOP on Tuesday.

Everything broke the Republicans way.

In New Jersey, the governor’s race is in a dead heat, while in Virginia Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin emerged victorious after more than a decade of Democrats controlling Richmond.

Atmospherics are something consultants can’t control and pollsters only measure----after the fact.

But the atmospherics went the Republicans' way for the weeks leading up to the election.

Joe Biden’s sinking poll numbers and his increased irrelevancy, the squabbling between the liberals and the ultra-liberal Democrats in Congress---resembling a fight in the leper colony---taxes and spending, increasingly insane regulations over private citizens, the stupid, unethical and criminal proposal for the government to snoop into our private checking accounts.

The litany goes on and on, and that’s before we mention inflation, unemployment, Afghanistan, and the threat from Red China, all of which are Republican issues.

And now education!

Who ever thought that education would turn into a Republican issue?

But the dynamic worked to Republicans' advantage and the timing was perfect, helping propel Youngkin to his win this week.

As Yogi Berra once said, “You don't have to swing hard to hit a home run. If you got the timing, it'll go.”

Freedom of course is at the core issue. And this is a lesson for Republicans, if they can ever get past their dumb consultants.

There is a lesson here for the future.

Ronald Reagan never listened to consultants or pollsters.

He spoke from the mind and the heart. And he always spoke of individual freedom and the rights of the citizenry over the bureaucracy.

If he was alive today, he’d be carrying a pro-parent placard in Loudoun County.

He never ran personality campaigns. He ran issue campaigns. Youngkin ran one of the most disciplined campaigns in recent memory.

He never let distractions deter him from his goal.

He never picked unnecessary fights on Twitter.

It was admirable. Let’s hope he keeps a wrap on his consultants who will want to rush out and claim credit.

In the early days, he ran silly commercials of him playing basketball, but once he dropped them and got serious about the issues, he climbed.

It helped too that he let Terry McAuliffe make his own mistakes.

As Napoleon said, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” Meanwhile The Squad is now The Squalid. And listening to AOC is a fools errand while Washington has become radioactive.

McAuliffe looked increasingly unhinged and desperate the closer we got to election day, becoming fixated on painting Youngkin as a Trump acolyte while Youngkin remained focused on the issue voters cared about, namely education.

The results speak for themselves. Youngkin will be sworn in as governor and McAuliffe will go back to whatever he was doing before.

Now for the future. The shorthand analysis will be that Biden was a drag (true) and education was the key (partially true.) But it was also bigger than that.

It was about freedom versus collectivism.

It was about freedom versus Bidenism.

It was about freedom versus corruption.

And Donald Trump is not a drag on GOP candidates. And Reagan’s issues are Trump’s issues and they are the GOP’s issues.

Not to be all things to all people but to but one thing to all people. Meanwhile, Bidenism is dead. He will occupy public housing for the next three years, but his agenda is DOA.

For future conservative candidates to win, they need to frame and reframe each argument as freedom versus X issue.

You are good, looking out for the interests of the people. They are wrongheaded liberals, only looking out for themselves.

Reagan himself put it best in 1981: “When I took the oath of office, I pledged loyalty to only one special interest group - ‘We the people’.”