Criminal Justice Reform Will Widen the November GOP Landslide

American voters are angry, a point that has not escaped top Biden pollster John Anzalone who recently said it best: “Americans are [PO’ed].”

By all accounts, the Democratic Party is in for a disastrous midterm election season. Americans are tired of the record-high inflation, tired of the war in Ukraine, and tired of all the current administration’s COVID-19 hysteria.

They’re ready for change, and it shows. Poll after poll shows that their majority will implode in the House of Representatives and likely the upper chamber as well.

A new NPR/Marist poll suggests that Republicans aren’t just poised to win; they’re expected to win unusual demographics with surprising margins. For example, they are currently polling at 52 percent with Latino voters and 60 percent with parents that have children under 18.

With victory seemingly guaranteed, conservative candidates and legislators need to begin looking beyond the short politics of the movement to consider the long-term implications of a governing majority. They should be looking to find ways to convert as many of this November’s frustrated pass-through GOP voters into passionate members of the Republican Party as possible.

As a reformed Democrat who is now a hard-blooded conservative and regular on the center-right TV and talk radio circuit, I believe that embracing criminal justice reform this election season would represent a key place to start.

Democrats are increasingly repulsed by how the DNC establishment has broken up families and increased crime in the United States through its poor handling of our outdated and broken criminal justice system, and they know Joe Biden and his allies deserve a lot of the finger-pointing.

As chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden led the charge for the passage of the disastrous 1994 crime law, which put millions of African Americans in prison while increasing recidivism by implementing stricter, immoral and far more unjust sentencing requirements, including for justice-involved youth.

Because of the hope and opportunity that his leadership seized from thousands in America, scores of children grew up without their mothers and fathers, while scores more of otherwise rehabilitated former offenders — seeing no pathway for economic opportunity in the criminal justice system that he destroyed — began leading career lives of crime.

Rather than increase the public welfare, Biden’s crime bill reduced the safety of our streets and ballooned the size of our prison system. Perhaps no piece of legislation has done more damage to minority families that Biden’s 1994 crime bill.

President Trump, on the other hand, took the opposite approach. During his time in the White House, he signed the most sweeping criminal justice reform package — the First Step Act — in decades. As Fox News recently detailed, the bill re-united families, reduced recidivism, and made everyone safer.

That’s why First Step was such a centerpiece of the president’s administration, which it even ran ads about during the Super Bowl. With over 90 percent of the country believing that the criminal justice system needs changes, the White House knew that it was pushing a winning policy that recruited so many new faces and demographics to the GOP.

If elected to a second term, President Trump vowed to follow First Step with some next steps, with a slight shift in focus to making it easier for ex-offenders to get jobs after prison. He’s no longer in the White House — at least for the time being — but given the unprecedented nature of this year’s midterms, why wouldn’t Republicans look to mirror his successes and ensure this diverse coalition of Republican voters remains here to stay?

They undoubtedly should. Crime is on the top of many voters’ minds this election cycle, and criminal justice reform is a proven way to bring it down, all while drawing a sharp distinction between the GOP and the party of Biden on an issue that draws significant support among independent and frustrated center-left voters.

One of the most promising bills on the table right now that has the potential to serve as the 2021 sequel to the First Step Act that President Trump envisioned is the Clean Slate Act. This legislation, which is already supported by many smart conservatives, including Jim Banks, Dan Crenshaw and Byron Donalds, will make it easier for rehabilitated former non-violent offenders to obtain employment by sealing their records once they have served their time and demonstrated good behavior.

Electoral considerations aside, passing this bill is common sense for a conservative. As the First Step Act and numerous academic studies have demonstrated, the No. 1 reducer of recidivism is obtaining employment.

Once ex-offenders can enter the labor force, they can begin providing for their families and contributing to society again, which makes them feel that it’s possible and sustainable to stay on the straight and narrow path.

The last time I checked, increasing economic opportunity and making the streets safer are core pillars of the Republican Party platform. So why not take this opportunity to legislative conservative values in ways that can make the GOP tent wider and more diverse?

It proved effective for President Trump, and it can prove effective for his allies in Congress, too, if only they give it a chance.

Polling shows that more minorities are considering voting for the GOP, many for the first time. They are extending their hand of trust to Republican politicians.

The question remains: will GOP leaders solidify this opportunity to expand their coalition for the first time in generations?