The liberal media are spinning this as a typical off-year result for the incumbent president's party, and a referendum on President Trump, but I think they’re wrong. These aren't typical times and Republicans should have kept their majority in the House, especially running against so many leftists funded by radicals clearly out of the mainstream.
My concern has never been for Republicans. It has been for the conservative principles it champions. I am going to be perhaps the only conservative in town who thinks this was a good thing for them, and for our country.
The press should acknowledge what I think is fact: Republicans have a serious messaging problem, and for one simple reason: their leaders aren't committed to their own party platform. They cannot articulate it, sell it, and enact it, because they don’t believe in it. And as opposed to the president, they are scared as hell when it comes to facing their biggest problem, the news media.
On the contrary, liberals (including their biased media handlers) communicate the Democrat platform with ease and conviction because they genuinely believe it, and the press gleefully supports them.
Since Republicans took control of the House and Senate, it’s been cringeworthy to watch GOP Congressional leaders tie themselves up into pretzels pretending to act like conservatives while refusing to engage a left-wing news media that has been committed to their destruction.
No matter how pressing the policy matter, the Majority leader in the Senate does nothing unless he has 60 votes, meaning he does nothing. House leadership is nowhere to be found. "Republican leader" is an oxymoron these days. And none of this is reported in the press.
The liberal press never reported that they couldn’t cut one red penny from anywhere or anything. They couldn’t pass a budget. Most of them still don’t read any bills, let alone their own Party’s platforms. At the end of the day, they funded everything they said they’d kill — and more. Our borders are a mess.
Although they promoted liberal orthodoxy, the press never told you that the Republican controlled Congress had the power to enact every single commitment made to the American people – and their leadership failed over and over again.
Even worse, under present leadership nothing, but nothing was going to change. This was the new normal for the GOP Congress. And the press let them get away with it.
There is nothing here that is conservative, even moderate. Ten years ago this was seen, correctly, as an unequivocally liberal agenda. The Democrats certainly have moved further to the extreme than this, and there you have it. It's liberals against leftists, Democrats against Democrats Lite.
The media need to start reporting it as it is. These Republican leaders aren't conservatives and aren't willing to fight for a conservative agenda championing fiscal integrity, the right to life and border security because at the end of the day, when empty rhetoric is a wall behind which they can no longer hide, they just don't believe in these things. When these leaders don't believe their own message and don’t have the guts to confront their biggest opponent – not the Democrats but the leftist, pro-Democrat media – they lose.
President Trump, on the other hand, clearly shows intention in his message and time and again has delivered on campaign promises while confronting the militantly anti-GOP press unlike any Republican ever has. But for his efforts to rally the GOP base, and the message he brought, last night would have been a loss of monstrous proportions for the GOP. And that’s what the press wanted.
One year ago, along with other conservative leaders, I predicted Republicans were going to lose the House majority because they had abandoned their conservative promises. We were right.
Unquestionably the new Democratic majority is more left-wing than ever and fully committed to enacting their stated liberal agenda. Their base -- at least for now -- is firmly committed to this leftist agenda as well. That base includes a leftist "news" media that is fully vested in the proposition that the conservative movement must be destroyed.
For them to regain the faith of their constituents, conservatives believe the GOP must find new leadership with leaders that truly believe in and are willing to fight for the conservative policies they espouse. It’s why conservatives are rallying behind Jim Jordan as the new GOP Minority Leader. Conservatives believe that with his leadership the Republicans will regain their fallen majority, and they can do it in two years. It is then that they'll fight – fight seriously – for that which they say they believe. This time it'll be Promises Made, Promises Kept for them.
MRCTV is a division of the Media Research Center.