Inflation continues rising on top of 40-year highs, our commander-in-chief is deterring attacks on U.S. troops in the Middle East as poorly as he’s keeping track of whether his secretary of defense is incapacitated, the left is using all its power to throw the 2024 GOP frontrunner in prison and bankrupt his family, and the border is a wide-open disaster allowing a record-setting 300,000+ illegal immigrants to waltz into the country — not counting the known “got-aways” — in December alone. Democrat destruction abounds, so Republicans surely must be using the one lever of power they have in Washington to push back, slow Democrat progress, and boldly offer an alternative vision, right? Wrong. A losing streak continues as disarray seems to match the willful destruction caused by Democrat policies raising doubts that victory — any victory — is on the horizon.
Remember back in the late twenty-teens when things were going well? The economy was strong, the border was secure, and America’s enemies weren’t launching wars against the U.S. and its allies. Sure, there was a constant onslaught of hoaxes aimed at derailing the Trump administration, but conservatives were winning regardless and fueled by the unhinged opposition. The Supreme Court and federal judiciary were being transformed into an originalist-dominated branch of government, foes such as Iran, North Korea, and Russia were restrained to their quarters, and the U.S. grew into a net exporter of abundant American energy. Things weren’t perfect, but they were trending in the right direction and the future looked a lot brighter than it does now.
Then COVID hit. Most government officials in the U.S. — save for a few bold conservatives who told Fauci to pound sand — locked us down, set America’s children back years in their education, slammed the door on economic growth, ruined livelihoods, and sparked a surge of mental health and substance abuse issues.
Trump was ousted in the 2020 election, and a person would be hard-pressed to find a significant win for conservatives since then. The Supreme Court, thanks to previous nomination victories, has held the line as best it can as just one branch of government — striking down several Biden administration executive actions and ending Roe — but those victories were seemingly fleeting. Since the Court’s Dobbs decision, conservatives have taken loss after loss when protecting life is put on the ballot.
The 2022 midterms were anything but the red wave — Florida and New York were the rare bright spots for electoral success — we were told was set to wash across the country. Not only did Republicans fail to take control of the U.S. Senate, they only barely gained a majority in the House, a margin that’s only gotten slimmer since then.
Even in power, Republicans struggled immediately when it came time to elect a speaker. The result of negotiations to finally end the crisis in leadership left House Republicans with even more opportunities for chaos. Opportunities that Republicans like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) were more than happy to exploit. Again speakerless, the House devolved into more chaos as days without a leader dragged on. Multiple candidates tried and failed to secure the gavel until finally we got Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who’s done as fine a job as possible despite the chaos around him.
But then this week, after great effort by House committees to gather information, hold hearings, and compile a resolution to impeach DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — an effort that was referred to committee in a vote supported by scores of Democrats — Republicans brought the impeachment articles to the floor for a vote and…lost.
How does that happen, and who couldn’t count heads? Even if Democrats worked to obfuscate how many votes they had against impeachment, shouldn’t the Republican whip team have expected dirty tricks following Democrats’ use of absurd delay tactics in the committee markup of the articles? It’s another loss for conservatives that calls into question the ability of the lower chamber to move ahead with the impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden. Is that investigation — one that has successfully produced concrete evidence of shady conduct across bank records, business deals, and email pseudonyms — doomed to implosion if it makes it to the House floor?
In addition to the failed vote on impeachment, the House failed to pass its standalone aid bill to support Israel this week, and a few members of the GOP conference have previously succeeded in blocking rules votes thereby freezing the legislative process and preventing any votes from taking place as a stunt to flex their muscles. All that raises a question: What chance does conservative policy have of delivering wins at any level if they can’t make it past, or even to, the House floor?
Given what just happened with the “bipartisan deal” on “border security” legislation — producing a bill that was so flawed it was immediately declared dead on arrival by Speaker Johnson and died unceremoniously in a procedural vote held in the Senate on Wednesday — it doesn’t seem like there’ll be a win from the upper chamber anytime soon either.
So, conservatives continue to watch as the world implodes around us and see very few, if any, wins for our side. Instead, things continue to get worse. Looking ahead at 2024, it’s hard to find reasons for even cautious optimism. The midterms were supposed to be a runaway success for conservatives running against the Biden agenda and members of Congress helping him implement his disastrous policies. But it wasn’t.
Now looking toward November 2024, Joe Biden should be the easiest presidential candidate to defeat. He can’t navigate a stage, read a prompter, or remember which long-dead world leader he supposedly met. His policies have wrecked the economy, caused a border crisis, endangered American troops around the world, and sparked wars. Polls show Americans growing increasingly sour on his “leadership,” even among black voters, young voters, and Muslim American voters who supported him in 2020. A Republican turnip should be able to beat a candidate as weak as Biden, but will Republicans be able to build a coalition and operation to usher its eventual nominee, likely Trump, and down-ballot Republicans to victory?
Or will GOP sideshows, often little more than popularity contests run by grifters, continue to distract and kneecap conservatives to the point we keep losing? One certainly hopes not and that conservatives can sweep to decisive victory up and down the ballot to have the chance to get to work undoing Biden’s damage.
Doing so requires a hunger for victory, not just the next grift or personal acclaim. Conservatives have already taken significant losses as a result of such attention-seeking and, as a consequence, lost out on other opportunities to win. Now, more than ever, conservatives need to start winning — for their policies and for the good of the country. Plus, we're just plain tired of losing.