11-24-2022, 11:14 AM
Josh Hawley’s 2022 Election Folly
His analysis is refuted by the voting evidence, and most of his favorites lost.
By Karl RoveFollow
Nov. 23, 2022 1:29 pm ET
Journal Editorial Report: Republicans might owe a House majority to gains in New York. Image: Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
A novel explanation for the GOP’s disappointing midterm comes from Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley. The problem, he writes, wasn’t candidate quality but substance: “The old Republican Party is dead.” Because too few candidates backed a Trumpian agenda of protectionism, less legal immigration, a crackdown on Big Tech and an end to tax cuts, “the red wave didn’t land.” Working people who support the Trump agenda “chose to stay home.”
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WSJ Opinion Potomac Watch
Donald Trump's 2024 Rivals Won't Back Down
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The data don’t bear this out. There were 113.7 million votes cast for House candidates in 2018. Republicans got 51 million and Democrats 60.7 million. Though votes are still being counted in California, so far this year Republicans received 54 million votes to 50.5 million for Democrats. Democrats had an 8.6% margin over Republicans in 2018; Republicans have a 3.3% edge in 2022.
Mr. Hawley also argues that working-class voters “have little enthusiasm” for the GOP. Data don’t back up this claim, either. According to the Fox News Voter Analysis, white noncollege voters in 2018 were 40% of the turnout and broke 59% Republican, 39% Democrat. In 2022, their share of the turnout ticked up to 41% and the Republican advantage grew to 65% to 32%. It appears Democrats have bigger problems than the GOP does among working-class voters.
Yet Mr. Hawley has half a point: The election results do reflect a problem of substance, specifically the damage Republicans did with candidates who went full-on Trumpy. If they echoed the former president’s issues, tone and stolen-election claims, they often lost and in almost every case ran behind the rest of the Republican ticket.
Ohio’s Sen.-elect J.D. Vance won with more than 2.1 million votes, or 53%, a margin of almost 7 points. But Gov. Mike DeWine, a quintessential traditional Republican, won re-election with 63%, receiving 380,000 more votes than Mr. Vance and sweeping the onetime swing state by more than 25 points.
Mr. Vance trailed the rest of the Buckeye Republican statewide ticket, each member of whom won with bigger margins. He received 286,000 fewer votes than the GOP’s attorney general candidate, 248,000 fewer than the Republican secretary of state, 201,000 fewer than the auditor hopeful and 194,000 fewer than the party’s treasurer nominee. All this despite Sen. Mitch McConnell’s super PAC spending $35 million to help Mr. Vance’s struggling campaign.
In the Arizona Senate race, one of Mr. Trump’s biggest acolytes, Blake Masters, lost by 126,000 votes, or 4.9%, the worst performance by a Grand Canyon State GOP Senate candidate in 34 years. The GOP’s secretary of state hopeful, Mark Finchem, who claimed the 2020 election was “stolen,” lost by 120,000 votes, or nearly 6%. The more traditional Republican nominee for state treasurer, Kimberly Yee, won 56% to 44%, receiving nearly 200,000 more votes than either Mr. Masters or Mr. Finchem.
New Hampshire’s Trumpian Senate nominee, Don Bolduc, lost by more than 9 points and nearly 57,000 votes, while the Trump-endorsed candidates for the state’s two congressional seats lost by a combined 61,000 votes, both running about 10 points behind the GOP’s expected performance in their districts. Republican Gov. Chris Sununu cruised to a 57% re-election, beating his Democrat opponent by nearly 95,000 votes and running ahead of Mr. Bolduc by 77,000 and the combined vote for the GOP’s two House candidates by almost 75,000.
Washington state’s Third Congressional District provides another example of the Trumpian problem. Propelled by Mr. Trump’s endorsement, veteran Joe Kent pushed aside incumbent GOP Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler in the primary. But he then lost the general election by less than 1% while the GOP’s extraordinary Senate candidate, Tiffany Smiley, ran ahead of him by 3 to 6 points in every county in the district. Similarly, with Mr. Trump’s endorsement in Michigan’s Third District, John Gibbs took out incumbent GOP Rep. Peter Meijer in a district rated D+1, then lost in the general election by nearly 13 points.
There are dozens of other examples, but the point is obvious: The principal reason Republicans came up short was that just when Americans were ready to vote for them to check Democratic excesses, the GOP nominated too many radicals and weirdos. Mr. Hawley—who raised a clinched fist in solidarity with those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—may not see that, but voters did.
Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
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Comment: I have long loathed "Karl Rogue", but at times he tells the truth, especially when it has no possibility of hurting his favorite politicians. I agree with Karl Rogue on his analysis.
Karl Rove does not speak often (if at all) of the generational change in American politics. It is relevant, as are events. Under normal conditions, Republicans should have wiped out the Democratic Party in most elections, flipping thirty or more House seats and maybe five Senate seats. Just think: C-Span could be the new Horror Channel for any liberal without changing over to Frankenstein, Dracula, and the like.
The current GOP has become a veritable playground in which extremists can win lots of nominations. Extremists who cover their extremism can win, only to expose themselves in the next legislative session (think of 2010).
I look at my own state (Michigan) and I saw a Republican gubernatorial candidate saying "no exceptions" to a rigid ban on abortion and some "stolen election" claimants. They went down by decisive measures, and a referendum to legalize abortion went into effect. The State legislature has gone D, so it can abolish Michigan's Right-to-Work (for much less!) law.
Moderates like Sununu in New Hampshire can win; extremists like Dan Bolduc in New Hampsh9ire lose.
Demographics look bad for a Republican Party unable to turn on a dime. Extremists in Solid R states establish the agenda, and the demographic trend of America becoming more urban, educated, and non-white bodes ill for a Party that disrespects the values of America's Model Minorities who dread the Racist Right. That includes Jews and LGBT people for reasons that I need not discuss. America's Model Minorities are generally much more educated than the Trump cultists.
Republicans did not quite get the message from January 6, 2021, arguably the low point of American politics since... I dunno... the murders of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney by the KKK in Philadelphia, Mississippi? America turned on a dime after that disgusting triple murder, and it did not do so this time.
Cultural change will not favor Republicans until they adopt the virtues that they used to claim as theirs -- national loyalty, rational thought, high value on formal education, rule of law, protocol and precedent, self-control, and integrity. Republicans did not abandon those quickly, and getting those back will take much more time than the current electoral cycle. America's model minorities are already there, so if Republicans had kept their old virtues they could be gaining ground on Democrats. Younger adults may be liberal in politics, but they seem to go along with the old virtues that Republicans used to claim (wrongly) as theirs alone or at least predictable among themselves if not among Democrats.
We are approaching the end of the Crisis of 2020, and the political fads of the 3T that Republicans latched onto in the 1980's show how threadbare they are. A 4T typically includes the establishment of the conformist, egalitarian, and communitarian values of a 1T at the expense of 3T fads. (The ferocity of 4T responses to real danger dies as the dangers abate). We will soon prefer thrift to monetary legerdemain while greater uniformity in consumer results becomes the norm. Republicans have done little to form the 4T consensus. They offered one of institutional corruption, competition for the common man but not the economic elites, and superstition as an intellectual norm.
His analysis is refuted by the voting evidence, and most of his favorites lost.
By Karl RoveFollow
Nov. 23, 2022 1:29 pm ET
Journal Editorial Report: Republicans might owe a House majority to gains in New York. Image: Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
A novel explanation for the GOP’s disappointing midterm comes from Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley. The problem, he writes, wasn’t candidate quality but substance: “The old Republican Party is dead.” Because too few candidates backed a Trumpian agenda of protectionism, less legal immigration, a crackdown on Big Tech and an end to tax cuts, “the red wave didn’t land.” Working people who support the Trump agenda “chose to stay home.”
OPINION: POTOMAC WATCH
WSJ Opinion Potomac Watch
Donald Trump's 2024 Rivals Won't Back Down
SUBSCRIBE
The data don’t bear this out. There were 113.7 million votes cast for House candidates in 2018. Republicans got 51 million and Democrats 60.7 million. Though votes are still being counted in California, so far this year Republicans received 54 million votes to 50.5 million for Democrats. Democrats had an 8.6% margin over Republicans in 2018; Republicans have a 3.3% edge in 2022.
Mr. Hawley also argues that working-class voters “have little enthusiasm” for the GOP. Data don’t back up this claim, either. According to the Fox News Voter Analysis, white noncollege voters in 2018 were 40% of the turnout and broke 59% Republican, 39% Democrat. In 2022, their share of the turnout ticked up to 41% and the Republican advantage grew to 65% to 32%. It appears Democrats have bigger problems than the GOP does among working-class voters.
Yet Mr. Hawley has half a point: The election results do reflect a problem of substance, specifically the damage Republicans did with candidates who went full-on Trumpy. If they echoed the former president’s issues, tone and stolen-election claims, they often lost and in almost every case ran behind the rest of the Republican ticket.
Ohio’s Sen.-elect J.D. Vance won with more than 2.1 million votes, or 53%, a margin of almost 7 points. But Gov. Mike DeWine, a quintessential traditional Republican, won re-election with 63%, receiving 380,000 more votes than Mr. Vance and sweeping the onetime swing state by more than 25 points.
Mr. Vance trailed the rest of the Buckeye Republican statewide ticket, each member of whom won with bigger margins. He received 286,000 fewer votes than the GOP’s attorney general candidate, 248,000 fewer than the Republican secretary of state, 201,000 fewer than the auditor hopeful and 194,000 fewer than the party’s treasurer nominee. All this despite Sen. Mitch McConnell’s super PAC spending $35 million to help Mr. Vance’s struggling campaign.
In the Arizona Senate race, one of Mr. Trump’s biggest acolytes, Blake Masters, lost by 126,000 votes, or 4.9%, the worst performance by a Grand Canyon State GOP Senate candidate in 34 years. The GOP’s secretary of state hopeful, Mark Finchem, who claimed the 2020 election was “stolen,” lost by 120,000 votes, or nearly 6%. The more traditional Republican nominee for state treasurer, Kimberly Yee, won 56% to 44%, receiving nearly 200,000 more votes than either Mr. Masters or Mr. Finchem.
New Hampshire’s Trumpian Senate nominee, Don Bolduc, lost by more than 9 points and nearly 57,000 votes, while the Trump-endorsed candidates for the state’s two congressional seats lost by a combined 61,000 votes, both running about 10 points behind the GOP’s expected performance in their districts. Republican Gov. Chris Sununu cruised to a 57% re-election, beating his Democrat opponent by nearly 95,000 votes and running ahead of Mr. Bolduc by 77,000 and the combined vote for the GOP’s two House candidates by almost 75,000.
Washington state’s Third Congressional District provides another example of the Trumpian problem. Propelled by Mr. Trump’s endorsement, veteran Joe Kent pushed aside incumbent GOP Rep. Jamie Herrera Beutler in the primary. But he then lost the general election by less than 1% while the GOP’s extraordinary Senate candidate, Tiffany Smiley, ran ahead of him by 3 to 6 points in every county in the district. Similarly, with Mr. Trump’s endorsement in Michigan’s Third District, John Gibbs took out incumbent GOP Rep. Peter Meijer in a district rated D+1, then lost in the general election by nearly 13 points.
There are dozens of other examples, but the point is obvious: The principal reason Republicans came up short was that just when Americans were ready to vote for them to check Democratic excesses, the GOP nominated too many radicals and weirdos. Mr. Hawley—who raised a clinched fist in solidarity with those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—may not see that, but voters did.
Mr. Rove helped organize the political-action committee American Crossroads and is author of “The Triumph of William McKinley” (Simon & Schuster, 2015).
----------------------------------------------------
Comment: I have long loathed "Karl Rogue", but at times he tells the truth, especially when it has no possibility of hurting his favorite politicians. I agree with Karl Rogue on his analysis.
Karl Rove does not speak often (if at all) of the generational change in American politics. It is relevant, as are events. Under normal conditions, Republicans should have wiped out the Democratic Party in most elections, flipping thirty or more House seats and maybe five Senate seats. Just think: C-Span could be the new Horror Channel for any liberal without changing over to Frankenstein, Dracula, and the like.
The current GOP has become a veritable playground in which extremists can win lots of nominations. Extremists who cover their extremism can win, only to expose themselves in the next legislative session (think of 2010).
I look at my own state (Michigan) and I saw a Republican gubernatorial candidate saying "no exceptions" to a rigid ban on abortion and some "stolen election" claimants. They went down by decisive measures, and a referendum to legalize abortion went into effect. The State legislature has gone D, so it can abolish Michigan's Right-to-Work (for much less!) law.
Moderates like Sununu in New Hampshire can win; extremists like Dan Bolduc in New Hampsh9ire lose.
Demographics look bad for a Republican Party unable to turn on a dime. Extremists in Solid R states establish the agenda, and the demographic trend of America becoming more urban, educated, and non-white bodes ill for a Party that disrespects the values of America's Model Minorities who dread the Racist Right. That includes Jews and LGBT people for reasons that I need not discuss. America's Model Minorities are generally much more educated than the Trump cultists.
Republicans did not quite get the message from January 6, 2021, arguably the low point of American politics since... I dunno... the murders of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney by the KKK in Philadelphia, Mississippi? America turned on a dime after that disgusting triple murder, and it did not do so this time.
Cultural change will not favor Republicans until they adopt the virtues that they used to claim as theirs -- national loyalty, rational thought, high value on formal education, rule of law, protocol and precedent, self-control, and integrity. Republicans did not abandon those quickly, and getting those back will take much more time than the current electoral cycle. America's model minorities are already there, so if Republicans had kept their old virtues they could be gaining ground on Democrats. Younger adults may be liberal in politics, but they seem to go along with the old virtues that Republicans used to claim (wrongly) as theirs alone or at least predictable among themselves if not among Democrats.
We are approaching the end of the Crisis of 2020, and the political fads of the 3T that Republicans latched onto in the 1980's show how threadbare they are. A 4T typically includes the establishment of the conformist, egalitarian, and communitarian values of a 1T at the expense of 3T fads. (The ferocity of 4T responses to real danger dies as the dangers abate). We will soon prefer thrift to monetary legerdemain while greater uniformity in consumer results becomes the norm. Republicans have done little to form the 4T consensus. They offered one of institutional corruption, competition for the common man but not the economic elites, and superstition as an intellectual norm.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.