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Ever since Donald Trump won the Republican nomination for president in 2016, an industry of rationalization and justification has thrived. The theme is clear: Look what you made us do. The argument is simple: Democratic unfairness and media bias radicalized Republicans to such an extent that they turned to Trump in understandable outrage. Republicans had been bullied, so they turned to a bully of their own.

No aspect of that theory has been more enduring than what Ill call the Mitt Romney martyr thesis. The Republicans nominated a good and decent manso the argument goesand the Democrats and the media savaged him. Republicans respected norms, Democrats did not, and now those same Democrats have the gall to savage the GOP for Trump?

I happen to agree that there has been, in fact, a Mitt Romney radicalization process. But it is quite the opposite of what this narrative suggests. It isnt rooted in Republican anger on behalf of Romney but in Republican anger against Romney, and over time that anger has grown to be not just against Romney the man but also against the values he represents.

The Mitt Romney martyr thesis is important to understand. Like many popular (but mistaken) theories, its based on some grains of truth. Many of the attacks against Romney were definitely extreme, most notably when in 2012 Joe Biden told an audience that included hundreds of Black Americans that Romneys policies would put you all back in chains.

Biden wasnt referring to literal slavery but rather the chains of, in his view, unfair economic rules. But the language was indefensibly inflammatory. When Biden launched that attack, I was personally infuriated. I was a Romney partisan from way back. In 2006, just as Romney planned his first run for president, I formed a groupalong with my wife, Nancy, and a small band of friendscalled Evangelicals for Mitt.

Our goal was to persuade evangelical Christians to vote for a Mormon candidate. We built our case around Romneys competence and character. (It was sadly naive to believe that the bulk of evangelical voters truly cared about personal virtue in politicians.) We spent countless hours supporting Romney through two separate campaigns, and in 2012 Nancy and I both were Romney delegates to the Republican National Convention.

A partisan mindset is a dangerous thing. It can make you keenly aware of every unfair critique from the other side and oblivious to your own sides misdeeds. I was indignant about attacks against Romney, for example, while brushing off years of birther conspiracies against President Barack Obama as fringe or irrelevant.

Mitt Romney: America is in denial

Then, of course, Republicans nominated Trump, the birther in chief, and the scales fell from my partisan eyes.

And now, in hindsight, the real Romney radicalization is far more clear. You could see the seeds planted during the 2012 Republican primary. On January 19, two days before South Carolina primary voters cast their ballot, Newt Gingrich had a moment during the GOP primary debate.

The CNN host John King asked Gingrich about claims by one of his ex-wives (Gingrich has been married three times) that he pressed her in 1999 to have an open marriage. Gingrich responded by condemning the destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media, declared that he was appalled that King would begin a presidential debate on the topic, and said that it was despicable for King to make Gingrichs ex-wifes claim an issue two days before a Republican primary.

The crowd interrupted Gingrich with cheers and hoots of approval. But why? Wasnt Kings underlying question fair? After all, Gingrich had admitted to cheating on his first and second wives, and he admitted to cheating on his second wife at the same time that he was speaker of the House and leading impeachment proceedings against President Bill Clinton for lying under oath about his own extramarital affair.

Moreover, Gingrich was having his affair after the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in America and a key Republican constituency, had passed a Resolution on Moral Character of Public Officials that contained the following statement: Tolerance of serious wrong by leaders sears the conscience of the culture, spawns unrestrained immorality and lawlessness in the society, and surely results in Gods judgment.

Surely, heavily evangelical voters in a key Republican stronghold would be concerned about Gingrichs scandals? No, they were far angrier at media outlets than they were at any Republican hypocrisy.

From the November 2018 issue: The man who broke politics

Gingrich went on to win the South Carolina primary in a landslide powered by evangelicals. It was the only time in primary history that South Carolina voters failed to vote for the eventual GOP nominee. But South Carolina voters werent out of step; rather they were ahead of their time. They forecast the Republican break with character in favor of a man who would fight.

To understand the emotional and psychological aftermath of Romneys loss, one has to look at the cultural break between the GOP establishmentwhich commissioned an autopsy of the party in 2012 that called for greater efforts at inclusionand a grassroots base that was convinced that it had been hoodwinked by party leaders into supporting the safe candidate.

They wanted a street brawler, and when (they believed) Romney campaigned with one hand tied behind his back, they were angry. Yes, there was anger at Democrats and reporters for their treatment of Romney, but the raw anger that really mattered was their anger at Romney for the way he treated Obama and the press. They were furious that he didnt angrily confront Candy Crowley when she famously fact-checked him in the midst of the third and final presidential debate of 2012.

And so the Republican establishment and the Republican base moved apart, with one side completely convinced that Romney lost because he was perhaps, if anything, too harsh (especially when it came to immigration) and the other convinced that he lost because he was too soft.

Trumps nomination was a triumph of that base. Well before Romney came out against Trump in the primary and well before Romneys first impeachment vote, Trump supporters scorned him. They despised his alleged weakness.

When Trump won, the base had its proof of concept. Fighting worked, and not even Trumps lossalong with the loss of the House and the Senate in four short yearshas truly disrupted that conclusion. And why would it? Many millions still dont believe he lost.

The Mitt Romney martyr theory thus suffers from a fatal defect. It presumes that large numbers of Republicans werent radicalized before Romneys rough treatment. In truth, they already hated Democrats and the media, and when Romney lost, their message to the Republican establishment in 2016 was just as clear as it was in South Carolina in 2012. No more nice guys. The character that mattered was a commitment to punching the left right in the mouth.

See more here:
Don't Buy the Mitt Romney Martyr Theory - The Atlantic

Dwight Weidman| Columnist

New Maggie Haberman book details Donald Trump's take on Ron DeSantis

As Trumps favor wanes within the Republican party, Ron DeSantis is trending up.

Buzz60, Buzz60

With less than a month before the midterm election, the familiar pattern is playing out with liberal media exaggerations of the prospects of Democrat candidates and the usual October surprise attacks on Republican candidates.

Media coverage has made the term bombshell obsolescent and the term should be retired along with the lefts other favorite term, racist.

Regardless of how much hyperbole comes from the Democrats and their media propaganda arm, the outcome of this election will be decided on the issues of inflation and the economy, crime and immigration, and that is bad news for Democrats.

The latest Rasmussen poll, as I am writing this, shows a Republican advantage of 47%-43% in congressional elections. In 2010, with a similar lead, Republicans gained 63 seats in the House and six seats in the Senate. In 1994, Republicans were actually behind the Democrats in most generic polls but ended up gaining 54 House seats and eight Senate seats.

In the Real Clear Politics (RCP) projections for the U.S. House of Representatives, Republicans start out with a majority of 220-180 seats over the Democrats when the solid and lean seats are counted, before any of the 35 tossup seats are decided. That means that the only real question is the size of the Republican majority. Since the House controls the purse strings of the nation, Republican control means that the reckless spending and other excesses of the Biden administration are over.

On the Senate side, it is closer, which explains why the Democrats seem to be concentrating their money and attention there. One troubling statistic for Democrats is that President Joe Bidens approval ratings in the key Senate swing states is under water by an average of 15%.

Despite some races being fluid at this point, the RCP projection for the new Senate is 52 Republicans to 48 Democrats, and if that holds, it will mean an end to the appointment of many leftist radicals to our court system and executive branch positions. The RCP projection already counts the Georgia Senate race as a hold for Democrats, so my Democratic friends shouldnt get their hopes up over the latest media hit on GOP Georgia candidate Herschel Walker.

Republicans are also projected in the RCP averages to pick up two governorships, in Nevada and Wisconsin, giving them a 30-20 state advantage. Also, dont rule out the possibility of a few Republican upsets in states like Michigan, Minnesota or Oregon.

It doesnt look like local hero and Pennsylvania Republican governor candidate Doug Mastriano is going to be in the winners circle, despite our newly crowned local Republican Party leaders all salivating over the possibility of one of them replacing him in the state senate.

Sorry, guys, but your choice of Doug in the primary reminds me of a climactic scene from the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," when the villain seeking the Holy Grail was told to choose from a roomful of chalices and, of course, he and his girlfriend choose the brightest and shiniest one.

And of course, when he drinks from it, he suffers an immediate gruesome demise. The old knight guarding the grail room remarked, He chose poorly.

Lets assume for a moment that the projections hold firm and on Nov. 8, Americans decide to apply the brakes to this Biden and Democrat disaster we have and give the car keys back to the Republicans. What then?

Other than stopping the insanity that is wrecking America, what will Republicans do to reverse the slide? Obviously, without holding the White House or a veto-proof majority in Congress, there is little that can be done legislatively other than obstruct the Democrats actions, but a Republican Congress can and should set the table for a Republican president Trump or DeSantis? in 2024.

Should Congress hold hearings? Yes, and there are lots of things to hold hearings on: the Biden family scandals and the possibility of them creating a compromised president; the failure of our withdrawal from Afghanistan; the willful violation of U.S. law allowing millions of illegal immigrants into the country; and corruption in federal law enforcement.

I could go on, but these hearings need to lead to criminal referrals. In 2024, when Republicans gain control of the executive branch, a bunch of leftists need to go to jail.

Dwight Weidman is a resident of Greene Township and is a graduate of Shepherd University. He is retired from the United States Department of Defense, where his career included assignments In Europe, Asia, and Central America. He has been in leadership roles for the Republican Party in two states, most recently serving two terms as Chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party. Involved in web publishing since 1996, he is the publisher of The Franklin County Journal. He has been an Amateur Radio Operator since 1988, getting his first license in Germany, and is a past volunteer with both Navy and Army MARS, Military Auxiliary Radio Service, and is also an NRA-certified firearms instructor.

Originally posted here:
Republicans must make sure this election win will have consequences - Public Opinion

A new study has concluded what many Americans have long suspected: The Covid-19 pandemic has killed more Republicans than Democrats.

In a detailed examination of data from Ohio and Florida, the National Bureau of Economic Research has found that political affiliation has emerged as a potential risk factor for COVID-19, and that significantly more Republicans than Democrats have died from the virus since the introduction of vaccines in early 2021 to protect against the disease.

By cross-referencing voter registration data and mortality figures, the study found that excess death rates the number of deaths above pre-pandemic levels for registered Republicans were significantly higher than for registered Democrats after the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines.

If these differences in vaccination by political party affiliation persist, then the higher excess death rate among Republicans is likely to continue through the subsequent stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, the study, which was published in September, concluded.

The study found that death ratesfrom Covid-19 were only slightly higher for Republicans than Democrats during the early days of the pandemic, before vaccines became available. But by the summer of 2021, a few months after vaccines were introduced, the Republican excess death rate rose to nearly double that of Democrats, and this gap widened further in the winter of 2021. The sudden increase in the gap between Republican and Democratic death rates suggests that vaccine take-up likely played an important role, the study found.

A central narrative of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States has been Republican opposition to public health measures, particularly mandates to wear masks in public and vaccination requirements for employment and access to public places and public travel. That reflected a refusal by many conservatives, following the lead of former President Donald Trump, to take the pandemic seriously, choosing instead to treat Covid-19 as tantamount to the flu.

Despite the fact that more than 1 million Americans have died from the virus, many Republican political leaders, particularly in red states, refused to impose stringent public health restrictions during the pandemic, and criticized mask and vaccination mandates. That opposition led many Republicans to deny that the vaccines worked and to refuse to get the shots. In Florida, one of the two states included in the study, Gov. Ron DeSantis transformed himself into a national Republican leader and possible presidential contender by leading the right-wing charge against public health mandates.

The partisan divide over vaccination developed almost as soon as Covid-19 vaccines became available in early 2021, and it continued to widen. By September 2021, 92 percent of registered Democrats had been vaccinated, compared with only 56 percent of Republicans, according to a Gallup survey at the time.

But the National Bureau of Economic Research study provides some of the strongest evidence yet that the refusal of many Republicans to get vaccinated has made them much more likely to die from Covid-19. While those who have been vaccinated often still contract the virus, many studies have shown that people who have been vaccinated are much less likely to die from the disease.

There have been previous efforts to measure the impact on health of the partisan divide over Covid-19 vaccinations. But the National Bureau of Economic Research study offers a more detailed look at death rates in two states among Republicans and Democrats.

The study tracked 577,659 people who died in Ohio and Florida at age 25 or older between January 2018 and December 2021. It then linked those people to their 2017 Ohio and Florida voting records.

Between March 2020 and March 2021, excess death rates for Republicans in Ohio and Florida were 1.6 percentage points higher than for Democrats; but from April 2021 to December 2021 after vaccines became widely available the gap widened to 10.6 percentage points. The study found that the largest gaps in excess death rates between Republicans and Democrats came in Ohio and Florida counties with low vaccination rates. By using county-level vaccination rates in Ohio and Florida, we find evidence that vaccination contributes to explaining differences in excess deaths by political party affiliation, even after controlling for location and age differences, the study said.

More:
The Right's Anti-Vaxxers Are Killing Republicans - The Intercept

As was the case during the 2020 presidential election, there are partisan differences in how Americans intend to cast their ballots in Novembers elections. The bulk of people who say they will vote on Election Day (November 8) will vote Republican, while most people who plan to cast their ballots before Election Day will vote Democratic.

A majority of likely voters (57%) who say they will vote in-person on Election Day say they will vote for the Republican candidate in the district where they live. Meanwhile, 61% of likely voters who plan to vote by absentee ballot either by mail or by dropping off their ballot at a vote center or drop box say they will support the Democrats. Likely voters who plan to vote in-person prior to Election Day through early voting slightly favor Democrats: 50% of this group would pick the Democratic candidate, while 45% would choose the Republican. (Likely voters are defined as registered voters who say they will "definitely" or "probably" vote in the upcoming election, or who say they already have voted.)

Changes in voting rules and regulations may have an impact, as 27% of Americans who voted in 2020 plan to vote this year using a different voting method than they did in 2020, including 19% of 2020 in-person Election Day voters, 39% of 2020 in-person early voters, and 24% of 2020 voters who cast their ballot by mail.

Carl Bialik and Taylor Orth contributed to this article

Polling by the Economist/YouGov was conducted on October 8 - 11, 2022 among 1,500 U.S. adult citizens. Explore more on the methodology and data for this Economist/YouGov poll.

Image: Adobe Stock (Alcorn Imagery)

Read more:
How Democrats and Republicans plan to cast their ballots in November - YouGov US

I recently gave a speech to the Indiana Manufacturers Association regarding the 2022 midterm elections. When I was asked what the results would be, I jokingly said if I knew that Id be doing this speech from the island I bought in the South Pacific because I would have won the Powerball, Mega Millions and the Hoosier Lottery.

With that said, recent polling by my company Indy Politics and Illinois-based ARW Strategies can provide some insight.

First, lets start with the polling that shows a close race for U.S. Senate and secretary of state. Please note, I have always maintained that polls are not predictions of what will happen on Election Day but merely snapshots in time, which, when looked at in context, can highlight trends that demonstrate how things might turn out. With that caveat, we polled 600 likely statewide voters on Sept. 25-26. We used phones and text messages. And the polls margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Republican incumbent Todd Young had a 2-percentage-point lead over his challenger, Democrat Tom McDermott. Young led 39% to 37%, which is within the margin of error. Libertarian James Sceniak was at 6%, while 17% of voters are still undecided. What was interesting in the undecided category was that 24% of Republicans said they were undecided. My theory is that these are MAGA Republicans who havent been crazy about Youngs first term in office, but they arent ready to vote for McDermott orSceniak.

Ironically, Republican Diego Morales faces somewhat of a similar situation in the secretary of state race. Democrat Destiny Wells has a 4-percentage-point lead over Morales, 36% to 32%, albeit her lead is within the margin of error. Libertarian Jeff Maurer was at 7%, and 25% of voters remained undecided. Once again, if we look at Republican voters, 27% were undecided. My theory here is, unlike Todd Young, who has issues with the MAGA crowd, Morales has issues with the establishment wing of the party.

Please note that we polled before we broke the story about two women who say Morales engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct. [Morales has denied those allegations.] However, Morales already had problems going into the poll: getting fired from the Secretary of States Office; quitting before he was fired a second time; spending $43,000 in campaign funds on a new car, which he could have had donated; unanswered questions about his military service; and backtrackingm on his positions on early voting and whether Joe Biden won the presidency fair and square.

And then there is abortion.

Indiana lawmakers met this summer and restricted abortion rights. It was legislation that neither the pro-life nor pro-choice side wanted. It got a lot of women worked up around the state. And the legislation is on hold while it makes its way through the court system. So, we asked in our poll: Would you vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights or a candidate who opposes abortion? Fifty-one percent of respodents said they would vote for a candidate who supports abortion rights, while only 35% said they would vote for a candidate who opposes abortion rights; 14% said it wouldntmatter.

At the start of this year, I would have argued that Republicans had things pretty much sewn up. Now? Not so much. Granted, a day in politics is a lifetime, and anything can happen. However, my Republican friends cant have too many more days like the ones theyve had lately.

__________

Shabazz is an attorney, radio talk show host and political commentator, college professor and stand-up comedian. Send comments to ibjedit@ibj.com.

Click here for more Forefront columns.

Continued here:
Abdul-Hakim Shabazz: Republicans might not have it in the bag Indianapolis Business Journal - Indianapolis Business Journal