Monday, February 12, 2018

2018 Republican Spring

By Douglas V. Gibbs
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After a little more than a year in the White House, President Trump’s approval rating in one of the major daily tracking polls has improved significantly and is now higher than President Barack Obama’s on the same date of his first term.  If you will remember, Rasmussen Reports was the only poll that got even close to predicting Trump would win the presidency in 2016, and now their daily survey shows that Mr. Trump’s approval rating is at 48 percent, statistically tied with his disapproval rating of 50 percent.  On February 8, 2010, Mr. Obama had a clear majority disapproving of his performance as president — 54 percent versus just 46 percent approval.

For those of you still claiming Rasmussen is not a poll we should be watching, and that all of the other polls are more dependable, remember that all of the other polls (and conventional wisdom) was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that Hillary Clinton was destined to win in November of 2016.

I have always believed that the skewing of most of the polls leans anywhere from 5% to 15% towards the left (if not more), so with that in mind, let's remember that even with the bias that we know is there, with the mid-term elections on the horizon, the GOP is also looking a lot better in the polls than people expected.  And, as usual, President Trump has noticed, and has spoken and tweeted regarding the good news. 

“I just looked at some numbers, you’ve even done better than you thought,” Trump told lawmakers, citing poll numbers.  “The numbers are pretty good and that’s one example of how things are getting better.”

A bump in Trump’s approval rating has likely been a part of the bump in the chances for Republicans running in 2018's mid-term elections.

Approval ratings don't normally go up during a President's second term, but it seems President Trump is an exception to that tendency, and the GOP is riding that slow wave upward.

The Tax Reform Law may be a factor in what is going on with public opinion, since many voters tend to vote with their wallets.

A Monmouth University Poll shows Trump’s approval rating jumping 10 points compared to last month, while the Democratic advantage on the generic ballot had shrunk to 2 percentage points (and it was around 15 points before).

Even the Reuters/Ipsos poll shows Trump’s approval rating has ticked up, but not with such an extreme jump - they wouldn't dare allow such a thing to grow at such an enormous rate (likely a greater than 15% skew?).

A part of the struggles that the GOP has been facing has not been so much from the opposition as it has been from their voting allies.  Conservatives were frustrated last year when a repeal of Obamacare, or at least a repeal and replacement of ObamaCare, never materialized.  The Republicans refusal to work with the President had conservatives down on the legislature, but with the passing and implementation of the Tax Reform Law, a rebound may be in the works.

Meanwhile, public attention has been carefully paying attention to the Robert Mueller investigation of allegations of collusion between Trump’s inner circle and Russia, and the deeper the investigation goes, the more people are realizing that it is just a snow-job by the Democrats in an attempt to cover up their own dealings with the Russians, and other leftist anti-constitutional, anti-American, and criminal activities.

The liberal left Democrats are not exactly worried, however, largely dismissing Republican optimism as being misplaced, since the alleged uptick is so minuscule, and as they did in 2016, they are convinced that their biased polls based on lopsided sampling are 100% accurate.

Besides, as they like to remind the Republicans, Roy Moore lost in Alabama (after a nasty negative campaign by the liberal media, likely voter fraud, and the Democrats shipping in illegal votes from out of State), and a pro-union Democrat won a State Assembly seat in Missouri that Trump won by a landslide (once again, one wonders about the voter fraud - in California it's gotten so bad that Judicial Watch has a lawsuit against the Golden State regarding the State's crooked and twisted voter rolls.

Over thirty Republicans have announced they are abandoning their congressional seats, largely in the name of retirement, which may hurt the Republican Party since less candidates will be able to use the word "incumbent" after their name.  Meanwhile, Democrats need a net gain of 24 seats to recapture control of the House and two seats to win back the Senate, and based on a number of factors, that still seems unlikely.

The expected wave of victory the Democrats were banking on in November is slipping through their fingers largely because of their hard stance against the tax bill, as well as their willingness to put illegal aliens before Americans and military members during the budget talks that has led to two shut-downs, so far.

In short, in the name of ideology, the Democrats are overplaying their hand.  Democrat leader in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, as she chewed on her foot, claimed the thousand or two dollars that the voters will get through bonuses or extra money in their pocket due to their tax return and a prospering economy as a result of the new GOP tax reform law are merely "crumbs".  Also, voters were watching when it came to the Democrat Party's disregard for acknowledging any improvement since Trump took office, symbolized by their unwillingness to positively recognize any of Trump's good news during his State of the Union Speech.

While the Republicans may not gain seats in the House (but it may be possible according to some Republican pundits that they increase their voice in the House), if their are losses they will be minimal.  Over the last two cycles the GOP has had a 247-seat majority and 241-seat majority - the largest back-to-back majorities in the history of the country.  I am not banking on them losing the House when Trump's numbers are on the rise, and the gap is so massive.

Under Trump we have seen the creation of 2.4 million jobs since he took office and a 4.1 percent unemployment rate, near a record low, which should translate over to the Republicans' chances in hanging on to Congress.

Democrats are determined to try and make any loss the GOP may have a message of some kind of referendum against Trump.  The GOP has their own strategy against that argument, countering by tying Democratic candidates to people like Pelosi.

The leftist media is predicting a bloodbath (like they did for Hillary), but what they will get is possibly a few seats, if any, in the House, and a possibility that the frustrated Republican electorate comes out in force so as to give the Republicans a few more seats in the Senate.

I believe both Houses will remain in GOP hands after the election.

After all, the Senate map definitely does not favor the Democrats. Only one Republican is up for re-election in a State that Hillary Clinton won last year, while 10 Democratic Senators are up for re-election in States that President Trump won last year.  And, many of those States tend to be conservative, anyway.

And let's not forget the problems with the law the Democrats keep having.  Surely, that does not help, either.  Criminal Democrat Senator Robert Menendez out of New Jersey will likely be replaced by a Republican if convicted in his corruption trial next month and then expelled from the GOP-led Senate.

Also, Voter ID laws have emerged in 29 States, and whenever fraud is held back, it tends to be good news for the GOP.  Missouri and Texas, in particular, both have Senate races in the works, and in those two States have Voter ID requirements that have been getting stricter.

Another factor is that during mid-term elections, Democrat voters tend to stay home, especially if they are members of the liberal left's protected groups.  While Democrats try to use “white resentment” as a tool for running, the reality is their claim of racism and hate for Republicans because they are somehow the party of the old white guys (screamed Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders) is a false one – Trump voters aren’t resentful of African-Americans and Latinos; they resent the racial politics of liberal whites; meanwhile, non-whites are beginning to catch on to the Democrat Party's silly games and the reality that it is actually the Democrat Party (who is the party of slavery, the KKK, and Jim Crow Laws) who is the party of racism.

Trump has changed the rules of the game.  Conventional wisdom has been proven to be wrong, when it comes to what the experts and consultants claim.  The idea that "minorities" vote for Democrats, old white conservatives vote for Republicans, and candidates have to move to the center to gain the independent vote is a fallacy - and Trump proved it.  If conservatism is articulated properly to the blue collar workers, regardless of race, creed, or societal position on a number of cultural and economic ladders, they will vote for the GOP.  It happened in Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan for Donald Trump, and the GOP has figured out that its time to take advantage of the changing game.  Besides, they are also realizing that the polls are flawed.  The liberal left controls the message, and the message can't always be trusted - so, the Republicans are bucking the system, and they will likely come out on top if they refrain from going back to the "we've got to moderate to win" mistake.

I think we may be in for some surprises, too.  I was at dinner with Edwin Duterte last night, who is one of the Republicans running against Maxine Waters, and in the Democrat-heavy district, the Republicans are running nearly neck-and-neck with Waters. While she has won the last two elections by more than 75%, and the two prior to that by more than 70%, the combined Republicans versus Waters right now is at a dead-heat.  Is it possible that the Democrats have been screwing up so bad that their own base may turn against them, and in November even a mainstay of socialist Democrat Party madness like Maxine Waters can be shown the way out of Washington?

In San Francisco the people are turning against Democrat Party policies by voting with their feet.  Hordes of people are fleeing from the city region due to the hard left madness going on, there. More people are leaving the Bay Area than are coming in, and the reasons for the exodus range from higher crime, the sanctuary status, and the cost of living.  If the hard left liberals are fleeing their Bay Area leftist utopia in such a way, imagine how many Democrats in that State alone are ready and willing to vote against their Democrat politicians in the next election ... at both the State, and the federal, levels?

A candidate told me that 42% of Democrats are unhappy with the direction California is going.  While I couldn't find a source for that nugget, I did find that 41% of likely voters in California disapproval with what the legislature has been up to.  Will this translate into helping the Republicans on the federal front?  Will dissatisfaction with Sacramento help California avoid another super-majority in their legislature for Democrats?

California set aside, the rest of the country is ready for a Republican Spring in 2018 - despite what the Democrats say.  Is that true?  Will 2018 mimic 2010 and 2014 where the Tea Party came out in force to support conservative candidates?  I think the answer lies in the willingness of Democrat Voters turning out.  In mid-term elections, Democrats tend not to turn out in as great of numbers - and that, alone, could help doom the liberal left's belief that they will see a big blue Democrat wave in November of 2018.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

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