As we head into the midterms proper, I noticed we don't have a thread up to discuss them in detail. Now we do.
As of this posting, the two big stories are have been the Georgia Senate and the Michigan house race.
In Georgia, during a tight race between the eventual winner Eric Schmitt and Eric Greitens, Trump's last minute endorsement went out to....Eric. Just "Eric", no last name listed. While amusing in a way, I have to point out that that sort of indecisive leadership is exactly what the GOP doesn't need.
The much bigger story is Michigan, where Republican Peter Meijer, a rep that voted to impress Trump, was successful primaries by a much more MAGA candidate, John Gibbs, thanks in part from a massive ad buy and donation campaign.....from the democrats. Learning nothing from 2016, the dems are once again meddling in GOP primaries to prop up weak candidates, heedless of what happens if that backfires and the weak candidate wins.
I don't actually know, and don't particularly care, how valid the claims that Gibbs is some far right extremist are (though the claim he's a poor candidate cross ideological lines to a degree, NR has blasted him a few times). But the dems boosting him despite their media claim so (and despite members of the house complaining about the national committee doing so) underscores precisely how hollow their "we have to preserve democracy" rethoric is.
Defenses of this have been....poorly argued, the two I've seen most often is "It doesn't matter if this goes against our principles, we have to win in order to enact those principles" and secondly "yeah, we boosted him, but the GOP voted for him the primary, your infantilizing GOP voters by saying we forced them into this", and finally "it doesn't matter, Gibbs woyld have won anyway"
The first one is just a transparent, willful misunderstanding of what the word "principles" means. If you betray your principles to get power, even if you intend to use that power to act on those beliefs, then your true principle is s desire for power, not "democracy" or whatever you claim.
And for the second one, that is valid, if Gibbs was sold to voters as "generic MAGA election truth guy that will end democracy", as politico claims he is, then voters have no excuse for picking him. That's not what happened though, Gibbs was propped up by ads like this:
Which basically says "he likes Trump, and also he backs the border wall and anti-CRT stuff in schools", which are fairly mainstream GOP talking points. You can't lie to voters about a candidate, and then say them endorsing him proces they support the policies that you very specifically did not tell them about.
And the third one just says the dems are stupid, since they made themselves look bad and wanted loads of money for no reason.
As of this posting, the two big stories are have been the Georgia Senate and the Michigan house race.
In Georgia, during a tight race between the eventual winner Eric Schmitt and Eric Greitens, Trump's last minute endorsement went out to....Eric. Just "Eric", no last name listed. While amusing in a way, I have to point out that that sort of indecisive leadership is exactly what the GOP doesn't need.
The much bigger story is Michigan, where Republican Peter Meijer, a rep that voted to impress Trump, was successful primaries by a much more MAGA candidate, John Gibbs, thanks in part from a massive ad buy and donation campaign.....from the democrats. Learning nothing from 2016, the dems are once again meddling in GOP primaries to prop up weak candidates, heedless of what happens if that backfires and the weak candidate wins.
I don't actually know, and don't particularly care, how valid the claims that Gibbs is some far right extremist are (though the claim he's a poor candidate cross ideological lines to a degree, NR has blasted him a few times). But the dems boosting him despite their media claim so (and despite members of the house complaining about the national committee doing so) underscores precisely how hollow their "we have to preserve democracy" rethoric is.
Defenses of this have been....poorly argued, the two I've seen most often is "It doesn't matter if this goes against our principles, we have to win in order to enact those principles" and secondly "yeah, we boosted him, but the GOP voted for him the primary, your infantilizing GOP voters by saying we forced them into this", and finally "it doesn't matter, Gibbs woyld have won anyway"
The first one is just a transparent, willful misunderstanding of what the word "principles" means. If you betray your principles to get power, even if you intend to use that power to act on those beliefs, then your true principle is s desire for power, not "democracy" or whatever you claim.
And for the second one, that is valid, if Gibbs was sold to voters as "generic MAGA election truth guy that will end democracy", as politico claims he is, then voters have no excuse for picking him. That's not what happened though, Gibbs was propped up by ads like this:
Which basically says "he likes Trump, and also he backs the border wall and anti-CRT stuff in schools", which are fairly mainstream GOP talking points. You can't lie to voters about a candidate, and then say them endorsing him proces they support the policies that you very specifically did not tell them about.
And the third one just says the dems are stupid, since they made themselves look bad and wanted loads of money for no reason.
