Topic: WorldNetDaily
Before the results of the midterm elections came in, Larry Tomczak declared in his Nov. 8 WorldNetDaily column: "Knowing that the only hope for America in our dark time is another Great Awakening, we should celebrate the midterm elections as a sign of God's intervention to set our nation back on the right track as we follow "the General's" example of personal passion for God that helps ignite nationwide revival and reformation." Well, that didn't quite work out -- there was no "red wave" as Tomczak and other WND denizens were fervently hoping for.
Joseph Farah set the tone in his Nov. 9 column by going Luddite and making harder for people to vote:
Do you remember the days when elections were normally settled in one day?
Whatever happened to those days?
Kari Lake, the most important leader to emerge in 2022, said it best: "Another election run by clowns, and we're not gonna take it anymore."
The other most sensible observation of an insane Election Night came from Tucker Carlson: "What happened today in Maricopa County [Arizona] where some huge percentage of voting machines, electronic voting machines … 30 percent, they claim these are Dominion voting machines, but it almost doesn't matter. Electronic voting machines didn't allow people to vote apparently. And that, whatever you think of it, the cause of it, it shakes people's faith in the system. That is an actual threat to democracy. And it points up the core problem, which is, we're not really very serious about democracy if we're using electronic voting machines, or not requiring photo ID to vote. We could have secure elections. But until we do, you're going to have these moments where everybody in the country fears volatility, because one side doesn't believe the result is real."
Bingo!
What's wrong with our election system?
No more election machines! Get rid of them. They're insecure. They're dangerous. They don't deliver reliable results under the best of circumstances. What's wrong with paper ballots? No more "ranked choice" gimmicks to help people like the corrupt Lisa Murkowski of Alaska remain as perpetual incumbents. Make certain only U.S. citizens vote. And, we ought to outlaw routine mail-in ballots other than absentees. Period.
Actually, the main reason why Arizona election results were slower to come in was an influx of mail-inballots dropped off at voting locations in Election Day instead of being mailed in in advance as they were intended. And the only "voting machines" the state uses are tabulation machines that count votes, and even when they malfuncrtion, all votes will still be counted eventually, just not immediately.
Michael Brown attempted his own spin:
For a number of reasons, I would have preferred to see the Republicans take back both the House and Senate in fairly decisive ways. This would have effectively thwarted the implementation of what I believe to be a very destructive leftist agenda. And I voted accordingly in my own state.
But I am not in the least bit discouraged or downcast, since the "red wave" I am really looking for is a spiritual one, not a political one. As I tweeted on Oct. 20, "I have voted Republican for many years, but my vision for a 'red' America is for a nation washed in the blood of Jesus."
Laura Hollis' Nov. 10 column on "8 key takeaways from the midterms" was heavy on sore-loser takes like "Early voting is problematic" and "Democratic Party is deliberately running candidates who are empty shells, absent from (or disastrous on) the campaign trail and/or demonstrably incompetent." but she was getting tired of Donald Trump's antics:
Trump's policies as president were immeasurably superior to those of the present administration. Trump continues to draw tens of thousands to his rallies, and he is at his best when his focus is on the issues that concern huge swaths of Americans: crime, illegal immigration, the economy, inflation. But when he attributes a candidate's success or failure to loyalty to him personally, the message falls flat. His jabs at failed Republican Senate candidates Don Bolduc and Joe O'Dea are examples. This self-absorption is mildly amusing when Trump's candidates win. But Tuesday has even diehard Trump supporters rethinking the future. Support within the MAGAverse on Twitter was shifting toward DeSantis even before the implosion of Republicans' midterm hopes. Now the sentiment is spreading that DeSantis' approach worked; Trump's didn't.
Odds are Trump will be announcing his candidacy for the presidency in 2024 next week. A Trump-DeSantis ticket presents interesting possibilities. But if Trump thinks he's going to parlay "Ron DeSanctimonious"-style barbs into a preordained anointing as nominee, I think he's mistaken. Trump already faces powerful headwinds from every institution controlled by the left: the Deep State, the media, academia, woke CEOs, Hollywood. If he fragments his own base into chunks, he'll go down and take the party with him. It would be an unforced error of catastrophic proportions to hand such a victory to the left.
Nicholas Waddy lamented in his Nov. 11 column that "the Dems' big bet on abortion in their ad spending was not in vain, and the GOP effort to make crime a centerpiece of the 2022 election fell somewhat flat. Again, the pre-election polling mostly suggested it was the Dems who were barking up the wrong tree, but electoral realities do not always take shape in the way pollsters predict." He added that "played an outsized role in helping Republicans to choose some of their most important candidates, and some of those candidates were demonstrably flawed." He was also critical of Republicans as a whole:
Republicans must heed their own warning signs. Even before the 2022 election was finished, Donald Trump had begun to direct criticism at DeSantis, who he understandably perceives as a potential rival. That Trump intends to run again appears obvious. That many Republicans, especially in the leadership of the party, have grown weary of Trump and fear that he could lead them to abject defeat in 2024 is equally obvious. Whether DeSantis, or someone else, can best Trump in the primaries, however, is doubtful, given the immense leads Trump has in virtually every poll of Republicans' preferences.
Whoever emerges as the GOP nominee in 2024, there is a strong possibility that candidate will be scarred by a long, vicious internecine battle that may damage the party fundamentally. Tens of millions of Republican voters are loyal and passionate Trumpers – and whether they would continue to vote in support of a party that spurned their idol is the $64,000 question that Republican Party leaders, and potential candidates like Ron DeSantis, now have to weigh. In other words, Republicans and conservatives need to ask themselves: Can Trump win in 2024? And, if the answer is no, then the next question has to be: Can anyone else on the Republican side win, absent Trump's blessing and enthusiastic support?
But such sober analysis was sparse at WND, which ultimately did what it usually does and blamed Republican failures on Democrats cheating. More soon.
