Top Three Takeaways – March 23rd, 2021
- He’s not fooling anyone. Ok, maybe not anymore. And in real-time, only a third of the country. I’m talking about President Biden’s “non-border crisis”. While he still hasn’t admitted it’s one, according to Rasmussen, two-thirds of Americans view it as one and they overwhelmingly blame his policies for creating it. This coincides with President Biden’s approval rating falling to 49% in the same poll – off five points from a week ago, and with only 41% who believe the US is heading in the right direction. Now, do these polls mean much right now? No, not at all in the context of elections. What it is does provide is a bit of a faith restoring moment for Trump supporters, Republicans generally, along with those who’ve been most worried about the future of the country. It’s been easy to feel defeated and helpless with a combination of radical Biden administration policies and a complicit news media which acts as an arm of the Biden administration and DNC. What this illustrates is that at least two-thirds of this country is still minding the store enough to recognize a crisis when they see it and understand who created it. And while Biden’s approval rating has only been dented by 5% in the wake of the border crisis, it’s that much more meaningful in the context of the past week in which stimulus checks hit bank accounts and Biden declared victory on his vaccine goals (even though all he had to do was to keep pace with where the Trump administration left off to attain them). If ever there were a week when you might think Biden would be set to see a bounce from “low information voters”, to borrow a Rush phrase, last week would have been it. The bottom line is that Biden’s not fooling anyone (who at least has their eyes open).
- Support for voter ID laws is rising. I know there’s a tendency for the most cynical among us to think the worst of those we disagree with politically, but truth be told most Americans really do want honest and fair elections. This was illustrated in the same Rasmussen polling which showed support for mandatory voter ID to rising from 68% of Americans in 2018 to 75% currently. This is another faith restoring moment for those who still doubt last’s year’s election results. You’re winning the election integrity argument. Remarkably three-quarters of adults now believe voter ID should be mandatory, yet only 19 states mandate it. This shows there’s a lot of work to be done across the country, but it also reflects the concerns of Floridians as well. While Florida requires voter ID, entering this year’s state session the top issue Floridians wanted to have addressed were election integrity related. There’s clear momentum on this issue and it should be our hope that in addition to strengthening Florida’s systems to prevent future fraud, other states feel the pressure to fix the issues which came in question before the world last year – much the way that Florida did after the 2018 cycle.
- Momentum. There’s an ebb and flow to politics but the ebbing and the flowing in midterm election cycles favors the party out of power. Democrats had a 3.2% advantage over Republicans last year nationally. In the past two midterm election cycles where Republicans have been out of power, they’ve averaged a 6.25% advantage on Election Day. With a 50-50 split in the Senate, and Democrats holding only a seven vote or so advantage in the House, Republicans are well positioned for the upcoming cycle. That’s before Biden’s executive orders curtailing American energy independence leading to huge increases in fuel costs, a self-created border crisis during a pandemic no less, and rising inflation generally as interest rates head higher due to all the artificial debt stimulus pumped into the economy that we must pay for with interest. And it’s only been two months. One thing for conservatives to remember. Progressive/leftist policies don’t work, and President Trump just reminded Americans prior to the pandemic that conservative policies do. There’s already a real sense of momentum heading into the next election cycle. It’s just a matter of getting there with our freedom intact.
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