The 2022 Election A Boon to Republicans

Though the Senate results are not yet finalized, the results in the House have caused some pundits to don the mantle of post-passion dispirit. The Republicans were anticipated to win in a “Red Wave” across the nation on a number of fronts and many online and public personalities framed their comments and predictions on that theory. The results, however, did not match the anticipation. Curiously, some are acting as if this was a loss for the Republicans, but I would offer an alternative view; the lackluster results insulated Republicans from a classic Democrat strategy popularized in Truman's 1948 Presidential upset and applies directly to Republican chances in 2024.

The Left needed Republicans to win in both Houses with actionable numbers more than the Republican needed to win for the interests of their party and their constituents. Joe Biden and his handlers were hoping for a reincarnated “do nothing” Congress like the 80th in 1946. In 1948, Truman based his entire campaign on attacking Republicans by overriding many of their legislative attempts with 250 vetoes in only two years while touring the nation and declaring them a “do nothing” Congress. He blamed the inevitable inflation of the New Deal and his own Leftist policies on the Republicans by insisting that it was their responsibility to instantly fix nearly two-decades’ worth of failed Democrat economic policy. That Republicans gained both the House and Senate allowed Truman to absolve himself and his party of their deserved stigma for virtually every negative consequence. This strategy was so effective that he won election in 1948 in a Presidential election that is still considered one of—if not the—greatest election upset in history.

That Biden and the Leftists intended to do the same is without debate; they have been running an identical campaign as FDR/Truman by attacking Republicans—who were not in a position of supremacy—while praising and elevating himself, the Executive, as the harbinger of good tidings. The difference is that Biden has enjoyed a Democratic majority to pass his proposals, though it is more accurate to say that the Democratic Congress used him, not the other way around. A casual glance at the President’s Twitter feed only reinforces these assertions. Had the Republicans seized the House and Senate, efforts to demonize the Republicans and their voters would have only intensified and been further strengthened; Biden would have been reshaped into a messianic figure fighting for the “common man” while his policies redistributed wealth from the poorest social strata and pumped it into his supportive corporations and into the gaping maw of the Hobbesian Leviathan. 2024 would have been another 1948; Biden and his Leftist cadre vs the unyielding, obstructionist, “do nothing” Republican Congress.

The results of this election cycle have deprived Biden and the Democrats of their primary political maneuvers. Now the Democratic party will have to bear the deserved burden of their awful economic policies. The Republicans gained just enough to advantage themselves in the next election which poses more favorable seats. For the good of our republic, their numbers in the House are sufficient to prevent further economic disaster, but not so overwhelming that Biden and the Leftists can hang the albatross of their own failed policies onto the neck of the Republican party.