Tonight, the January 6th committee airs their big, public, prime-time hearing for all of America to see. Their plan is to craft a narrative that the greatest threat to the country isn’t the economy, inflation, gas prices, immigration, etc. They are going to argue that the events of January 6, 2021, are the real threat to America.
And, no, I’m not just making that up. That’s a direct admission from the committee’s allies/sympathizers in the media. Via the New York Times:
With their control of Congress hanging in the balance, Democrats plan to use made-for-television moments and a carefully choreographed rollout of revelations over the course of six hearings to remind the public of the magnitude of Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn the election, and to persuade voters that the coming midterm elections are a chance to hold Republicans accountable for it.
It is an uphill battle at a time when polls show that voters’ attention is focused elsewhere, including on inflation, rising coronavirus cases and record-high gas prices. But Democrats argue the hearings will give them a platform for making a broader case about why they deserve to stay in power.
The people who took part in the riot at the Capitol were foolish, wannabe rebels and live-action roleplay enthusiasts pretending to be patriots stopping an injustice. They had no chance in hell of ever stopping certification of the 2020 election, and there was never any danger that they would even come close. They deserve to be prosecuted for their dangerous antics.
But, 17 months later, the American public has largely moved on. They were aghast at the riot, but they understand the risk to democracy is not what the Democrats say it is. When the Democratic Party has declared that literally everything the Republicans do is a threat to democracy, the public starts to tune it out (much like they have tuned out the Democrats calling everything Republicans do racist). There is no support for continuing the “fight for democracy” right now because more important things are on the plates of every American.
The Democrats and the media are fighting the battles of 17 months ago because they cannot admit that the battles of the present even exist. To do so would be to prove themselves wrong. The Washington Post in the aftermath of the Biden election in 2020 called conservatives’ fears of gas price spikes “overblown.”
A dubious meme has emerged online in conservative circles: The price of gasoline will spike because Joe Biden is taking office.
The theory is that the president-elect's coming efforts to wean the United States off oil will nail people's pocketbooks. Conservative corners of Facebook are filled with viral photos of gas station signs with prices above $5 a gallon. “Just a reminder of what things looked like the last time Biden was in the White House,” reads one image.
But this vastly overstates a president's power to control the cost of a commodity traded on a world market. Although a president's actions — including Biden's climate policies — can nudge the price of oil, the effect is marginal at best, experts say.
This was premised on a lie: That the President doesn’t have some sort of “magic button” that can control gas prices. That is simply not true. While not a button, the President has enormous regulatory power, and the Biden administration has used that power to weaken American energy production. As a result of his policies, gas prices have steadily started to climb - well before “Putin’s price hike,” despite the Biden administration’s claims.
Americans are more focused on this than they are on January 6. They are more focused on rising prices in the grocery stores. They are worried to a lesser extent about the crisis at the border. They are concerned about the cultural revolution in their children’s classrooms.
However, and I say this knowing I have friends who work for and with the Louisiana Republican Party, we’re seeing the same problem within the Republican party.
The Louisiana Republican Party is holding its “Victory 2022” conference in Lafayette, Louisiana, later this month. The headliner for this event is Dinesh D’Souza, whose “2000 Mules” documentary is the buzz of some conservative activist circles. D’Souza claims (with questionable and unverified evidence) that “mules” in the states Donald Trump lost illegally collected and delivered votes to drop boxes in the 2020 election.
The implied point is that this illegal activity helped the Democrats “steal” the 2020 election - a claim that has never been able to be proven and flies in the face of all evidence.
D’Souza is cashing in on a Republican conspiracy theory, and the more exposure he gets, the more money he can make off the documentary. But, like the Democrats focusing on the past, the documentary is an attempt to convince people that democracy is threatened at that this needs to be the battle we fight going forward.
Keep in mind the embarrassing defeat of David Perdue, who was recruited by Trump to run on the platform of “The 2020 election was stolen.” Consider Mo Brooks of Alabama, who declared we had to move beyond 2020, lost Trump’s support, and started rebounding in the polls to the point where his dead in the water campaign made it to a primary runoff against an establishment-backed, chamber of commerce-type Republican. The evidence is there within the Republican party’s ranks that the voters care about the present, not the past.
Louisiana is an energy-producing state, directly impacted by the Biden administration’s policies. Thousands of the state’s residents are affected (directly or indirectly) by the jobs lost and the businesses that have moved out of the state. We have also seen economic stagnation thanks to our Democratic governor’s policies. Why is the state’s Republican party endorsing a focus on the past instead of rallying Louisiana residents to a fight over the things that have them most worried?
A friend makes the case that it’s the star power of D’Souza and the buzz generated by “2000 Mules” that makes it worth pursuing. While I understand trying to energize the base, you’re going to do so with an issue that not everyone in the base cares about. But everyone in the base does care about the economy. They care about social issues. They would much rather hear from guys like Ron DeSantis and Brian Kemp, governors who have successfully fought the progressives and the woke class.
They want to hear from conservative icons with broad appeal. D’Souza is, frankly, a grifter who simply wants to make money off the fears of conservatives. You can do much more by finding the people who have gone out and won elections and fought the battles affecting voters in their day-to-day lives.
If you want to win, solve today’s problems. Stop fighting the battles of the past when they don’t have any impact on the future. Sorry if you think they do, but a majority of the people who are going to be voting in November disagree.