“The sad reality is that the liberal Republicans who spend every day undermining the conservative position on a given issue are not just from swing states,” cautions GOP strategist Daniel Horowitz. “Many of them are from states that Trump won, often by wide margins,” he adds, noting that “Democrats don’t have senators who dissent from their party in a meaningful way even from states that are bright red, yet Republicans barely have senators who enthusiastically promote conservatism even from friendly territory.”
Come election time, bad GOP falsely wrap themselves up in the conservative label because it’s expedient to win elections that way in Red States. But we can’t forget that the people of these Red States are the ones who overwhelmingly support Donald Trump. The president wins easily in rural areas of every state. He owns the American land mass. Conversely, the Democratic Party can claim only a very small amount of American soil, the big Sanctuary Cities with their teeming immigrants, illegal and otherwise, as well as identity-politics voting blocks.
Horowitz argues that Red State Republicans are missing a unique opportunity to put into office true supporters of the president, ones who won’t abandon him on key conservative issues: “There’s a unique Senate map for 2020. Unlike this year, most of the senators up for re-election are Republicans. However, the overwhelming majority of them are from red states in a presidential year with Trump on the ballot and likely to carry these states, in most cases, by large margins. God forbid we should actually only nominate conservatives like Democrats only nominate uber-liberals in their primaries.”
A fighting leader like Trump may come just once in the lifetime of our country. He’s here now and will likely be reelected in 2020, but he needs genuine supporters in the House and Senate to back him up. Swing State GOP candidates might think it’s politically savvy and expedient to cozy up to liberal sentiments to win narrowly, but those in solidly conservative states don’t need to. Chances are there will be only throw-away opposition.
To reelect a bad incumbent is not helping President Trump much. Why waste the opportunity to mount a primary challenge? “It’s time for primary challengers to weed out the RINOs,” admonishes GOP activist JD Rucker. Strategies have to be talked about now. How-to primers and campaign handbooks have to be freshly formulated without delay. It’s not that hard. We can even learn from tactics that have been successful on the other side, he says:
“If there’s one thing we learned from the Justice Democrats, an organization formed in 2017 that made an impact in 2018 by ejecting Democrats they didn’t like, it’s that there are people in ‘safe’ congressional districts who can be beaten in primaries. Joe Crowley had won nine races in the 14th district in New York. Then, the Justice Democrats found a bartender from the Bronx to challenge him in the primaries. That’s how Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez came to power.”
So what’s going to be unique about next year? asks Horowitz. It’s the opportunity to reelect perhaps the most-needed, just-in-time president in US history, but also the only window to Make Conservative America Great Again. “[W]e should begin focusing on congressional primaries, which begin earlier in a presidential year, now. I would encourage my colleagues that, rather than using their platforms to focus incessantly on the soap opera of the Democrat primary, they should worry about cleaning our own house so that at this time in two years we have a slate of senators to vote for without the clothespin on our noses.”
All voters and government office holders have a right to change their minds about President Trump and become exemplary supporters. The 2016 election was a turning point for many RINOs and Establishment GOP around the country. We have to forgive and be thankful that a new Republican Party has already emerged. Hopes are great that former GOP strongholds like Colorado and Minnesota will flip for Trump.