The 2022 ‘Titanic’ Vote: Iceberg Ahead, or Are We Already Sinking? – The American

The history surrounding the April 15, 1912, peacetime sinking of the “unsinkable” RMS Titanic has been exhaustively documented. The primary historical takeaway has been that the ship’s builders, and its boosters in government and industry, had fallen prey to technology hubris: Ships could be built to withstand the worst natural hazards and calamities that Mother Nature could throw at them. A massive iceberg in the North Atlantic put paid to such conceits, with over 1,500 on board sent to their deaths in the briny deep. In the wake of last fall’s catastrophic midterms, the GOP may be discovering that the electorate — at least, those that went to the polls — inhabit political worlds different than imagined, different than polls suggested, and, above all, different than standard diagnoses indicated.

Many post-election diagnoses identify bad candidates, lack of positive issues, focus on the 2020 election, Donald Trump, poor allocation of limited campaign resources, etc. All these points carry some salience. But they miss — excuse the pun — the elephant in the room: failure of GOP and independent voters to keep uppermost in mind what midterms above all represent — a referendum report card on the performance of the president.

In ordinary times, this focus is less significant, and voters may choose to focus on the candidates on the ballot, congressional, senatorial, and gubernatorial — even, at times, key high-visibility mayoral races. In the presidential year of 1960, the Kennedy–Nixon debates showcased remarkably similar positions; a common expression of the choice was Tweedledum and Tweedledee. In such times, off-year elections have less saliency.

Not so in 2022. Not when the country has seen the worst performance of a president’s first two years since at least the Civil War. Many have said that had President Joe Biden purposefully set out to damage America, he hardly could have done worse; some indeed have asserted that he intentionally sought to weaken America. Who is correct on this proposition matters not at all.

What mattered most was stopping the president from another two years of inflicting catastrophic damage: (a) roaring inflation, the highest in 40 years; (b) runaway spending, which added trillions to the national debt, already at record levels; (c) replacing a net energy surplus in 2020 — the first in 70 years — with renewed dependence on foreign oil, necessitating tin-cup tours seeking access to increased oil-production exports; (d) a literally open border, with record millions streaming across our undefended southern border, without screening for terrorists — or for COVID, despite such screening being supported by 80 percent of the voters; (e) allowing crossings by migrants under indentured servitude to the drug cartels and annually importing enough fentanyl to kill every American; and (f) an epic crime wave underway in America’s large cities.

With such calamities unfolding, a red tsunami was essential to keep to a minimum further damage during the president’s term. Instead, we had what is barely a sidewalk puddle. This happened because Republican and independent voters did not turn out in sufficient numbers for the only poll that matters, cast in the voting booth. In doing so, they voted for two more calamitous years. This holds regardless of their motives; voting machines tally actual votes, not the reasons behind voter choices.

In order to stop the president and his minions on Capitol Hill, the GOP needed enough of a margin to lose wavering Republican votes; unlike the Democrats, who have the internal discipline of a totalitarian party, the GOP has a bigger tent. Thus, John Boehner, who, ascending to the House speakership in the wake of a GOP landslide in 2014, could not keep his flock in line with 255 votes; the Democrats can run the House with 218 votes. The House is now 221–214 Republican, and while Speaker Kevin McCarthy is off to a good start, the narrow margin will often severely limit what the GOP can accomplish. The 51–49 Senate means the Democrats can confirm another passel of hard-leftist judicial nominees, a collection of Ketanji Brown Jackson clones.

Thus, voters unable to set aside their reservations about GOP candidates as to their positions on specific issues delivered what the president and his legislative leadership interpret as a mandate to continue the policies that are impoverishing, sundering, and literally endangering the republic. In these highly partisan times — now arguably the most deeply divided since the Civil War — voters should have felt an overriding obligation to above all limit further vast damage inflicted on America by the party in power.

Democrats are further energized because (a) despite blatant election fraud, an Arizona judge dismissed gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s lawsuit; (b) most voters gave Biden what amounts to an ungentlemanly C — instead of a failing grade; (c) the GOP ran poorly with independents, winning 38 percent, way below the 51 percent Democrats won in 2018; (d) a hyper-partisan mainstream media deliberately covered up the border chaos with words calculated to obfuscate, leaving most voters blissfully unaware of the massive influx of illegals — unprecedented in modern times; (e) the government’s admission that it cannot even locate records of 378,000 migrants taken into custody — a number greater than what a plurality of poll respondents gave for total 2021-2022 border crossings; (f) an avalanche of bogus asylum claims, creating de facto mass amnesty.

The full extent of the mainstream media immigration news blackout is made clear in this detailed description by Never-Trumper Andy McCarthy:

Broadly speaking, the country does not know how bad the situation at the border is. As the Center for Immigration Studies’ Andrew Arthur points out, in recent polling by Harvard’s Center for American Political Studies, just 13 percent knew that there were over 2 million illegal border crossings per year. Not only did the remaining 87 percent significantly underestimate the number of illegal entries, but more than half of them believed the number to be less than half a million.

McCarthy goes further, charting a course to bypass media disinformation and set the stage for Republicans winning in 2024 what they utterly failed to do in 2022. His article gives the staggering numbers for illegal migrants during Biden’s first 23 months: at least 6 million, or 2,600 per day. But that does not allow for the steep increase in 2022, as it took months for the cartels to organize caravans, etc. McCarthy explains the results to date, and the likely consequences to come:

To provide some perspective, during the Obama–Biden years, the Department of Homeland Security regarded it as a crisis if the number of illegal-alien encounters inched up to 1,000 per day, which computes to 365,000 per year. “A thousand [per day] overwhelms the system,” Obama’s former DHS secretary, Jeh Johnson, acknowledged in a 2019 interview. At the time, the Trump administration was dealing with four times that amount due to a surge in border arrivals by alien family units and unaccompanied alien minors. (The surge was caused by the refusal of congressional Democrats to cooperate in Trump’s signature border-security priority; it was quelled, as Rich Lowry related, because Trump induced cooperation from other countries.)

Thanks to Biden’s wholesale adoption of transnational-progressive radicalism, we are now at seven times the number that Johnson conceded would constitute a crisis. Post–Title 42, we could find ourselves at 18 times that amount, or perhaps even more — and remember, that’s just the apprehensions, not the got-aways.

There is more. Three major polls released in late January/early February present sobering numbers: (a) a majority of voters call lack of leadership the top political issue; (b) a majority also say that President Biden has accomplished little, citing the economy, border crossings, and Russia/Ukraine; (c) 41 percent say that their personal finances have worsened under Biden — the worst number in 37 years.

Then there is New York City, 41 percent of whose voters name crime as their top issue, miles ahead of affordable housing (17 percent), homelessness (12 percent), inflation and immigration (both 8 percent). Crime ranks first for 63 percent of GOP voters, 53 percent of independents, and 30 percent of Democrats. Forty percent feel “less safe,” 53 percent “about the same,” and 8 percent feel “safer.” Mayor Eric Adams, 13 months into his mayoralty, is 21 points underwater, 57-36 percent; his disapprove number is 78 percent for GOP voters, 63 percent with independents, and 48 percent among Democrats. With robbery up 32 percent, rape 11 percent, and burglary 29 percent, who can blame them? Gov. Kathy Hochul refuses to blame “get out of jail free” bail “reform” for the rise. Yet NYC…