By: Nat Humphreys
Surprise setbacks in the recent midterm elections have the Republican Party in a froth.
What went wrong? What was it we said, they’re asking, that wasn’t a bedrock American pushback to the lawlessness progressives have seemingly blessed?
One question appears to have already been answered. Reaction to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs abortion decision played a much greater role than any polling foresaw. While much has been written alleging the left’s grip on the Democratic Party, the divisiveness of Dobbs has laid bare the evangelical right’s hold on Republicans. Should they choose to look closely, Democrats, too, have lessons to learn. One could make the case that 2022s midterms was an America whispering, “A pox on both your houses.”
In the absence of easy answers, Republican finger pointing is well underway. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has been pilloried for allowing prejudices to direct campaign funding. Name recognition it appears, is not solely a qualification for the world’s greatest deliberative body. The king-making touch of a Trump endorsement has vanished overnight.
And what of the issues, argue Republicans? Can Americans not see the weekly murders in its cities? The looting of its stores? The advancement of progressive values in its schools? The hoards of migrants pouring over its borders?
Well, no, they can’t.
We live in a world now of nearly unlimited interactive choices, a menu from which we’re able to swaddle ourselves in our own world of viewpoint affirmation, other perspectives be damned. Not only are our views celebrated in this self-built world, but any who question them are demonized.
Couple this with the pouring of left-leaning journalism majors spawned by progressive college campuses into our news rooms, and you have what today’s reporting has become, story-telling with a finger-wagging viewpoint. This is what an overwhelming majority of Americans consume each day.
At the same time, six million-plus of us dip into conservative-leaning podcasts in any given month. 15 million Americans sample conservative talk radio, on average, per week.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, on a good evening, leads nightly cable news consumption with 3.5 million mostly conservative viewers, an impressive number until you realize that’s just 1% of us.
No stat that I have found states a weekly conservative audience for all media combined, so we’re going to have to invent one. Let’s be generous and say that 20% of our countrymen hear a conservative viewpoint in some form in any given week.
This means 80% of Americans aren’t being shown their country’s open southern border or the criminal results of our cops being handcuffed in their work.
80% of us hear only that men competing in women’s sports is equity finally realized, and that today’s murder rates are the fault of the guns, not the people behind them.
If you mark the Trump Era from the moment he announced his candidacy, we’ve had seven years of his mocking our mainstream media for what they have become. And seven years of their relentless revenge. What would your guess be as to the cumulative influence of that multi-year pounding? In 2018, 2020 and here in 2022 the legacy media successfully demonized both him and conservative thought, emerging victorious.
Through it all I’ve remained surprised that no commentator has sought to augur Trump’s imminent fall by pointing to the wit of Mark Twain, who famously cautioned, “Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.” The Donald missed that one.
