U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “GOP Insiders Reportedly Sounding ‘Code Red’ Over JD Vance Blowing Ohio Senate Race,” Mediaite reports. “‘Worst Campaign’ You Could Possibly Run.”
Before proceeding, a caveat is in order. Mediaite has a strong leftist bias and has been rated as factually challenged in much of its reporting. As such, it’s not out of line to suspect a motive behind the story to bolster confirmation bias and voting commitment among the readers, and to a lesser extent, since “conservatives” don’t typically frequent the site, to demoralize Republican voters and maybe get some to stay home.
That said, there’s the old saying about a blind pig finding an acorn once in a while, plus Mediaite can document much of what they’re claiming here. What’s undetermined is how much weight we should assign their observations when considering our own actions and likely voter outcomes.
It’s true that Donald Trump-backed Vance has an uphill climb in convincing some Republican voters that he means what he says and won’t end up being just another Vichycon who forgets his core constituency once they give him power. For starters, some (like me) question the sincerity of a newly-converted Trump acolyte who a few years earlier was dissing a “yuge” part of the MAGA agenda with assertions like:
“Trump makes people I care about afraid. Immigrants, Muslims, etc. Because of this, I find him reprehensible. God wants better of us.”
Vance giving his support in 2016 to hopeless GOP presidential candidate Evan McMullin, who in 2020 betrayed everything he’d previously campaigned on by endorsing Joe Biden, doesn’t exactly ease concerns about JD’s political judgment and priorities.
“It’s one of several toss-up Senate races nationwide which Republicans are in jeopardy of losing with a celebrity candidate backed by former President Donald Trump. Polls show Dr. Mehmet Oz trailing in Pennsylvania and Herschel Walker losing in Georgia,” Mediaite elaborates, concluding with a hard truth we ignore at our peril:
“Losses in Ohio, Georgia, and Pennsylvania would almost certainly doom the GOP’s chances of winning the Senate.”
Yep.
We’ve gone over concerns with Trump-endorsee Oz in previous AmmoLand columns. Now that he’s the primary victor, many of us are not surprised to see him distancing himself from “The Donald” and going “moderate.” If he wins, and right now he’s trailing, expect that to be how he legislates and votes.
And for his part, Trump-backed Herschel Walker, a critic of absentee fathers, is trying to overcome a media-hyped scandal about his multiple “unknown” children. That’s hardly a good look for a candidate vying for the public trust.
It doesn’t look good, does it? Well, too late. Gun owners can either vote for these guys or the Democrats, and we know what they want to do to us on guns, the danger they’ll pose to the filibuster, and the way they’ll shape the courts and other agencies through confirmations.
Vance’s Democrat opponent Tim Ryan showed us what he was made of back in 2019:
“He organized a caravan with Moms Demand Action, an anti-gun violence group, to travel more than 370 miles, including six stops through the region before its final leg in [Mitch] McConnell’s hometown, where around 1,500 people gathered in support. Protesters came with signs with messages like ‘Mitch Do Something,’ ‘Ban These Killing Machines’ and ‘Make America Safe Again.’”
Oz is running against John Fetterman, who likewise is campaigning on disarming not just his constituents but all of us:
“Fetterman called on Senate Democrats to abolish the filibuster that has prevented advancement of many bills in the evenly-divided Senate, to not only enact a ban on assault weapons and ‘high-capacity magazines,’ but also implement universal background checks on all gun sales.”
And Walker is up against incumbent Raphael Warnock. Per The Washington Free Beacon:
“Warnock, who has been endorsed by the top anti-gun groups in the country, also has a long history of joining anti-gun coalitions. In April 2013, he partnered with then-New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns to advocate for federal universal background check legislation… Warnock … accused those who oppose some anti-gun measures of being bought off and immoral.”
The bottom line: Republicans doing their best to blow the much anticipated “Red Wave” continue to exemplify the Stupid Party and take the fire out of the bellies of their base, as evidenced by the ridiculous “bipartisan gun bill” they just let the Democrat sucker them into (with more surrenders on the way). If they lose key states, expect more of the same — and the continual problem is if they do take them, who has confidence we’ll suddenly see them get serious about advancing “pro-gun” bills like national reciprocity and hearing protection?
Nonetheless, any gun owner who wants to keep Democrats out of office simply as a matter of lesser of two evils, self-preservation, and the Republican campaigns themselves, would do well to look to the other side’s playbook and learn to Fight Like a Democrat.
Here are some generalities that nonetheless often hold true: Many voters are going to be low-information kneejerk reactionaries, particularly in the high population areas where the votes overwhelm the rest of the state. First and foremost, they’ll vote for whoever has “D” after their name. When they do pay attention to the issues, more often than not their impressions and conclusions are going to be no deeper than “mainstream media” sound bites and headlines.
So come up with some soundbites of our own and see if any gain traction.
We don’t have much on Ryan, who was an aide to Jim Traficant, a congressman who “was expelled from the House after being convicted of ten felony counts, including taking bribes, filing false tax returns, racketeering, and forcing his congressional staff to perform chores at his farm in Ohio and houseboat in Washington, D.C.” Maybe that’s worth a mention.
But there’s actual culpability stuff to use against Fetterman, who pulled a shotgun on an unarmed black jogger, and on Warnock, who repeatedly obstructed a police investigation into child abuse. Both are inexcusable and neither has ever been adequately explained and apologized for, so why not make them the first details voters think about when they hear their names?
Or we could just stay above it all, like idiots who think they really do have “friends across the aisle” and lose. And then find out what real dirty fighting is about.
Either way, concessions with an eye toward gaining media approval are a fool’s errand that gains nothing and demoralizes the base. Which is naturally what Democrats and their DSM allies are counting on Republicans to do.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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