After seeing some stumbles in August and early September, Republicans have appeared to regain their footing and are surging at just the right time. With 36 days to go until the midterm elections, Republican Senate candidates have once again found their voice. The campaigns have begun talking about the GOP’s bread and butter issues: inflation, crime, immigration, and the economy.
GOP candidates may want to write a thank you note to Ron DeSantis for that. The Florida governor’s ploy to send one planeload of illegal aliens to the east coast Democratic mecca of Martha’s Vineyard took abortion off the table as an issue and ignited a debate about what’s going on at the southern border.
The Republicans’ latest surge was due to a combination of GOP luck and Democratic ineptitude.
The latest piece of good news for the GOP comes courtesy of Monmouth University. Their latest survey’s results were published today and record a three-point Republican lead on the question of which party voters would rather control Congress. That comes a month after a seven-point lead for Democrats in August.
Things are looking up for Republicans on other fronts too. In Pennsylvania, Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman appears to be fading fast, with Mehmet Oz surging in the polls. In Wisconsin, Republican incumbent Ron Johnson seems to have shored up his position. And in Nevada, Adam Laxalt has recorded several poll leads against Democratic incumbent Catherine Cortez Masto.
Republican luck is playing a big role in Mehmet Oz’s surge in Pennsylvania. Oz has been trailing by double digits in several polls until Democratic candidate John Fetterman suffered a stroke. The GOP began to raise questions about Fetterman’s fitness for office, and the media did the rest. Oz now trails Fetterman by two points in some polls.
Recently at a Fetterman event in Pittsburgh, Democratic speakers introduced Fetterman by not talking about the issues uppermost in voters’ minds. Instead, it was warnings about Republicans wanting to “take us back to yesterday,” according to Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey. As his city is being crushed by crime and an overdose crisis, he wanted to talk about abortion.
Fetterman went on with several stumbles over the next 10 minutes. He talked about sandwiches, salads, french fries on salads, more salads, how Dr. Oz is rooting for him to stay sick, and his most reliable tropes: crudites and protecting marriage equality. He said that Oz wanted to ban abortion with no exceptions and that he reduced crime while mayor of the borough of Braddock.
Then, he left the stage.
It speaks volumes that none of the speakers, including Fetterman himself, addressed the issues that polls show to be of utmost importance to the voters in this state — inflation, increasing crime, and the drug epidemic.
Fetterman didn’t even mention inflation, which is the number one issue on the minds of all Americans. It’s why the Democrat’s summer surge is turning into an early fall swoon. As emotions cool over abortion, the campaign gets back to “It’s the economy, stupid.” And that favors the GOP by a huge margin.
Democrats also can’t seem to stay out of their own way. Wisconsin Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, running to unseat GOP incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson, tweeted out a tasteless attack after GOP House Whip Steve Scalise was shot in 2017.
Taking one for the team. I question how people vote against self interest but this is next level. He literally almost died on this hill. https://t.co/Xx8ZQXuvzM
— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) October 4, 2017
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel then unearthed a slew of tweets that shows Barnes being unfit for office.
“We should drastically reimagine society, our communities, and what quality of life actually means in a moment like this,” Barnes tweeted in March 2020, just as coronavirus was starting to spread.
Barnes asked in November 2016 if the presidential election had been “rigged.” Months later, the first-term Democrat declared Donald Trump, then president, a “Russian spy.” More recently, he dismissed the notion that George Washington was one of the country’s top presidents.
Johnson is the most vulnerable Republican incumbent and appears to have steadied himself for the stretch. Along with Mehmet Oz’s comeback and other candidates running in red states like J.D. Vance in Ohio and Ted Budd in North Carolina, Republican prospects are a lot brighter than they were just a month ago.
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