Revenge of the Dissidents
I remember election night in 2024 so clearly. After 4 years of Biden’s tyranny, censorship, dementia, and bad policy, Republicans and Independents turned out in force to vote for Trump.
I was watching Tucker Carlson’s livestream from Mar-a-Lago, and as it became clear that Trump was going to win, he and Elon Musk were ecstatic. It was contagious. I was ecstatic too.
The Biden admin had trampled all over the Constitution, working with big tech to crush dissent online.
Anyone questioning the official Covid narrative was banned across Facebook, Twitter (pre-Elon), Youtube, and more.
President Trump himself was banned from social media as his first term ended. This wave of censorship, directed by the government, was a blatant violation of the First Amendment.
Free speech was legitimately dying.
This is a big part of what powered Trump’s landslide victory. And to his credit, these censorship policies were quickly reversed.
But Trump’s second term hasn’t gone the way some of us hoped.
The Changing Face of MAGA
By now, most people have accepted that starting a war with Iran was the key factor in the midterm massacre (even JD Vance, as we’ll discuss shortly).
The war caused a portion of Trump’s base, and many of his key influencers, to abandon ship. The Daily Caller created a graphic which sums up the shift.
Trump’s anti-war supporters felt betrayed. I certainly did. He swapped us out for neocons. And seemed happy about it.
It was exactly what he had campaigned against.
JD Vance’s Post-Mortem
Yesterday, JD Vance wrote a long post on X (Twitter). In it, he discussed what went wrong in detail.
And he didn’t pull punches. I encourage everyone to read the whole post, but here’s the important part:
Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:
1) End the war
2) Focus on cost of living/inflation
3) Put America First
4) Change our relationship to Israel
Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats.
Better late than never. But can the GOP regain its lost supporters by 2028? It’s going to take serious changes.
Losing the Dissident Vote
By starting a war with Iran, Trump lost the right-wing dissident vote.
He then dismissed inflation and affordability concerns. It was worth it, he told us.
As millions of people couldn’t find a decent job, or pay their rent, his administration repeatedly dismissed their concerns.
Iran, inflation, and how Trump handled it is why Republicans lost so horribly. Pretty simple. The sooner Republicans fully accept this, the better.
The silver lining here is that neocons and neolibs have completely blown their credibility. Politicians are beginning to realize that listening to their advice on foreign policy is electoral suicide.
Will the GOP recover and make the necessary changes? I hope so. Paying even higher taxes, watching DEI take back over, censorship, and endless immigration sounds absolutely terrible.
If Democrats win the presidency in 2028, it’s going to be a very tough road. The damage they will do will echo for decades.
Sure, the left is sure to muck things up terribly again. That will help the GOP in the next presidential election.
But that will only go so far. The GOP needs to get its own house in order, quickly. Pay attention to right-wing dissidents and Independents. Ignore the neocons completely, on every issue. That’s the lesson.
