STATE OF THE PARTY – OVERNIGHT:  There are attempts by the doers of evil to disparage the state of the Republican Party.  Rich Lowry says it ain't so.  From the New York Post: 

Republicans have had a brutal news cycle over the past month, between the ouster of Liz Cheney from leadership and the intraparty jousting over a Jan. 6 commission.

The overwhelming sense of the coverage is that the party is descending into madness and civil war and is a husk of its former self.

There’s no denying that much of the party has been too willing to indulge or look away from wild theories about the 2020 election and the Capitol riot, but this shouldn’t obscure the fact that the Republicans are well-positioned to take the House next year.

All indications are that GOP voters are united and energized and the party is doing what’s necessary to make Kevin McCarthy the next speaker, which would instantly squash the never-very-plausible talk of President Joe Biden being the next FDR.

The foundation of the party’s unity, of course, is that Donald Trump effortlessly maintained his control of the GOP. The anticipated civil war came and went with barely a shot fired.

Cheney is certainly a casualty, although she is now less a leader of a significant faction of the party and more a voice crying in the wilderness. That is an honorable role, and she may well be vindicated in the fullness of time.

But the party will pay no electoral price for the drama over her leadership role or, likely, for its continued loyalty to Trump.

Despite Trump’s grip, he’s not front and center for average voters. He isn’t president and he isn’t on the ballot. The focus inevitably will be on Biden and his agenda, which will loom larger than anything the former president can do from Mar-a-Lago.

The Democratic polling outfit Democracy Corps just did a battleground survey that confirmed this picture. As Stanley Greenberg writes in a memo about the poll, among Republicans, “the percent scoring 10, the highest level of interest in the election, has fallen from 84 to 68 percent. But Democrats’ engagement fell from 85 percent to 57 percent.”

Greenberg calls the GOP base “uniquely unified and engaged.”

More evidence is the boffo fundraising by the National Republican Congressional Committee so far. Meanwhile, GOP candidate recruitment is ahead of the pace of prior midterm cycles, whereas Democrats are seeing worrisome retirements.

It’s not as though there’s a high bar for the GOP. Republicans need to flip only six seats in the House, when in the post-World War II era the president’s party has lost on average 27 seats in midterms.

On top of this, the playing field is tilting the GOP’s way. Reapportionment gave more seats to Republican states, and, based on its strength in state legislatures, the GOP also has the upper hand in redistricting.

COMMENT:  There are no guarantees, but I have to be impressed by the spirit and common sense of those running the 2022 Republican campaign.  I think they have their finger on the pulse of the nation.  Compare please with the leftist Democrats, who are selling such wonderfully popular ideas as critical race theory.  Also I have to be impressed by the depth of the Republican presidential bench for 2024.  The Dem bench has fewer people than a bus stop in a desolate county. 

We'll have the press against us, but I have the sense that more and more people are on to our slanted, cynical journalists. 

Election is only 17 months away.

May 20, 2021