Politics

Bristow, Virginia Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin responded to recent accusations from Democrats that he is attempting to buy votes by sending out tax rebates ahead of the 2023 statewide elections. “Had [Democrats] not delayed the budget for seven months, then the tax checks would have gone out a long time ago,” Youngkin told The Spectator during a press gaggle at Piney Branch Elementary School. The governor dropped by multiple polling locations on Tuesday to speak to election volunteers and voters. NBC News reported last week that “the state of Virginia is sending out tax rebate checks to qualified residents, just days before the state’s 2023 General Assembly elections.

We’re almost exactly one year out from what increasingly looks like another Trump v. Biden showdown. Former president Donald Trump leads his second-place opponent by more than forty percentage points nationally, and has a thirty-point advantage in Iowa. President Joe Biden avoided a primary challenge from RFK Jr., who is now running as an Independent, and no one thinks Representative Dean Phillips’s campaign is serious, especially considering his refusal to acknowledge the objective reality that he’s even running against Biden. Although Phillips doesn’t seem to be the guy for the job, more Democrats are waking up to the idea that Biden doesn’t have what it takes to win a second term. Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Democrats don’t want Biden to run again.

The political left isn’t content to secretly smelt statues of Robert E. Lee or remove a plaque honoring the Confederate general’s horse, Traveller. Apparently, the Democratic Party’s own history is too problematic to bear.  Over the years, the Democratic Party’s official website has undergone some curious changes. The Spectator previously reported on the Democrat logo changing from sky blue to royal blue after President Joe Biden took office. It seems the “Our History” page is also getting whitewashed.  Since 2019, the history page has neglected to mention anything about the Democratic Party prior to the 1920s.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where for the first time some cracks are showing in the emphatic Democratic support for Joe Biden. Even with his many widely apparent defects as a candidate and a president, Biden’s support from strong Democratic constituencies has remained largely consistent throughout his tenure. The loss of Independent support at this juncture is rationalized away by many Democrats, who feel that once Donald Trump is presumably the GOP nominee, they’ll be able to get all those leaners in the center back in the fold. But now, thanks to his policy choices on Israel, Biden is suffering a major blow among a significant Democrat constituency made more important given its geographic concentration in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania: Arab Americans.

On Tuesday, Kentuckians will vote in the state’s highly publicized — and very expensive — governor’s race. Democrat incumbent Andy Beshear is facing off against current Republican attorney general Daniel Cameron. Polls throughout the race have shown Beshear leading by double digits, but GOP consultants I’ve spoken to are cautiously optimistic about Cameron’s chances, noting that his numbers have been rising over the past couple of weeks and that many Kentucky voters remain undecided, which is usually bad news for the incumbent. Trump also reupped his endorsement of Cameron this week in an attempt to disrupt Beshear’s relatively high approval rating among Trump supporters.  Cameron’s recent rise has inspired some late-stage nastiness.

President Joe Biden has put himself in an awkward position as the 2024 Democratic primary inches closer. The Democratic Party voted last February to change its primary calendar, honoring South Carolina as the first state to vote and demoting Iowa and New Hampshire. The DNC spun a yarn that South Carolina should vote first because it has a larger black population, but that seems a neat excuse to cover up the fact that really they are rewarding South Carolina for being the state that revived Biden’s 2020 campaign after humiliating defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire.Either way, the new primary schedule may come back to bite Biden and the Democratic establishment.

Mike Pence was never likely to win the Republican nomination for president, and today he recognized the inevitable. He withdrew from the race. Now is not the time to focus on why his candidacy never gained traction. It is the time to remember his great contribution to our nation on January 6, 2021. On that fateful day, Pence did the right thing, despite enormous pressure from Donald Trump and a rioting mob to do the wrong one. He resisted that pressure at great risk to his political future and personal safety. He deserves our praise and gratitude. On January 6, Pence was presiding over the Senate as the electoral votes for president were counted. The duty was a limited, constitutional role assigned to the vice president.

Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota has thrown his hat into the 2024 presidential election ring, challenging President Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination.   Phillips’s candidacy is being heralded by many outlets — and acknowledged by Phillips himself — as a “long shot,” with the New York Times noting Biden’s “significant financial advantages.”   Still, Biden isn’t exactly the obvious choice to represent his party in 2024: Axios reported last month that a CNN poll showed “two-thirds of Democrat-leaning voters say the party should not nominate President Biden for a second term.

Welcome to Thunderdome, where after three long weeks, the Republicans in the House finally found their path toward a speaker — and boy is it a Flamin’ Hot Cheeto of a choice. Louisiana’s Mike Johnson, known for his kinglike dominance of the green line meme, is your new speaker of the House. He is eminently difficult to categorize, a cipher, an ardent social conservative with little in the way of fiscal conservative instincts but with a lot in favor of Zionist support for Israel. If you are a Squad member, this guy’s your nightmare. But he’s also likely to drive the media crazy, because he’s basically an unupdated social conservative from 2004. Perhaps not exactly what the Democrats had in mind when they helped Matt Gaetz knife Kevin McCarthy.

It took a few weeks, but Republicans got their act together and did the impossible: elected a new speaker of the House, Louisiana’s Mike Johnson. Johnson and his team have an incredible amount of work ahead of them — from funding the government to fundraising for House Republicans. What’s particularly noteworthy to me in the hours ahead of Johnson becoming speaker is the all-out effort Democrats and their media mouthpieces are making to define him — mostly by spreading provable misinformation.  Johnson’s Democratic counterparts on the Judiciary Committee immediately lashed out at him for being a member of the Freedom Caucus, which is an outright lie.

Attorney Jenna Ellis, a former legal advisor to Donald Trump’s 2020 election campaign, pled guilty to one count of aiding and abetting false statements and writings on Tuesday morning.    Ellis, who was charged alongside Trump and seventeen others with violating Georgia's anti-racketeering laws, has become the latest co-defendant to enter a plea deal in the case to overturn Georgia’s election results from the 2020 presidential election. Ellis’s guilty plea also implicates claims of voter fraud made by former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and other Trump lawyers during a December 2020 Georgia Senate committee hearing.   Ellis distanced herself from the former president in a tearful statement before the court.

You can lead an electorate to the electronic vehicle charging station, but you can’t make them plug in.   That’s the lesson President Biden is learning as American consumers reject the “green” future the administration has been trying to mandate through the EPA’s proposed emissions standards and billions in EV subsidies and tax credits.   The American people, however, just aren’t buying the climate change is “even more frightening than a nuclear war” line Biden is selling.

If you are paying attention, you know that nature is full of inklings and adumbrations. I am writing in New England in mid-September — and it was just about a week ago that a subtle change in the atmosphere proclaimed the advent of autumn. It was not just that the weather listed cooler; it was also that the entire sensory gestalt shifted. The world suddenly bristled with different smells and colors and sounds. Browns and yellows and reds were edging out summer greens in the leaves. The roads were carpeted with acorns. You knew that the world was confronting you with different prospects and expectations. Something similar happens in the world of politics. For a long time, a certain narrative reigns.