Midterm Madness

By Charlie Johnston

A lot of people and commentators are deeply concerned the Republicans are going to blow the midterm elections. It is not an irrational concern. Wobbly Republicans have blown a lot of elections over the years. With too many Republicans in the Senate taking the “20” side of the 80-20 issue of voter ID (for reasons that are inexplicable to me), it looks like the wobbly Republicans are doing their dead level best to blow another winnable race. It is why I have concluded that Democrats are in the process of destroying their party – and red state RINOs are the single biggest threat to the republic.

In a larger sense, though, I do not think this election cycle is a referendum on either Republicans or Democrats. It is a referendum on whether we, the American people, have the political wisdom, prudence, and maturity to maintain and extend liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

For much of American history we have had a more conservative party focused on individual liberty and opportunity and a more liberal party focused on communal action and social safety nets. For the most part, it was a difference in approach rather than of deep substance. Conservatives were for working together and caring for those in trouble, but thought coercive governmental measures were neither effective nor compatible with actual liberty. Liberals were serious about liberty and providing opportunity, but thought that the price of national community was structurally setting aside a portion of the wealth created to provide for critical communal needs. I could go on about the many nuances of the debate, but the critical point was that it was more about emphasis and tactics rather than fundamental goals.

Since the parties that served as the organizational hubs of each emphasis were both largely responsible and sympathetic to the tactical emphases of their opponents, we safely developed a system where a sort of pendulum swung between both approaches. Even if an opponent were in charge, we could safely assume that we fundamentally agreed on basic principles such as faith, family, and freedom and that the opponent would not seek to persecute those who had a different emphasis. If there was too much of a particular emphasis for too long, the pendulum would swing back – and society carried on whether under the lead of Truman or Eisenhower, Kennedy or Nixon. After so long under that system with integrated social safeguards, we came to think the pendulum swinging back and forth was a normal state of affairs, rather than another example of American exceptionalism, borne aloft by genuine national philosophical unity.

The assumption of Democrat gains in the midterm elections are based on that pendulum theory still being intact. It is not. The pendulum is smashed to bits, with sharpened shards scattered all across the national floor. Unlike the Democrats I often cooperated with in my earlier years, modern Democrats have become an authoritarian party that hates America, hates Christianity, is opposed to public safety and law and order (except for illegal aliens), thinks taxes rather than productivity is the source of wealth, and promises to weaponize the justice system to persecute all opponents the next time it gets power.  It is become a death cult writ large, one that is quickly coming to rival Islamic Jihad in that regard. You can negotiate when both parties are squabbling on the best route to a common destination. When one party wants to go west and the other is determined to go east, there is no compromise available. One side must prevail and the other sink into irrelevancy. Barack Obama did succeed in “fundamentally transforming” at least one major segment of society.

Republicans are not a perfect party. Often, they are not even a very good party. But they are the only sane party available right now that is not in the grips of pathological hatred and neuroses. We do not have a rational liberal party these days – which has left a lot of honorable liberals effectively homeless. That is why liberals like Robert Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, and even Elon Musk are Republicans these days. They are still liberal, but not willing to submit to insanity and the sort of malignant hatred that has completely gripped the institutional Democratic Party. This will not last forever. Eventually an honorable and rational American liberal party will rise from the ashes of modern Democrats’ burning malice.

Voters have the recent memory of the Biden administration fiasco to see what modern Democrats and their media stenographers are become. If that is not sufficient, they have the current object lessons of the Abigail Spanberger bait-and-switch in Virginia and the financial hollowing out of New York City under Zohran Mamdani to keep their minds focused.

The most likely scenario is that this midterm election will begin the full-scale collapse of the death-to-America cult modern Democrats have become. That would pave the way for the emergence of an honest, responsible, American liberal party over the next few years. It may very well be led by Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, the last rational Democrat standing. The far-left media scribes (and many conventional Republican thinkers, as well) think the Democratic Party is preparing to oust Fetterman. I suspect Fetterman may be ready to oust the Democratic Party and build anew. That would be nice. Ever since Obama – and maybe even the last days of Clinton – the Republicans have been builders, if often incompetent at it, while Democrats have been increasingly and brazenly a wrecking crew. It would be nice to see parties compete over which can be the better builder once more.

If this is not the case, we will have two years of growing chaos followed by (in the best case) a chance to figure out finally that there is no pendulum anymore and only one functioning, rational party that is interested in serving American interests. The worst-case scenario is that we will go into a very black new dark ages until we figure it out.

There is a profound spiritual dimension here. I am convinced that if the midterms are the beginning of complete collapse for the hysterical harpies who constitute the modern Democratic Party, we are only a few years away from the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart and the ushering in of the Era of Peace. If not, we are, at least, several decades away from that signal event. This is part of why traditional political analytical templates are useless right now – and distractions from what the real stakes are.

If communication goes out for any length of time, meet outside your local Church at 9 a.m. on Saturday mornings. Tell friends at Church now in case you can’t then. CORAC teams will be out looking for people to gather in and work with.

Find me on X at @JohnstonPilgrim

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