Election 2022 Recap

Written by David E. Smith

The hope in a “Red Wave” election didn’t come to fruition in November. The work to flip the U.S. House and U.S. Senate to Republican control produced mixed results.

The GOP barely gained control of the U.S. House, which means Nancy Pelosi will no longer be the Speaker of the U.S. House, and third in line to the presidency.

Of our state’s 17 Congressional seats, three downstate districts have Republican representation, as we lost one to redistricting and one to a Democrat candidate in the newly redrawn 13^th district in central Illinois.

In the U.S. Senate, Democrats maintained control in either a 50-50 split or a 51-49 divide depending on a December 6^th run off in the state of Georgia.

Ironically, Republicans won the popular vote nationally. Conservative news source Brietbart reported that Republicans won more than 52 percent of the vote, winning six million more votes nationwide in races for the U.S. House, “but have flipped relatively few seats” to gain control. Part of that success can be attributed to the fact that Republicans increased their share of the Latino vote.

As for the race for Governor of Illinois, abortion cheerleader JB Pritzker won the race by an eleven-point margin, 54 to 43 percent, over State Senator Darren Bailey. The Libertarian candidate received less than 3 percent of the total vote.

Adding up the preliminary numbers, 4,104,636 citizens cast their votes for one of the candidates for Governor. This is significant drop from the 2018 gubernatorial election in which 4,547,657 citizens participated.

Much has been written and said about the results of this important effort to flip this seat of Governor. Many grass-roots conservatives thought Bailey had a decent chance to win the seat, as the contrast between their political ideologies couldn’t have been clearer. So what went wrong?

The top reason in my mind is that the Bailey campaign failed to respond to the constant barrage of ads labeling him (and people like him) as “extreme.”

Any political consultant worth their weight in salt will tell you that you have to respond to these ridiculous ad hominems. Pritzker’s mudslinging continued unabated through the campaign and without response. Without a strong and definitive retort, many voters just assumed that they must be true.

So why didn’t Bailey’s campaign respond? Because the Republican “managers” and “consultants” have failed to recognize the lie that tells their candidate  to stay away from certain topics and  that it can only be detrimental to the campaign’s efforts.

The fact that a campaign staffer asked me not to talk about abortion at a political rally in which media were to be present highlights this foolishness. Now I am fairly sure that if Darren and Cindy Bailey were aware of this request they would have told this staffer to back off.

Political consultants have a dreadful fear of the liberal media. Instead of working to grow the grassroots base, they walk on eggshells in order not to provoke the media or give them a “controversy” to talk about.

If we believe the many polls which tell us that voters in Illinois (and across the nation) favor restrictions on late term abortion, they missed a phenomenal opportunity to turn the “extremist” label back on Pritzker who favors legalized abortion up to the very day of birth. (Watch the IFA video on this.)

Instead of avoiding the issue, they could have highlighted how Pritzker helped to usurp parental rights by repealing the Parental Notice of Abortion Act, allowing 13-yr-olds to get abortions without their parents’ knowledge. Close to 80 percent of voters supported this law, so it should have been a frequent talking point and campaign ad.

There were other reasons that played into the unhappy results. The so-called  Worker’s Right referendum (Amendment 1) served as a strong incentive to get government employees out to vote. They were rightly told that this would strengthen the collective bargaining hand for public sector unions.

This “patronage army” of the Democratic Party naturally supports socialism and big government programs because they believe the lie that the rich only will pay.

They are the same voters who often have negative opinions of capitalism. Won’t they be surprised when their property taxes start climbing and they realize that someone had to pay for what the public sector union bosses demand?

Then we have the fact that establishment Republican leaders failed to support Darren Bailey because he wasn’t one of the good ole boys. Some even complained out loud that he talked with a southern twang. Yet that was just the cover for their distain of this southern Illinois Christian conservative who didn’t just talk the talk, but walked the walk.

Where was Jim Edgar? How about Bruce Rauner, Leslie Munger, Bob Dold, Kirk Dillard, Bill Brady and Mark Kirk? Even Peter Roskam was AWOL. With “friends” like these in your camp, victory will always be elusive.

Soon-to-be-former Illinois House minority leader Jim Durkin certainly didn’t lift a hand to help Darren Bailey either. Instead, he gave a post-election interview to the state’s most liberal newspaper grumbling about the Illinois Republican Party.

Can you believe that he told the Chicago Sun-Times that being called a RINO (Republican in Name Only) is a “badge of honor.”

Yet the Illinois House went from a “super minority” status to a “super duper minority” in next General Assembly (2023-2024), having only 40 Republicans, to 78 Democrats. Durkin’s legacy will have him remembered as the “leader” who presided over an incredibly shrinking caucus.

Durkin’s management in the Illinois House has been a dismal failure. The super minority status of the Republican Caucus in the Illinois House is now at the lowest in state history.

In his 1975 speech to CPAC Ronald Reagan said:

Our people look for a cause to believe in. Is it a third party we need, or is it a new and revitalized second party, raising a banner of no pale pastels, but bold colors which make it unmistakably clear where we stand on all of the issues troubling the people?

Maybe it is time to embrace the opportunities we have to contrast our conservative worldview – our Biblical worldview – with that of those who cannot even define what a woman is and insist that a male can be a “birthing person.”

Want to talk about a banner of bold colors? We cannot be afraid of the truth. We cannot avoid talking about the “hard” social issues. We need to be confident of this very thing: Truth Wins.