Newt Gingrich: There will be a red wave this fall
On 'Fox & Friends,' former House speaker says Comey and McCabe are in deep trouble and that now is the time to take on welfare reform.
Over the past few days, four building blocks have fallen into place that strengthen the case for a red wave of Republican victories in the November midterm elections, wiping out Democratic hopes for a blue wave.
Three of these building blocks are Republican-favoring political developments in what would normally be considered safe, blue states.
First, New Jersey’s U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez is a Democrat who has been deeply weakened by charges of corruption. He was tried in a long, highly-publicized trial that ended in mistrial. The government decided not to prosecute again, but the news reports about the case had already shed light on some of Menendez’s actions, which were pretty indefensible.
Then the Senate Ethics Committee admonished Menendez in April for serious corruption allegations. The result is that on Tuesday, a relatively unknown Democrat – who did not raise enough money to meet the $5,000 threshold for reporting campaign funds –earned 37.84 percent in the Democratic primary as a protest against Menendez.
Bob Hugin, a former pharmaceutical executive, is the Republican nominee and will run a well-funded campaign. At a minimum, this puts New Jersey in play for Republicans and will draw millions of Democratic dollars away from other races to defend Menendez. At a maximum, the Democrats will lose the seat. If they lose New Jersey, there is no possibility they can win control of the Senate.
Second, the California primary put Republican John Cox in the general election for governor running against Democratic Lt. Gov. (and former mayor of San Francisco) Gavin Newsom.
The difference in statewide Republican turnout with a GOP candidate on the ballot for governor has been estimated at 23 percent. This turnout will make the governor’s race competitive and could be the difference between winning and losing a number of House seats.
In addition to the disaster of a massive gasoline tax increase and California’s sanctuary policies that protect MS-13 gang members, Newsom’s promise to raise both income and property taxes and his proposal to have government take over all health care combine to make California Democrats more vulnerable than they have been in a quarter century.
Third, Minnesota Democrats went crazy last Saturday, and their state convention was taken over by the hard left (yes, there are Minnesota activists to the left of the already liberal state’s Democratic Party). The result was that the repudiated Attorney General decided to run for governor in the primary. That created a vacuum that ultra-left-wing Rep. Keith Ellison decided he would try to fill.
This combination of personality-driven bitterness and ideological extremism has suddenly made Minnesota Democrats vulnerable. Long-time Minnesota analyst Barry Casselman has written shrewdly that former Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty is now likely to be the next governor and that two Democratic House seats are now likely to go Republican (making the possibility of a Democratic House this fall more unlikely).
Casselman has also written that if the chaos continues and the Democratic Party becomes both more radical and more splintered, even U.S. Sen. Tina Smith – who was appointed to replace Al Franken – could suddenly be in trouble.
All of this chaos will help Republicans and drain even more Democratic resources into a state they thought would be easy to keep.
The fourth building block that strengthens the case for a red wave in November is the growing and undeniable strength of the economy.
As I explain in my new book, “Trump’s America,” which was released this week, the real achievements of the Trump administration have been masked by the hostility and bitterness of the elite media that insist on focusing on trivial matters and ignoring big stories.
However, after the most recent jobs numbers were released last Friday, even the liberal New York Times was compelled to publish an article with the headline, “We Ran Out of Words to Describe How Good the Jobs Numbers Are.”
When we have the lowest black unemployment on record in America, something big is happening.
When there are more job openings than job seekers in America, something big is happening.
When the Federal Reserve is estimating second quarter American economic growth at well over 4 percent (a Reagan era number and more than twice the growth rate of the economy under President Obama) something big is happening.
Americans are beginning to conclude that their lives are getting better, and that President Trump and Republican leadership are a part of that phenomenon.
The result has been a collapse of the Democratic advantage in the generic ballot from a double-digit lead in December to some polls now showing Republicans on top. This is an enormous shift.
I will keep reporting on election patterns as they unfold, but as of now, I feel pretty good about my assertion that we are more likely to see a red wave than a blue wave on Election Day Nov. 6.
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