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Election 2024

A bad omen for 2024

November 8, 2023

Mike Huckabee

I dread having to tell you about Tuesday’s elections, because on the whole, they were another disaster for the Republican Party. I'll soften it by starting with the few bright spots, like the (too close) reelection of Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves and strong GOP legislative wins in Mississippi and Kentucky, but it would really be a shock if we’d lost those states. But all the high-profile races were a total rout.

Deep-red Kentucky reelected Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear by 52.4% to 47.5% over Republican Daniel Cameron. It’s a mystery why. Beshear is 180 degrees out of phase with most Kentucky voters, but he poses as a moderate while the reliable overrides of his vetoes of conservative bills have helped prevent voters who don’t pay much attention from realizing what his true colors are. Cameron took a lot of attacks, some of them shockingly racist, from Democrats who are especially terrified of letting black conservatives achieve prominent positions and disprove their false narratives. The results were hardly a shock; while polls had tightened, most showed Beshear ahead. Still, the actual gap was larger than the polls, and in a state like Kentucky, that’s a bad omen for 2024.

The worst news, though, came out of Ohio and Virginia. In Ohio, by a 56-44% margin, voters enshrined abortion as a constitutional “right.” This article explains what the amendment says and what Republicans in the legislature might do to overcome it. It also makes clear that the abortion laws being pushed by Democrats are actually far more radical than those in European nations they want us to emulate, and more radical than most Americans' beliefs on the subject, yet they keep winning on this issue.

https://apnews.com/article/ohio-abortion-amendment-election-2023-fe3e06747b616507d8ca21ea26485270

That vote was propelled by a pro-abortion campaign heavily funded by outside leftist groups that outspent the pro-life side by $10 million. Aided by media sycophants and their own utter shamelessness, Democrats have successfully framed the slaughter of babies in the womb up to the moment of birth as “women’s health care” or “bodily autonomy.” Ohio voters also voted to legalize marijuana, which along with abortion created a perfect storm to turn out their base. They plan to use abortion to the hilt in the 2024 elections, so brace for a tsunami of demagoguery.

In Virginia, where Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin was hoping for the GOP to retake the Senate, they not only failed but lost their majority in the Assembly. This race also was heavily impacted by abortion, with Youngkin pushing for a 15-week ban on abortion, with exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.

I honestly don’t know what to make of Virginia voters. They just lived through watching Democrats arrest parents for getting upset that their daughters were being raped in school by "trans" males in their bathrooms, and now, they’ve decided to hand power back to them in the name of "women's rights"?

On a larger level, how can anyone look at the worldwide disaster created by Democrat rule and vote to keep these people in charge of anything? The cities they run are violent cesspools of crime, homelessness and corruption; the states they run are losing population because all the sane, productive people are fleeing; and their national policies have everything from the economy to border security to the Middle East crashing down around their ears. Joe Biden’s only been in office for three years, and we once again have Nazis attacking Jews in the streets and the threat of World War III! Who can look at the endless catastrophes of Democrat rule and think the most important voting issue is being allowed to kill babies in the womb until the moment of birth?

There are a lot of problems to address if we’re going to stop these electoral debacles and save America from the certain destruction of four more years of Biden and Co. “in charge.” One is that after the Dobbs ruling, the Democrats were able to monopolize the framing of abortion, shroud its brutal reality in fuzzy euphemisms (“women’s health care,” “reproductive justice,” etc.) and convince too many women of the insane notion that the GOP wants to chain them in kitchens and force them to have babies. The pro-life movement worked so hard and so long to overturn Roe v. Wade that I fear they didn’t realize how much effort they would have to keep putting into winning hearts and minds state by state. They might have also underestimated their opponents’ conscience-free zeal in pushing abortion to the utmost limits. They have to redouble their efforts to fight back against the propaganda.

Another issue is turnout. In many of these races, the results could have been flipped if only a higher percentage of Republicans had voted, but they didn’t. Some think it doesn’t matter, “the Democrats will just steal the election anyway, so why bother to vote,” etc. Do you know what that kind of defeatist attitude results in? Defeat! As the horrific results of this election start to become apparent over the next year, I’m sure many Republicans will be complaining about how bad things are getting, and wondering how such incompetent people with such awful ideas came to power. If they didn’t vote, then they can look for the reason in the nearest mirror.

That brings us to the RNC. There was a big push to change the RNC’s leadership that failed, but we were assured they’d learned their lesson and had plans to turn out voters. Well…where were they? I heard a lot of complaints about important races not getting the funding they needed, and saw a lot of races lost to low GOP turnout. Meanwhile, the biggest news I’ve heard from the RNC lately was that it agreed to let NBC and two liberal news anchors host the next GOP primary debate. How many at-bats and strike-outs should they get before they're sent to the Democrat-run unisex showers?

Finally, a lot of people are trying to blame this latest election debacle on Trump, even though he had little to no involvement in most of these races. It’s true, Trump Derangement Syndrome is a big motivator for the Democrat base, but it’s a brain-wasting disease, and I’m sure that will be true for years to come whether Trump is in politics or not. Let’s face it: the current Democrat Party can’t run on its successes and achievements because it has none, other than knowing how to stay in power despite outrageous failure. It succeeds almost entirely on smears, vilification and scare narratives.

If they don’t have Trump, then whoever comes along next will quickly be smeared as “worse than Trump” (they used to say “worse than Hitler,” but I think they’re realizing a lot of their young base are admirers of Hitler.) To them, all Republicans are racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic monsters who want to chain women in the kitchen and bring back slavery (which is odd because Republicans fought a Civil War to make Democrats give up their slaves.) And it makes no difference who the Republican is (just look at the wild attempts to paint new Speaker Mike Johnson as a crazy, dangerous radical right-winger when they don’t even know who he is.)

No, whether Trump is running or not, Republicans will always have to deal with the problem of misled, miseducated voters whose emotions have been fired up by phony Democrat propaganda. We need to have competent leaders to counter that, and the best way is to find someone who can motivate rational people to get off the couch and vote. That didn’t happen yesterday, and it’s going to cost a lot of innocent lives in Ohio.

Here's a round-up of election results…

https://redstate.com/smoosieq/2023/11/07/live-election-results-kentucky-mississippi-ohio-pennsylvania-rhode-island-virginia-n2166023

Some commentary from Fox News…

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/top-takeaways-election-day-2023-what-they-say-about-2024-showdowns

And I think some pretty spot-on comments from Todd Starnes…

https://www.toddstarnes.com/politics/dont-blame-trump-for-what-happened-on-election-day/

And from Bonchie at Redstate.com…

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/11/08/republicans-werent-tired-of-losing-yet-n2166041

A Bright Spot In Tuesday’s Elections: Bonchie at Redstate.com also points out that while the GOP didn’t take the legislature in Virginia, they actually overperformed, winning in every district that voted for Biden by less than 9 points. Virginia is a blue state infested with federal employees, so it may be impossible for Republicans to take it. But the strength they showed even in a state like that could bode well for them in swing states in 2024. Hope that makes it easier to get through your day.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2023/11/08/the-2023-elections-produced-a-lone-bright-spot-virginia-n2166044

This Poll is giving Democrats vapors

November 7, 2023

Mike Huckabee

I always caution people not to pay attention to polls taken a year before an election, but a new New York Times/Sienna College poll is giving the vapors to Democrats. The results are absolutely devastating for President Biden.

https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-leads-biden-significant-margin-crucial-swing-states/

The poll shows Trump with solid leads in five of six swing states, with Biden ahead only in Wisconsin by 2 points (I assume that’s due to the Cheesehead vote.) It also found that two-thirds of Americans think the country is moving in the wrong direction (one-third think this is the RIGHT direction?!), and a majority say Biden’s policies have personally hurt them.

Most terrifying for Democrats, the poll shows that Biden’s jaw-dropping incompetence is causing their coalition of interest groups to fray. Biden’s lead among Hispanics is down to single digits, he leads among voters under 30 by only one point, and his lead in urban areas is half that of Trump’s lead in rural areas. This terrifies Democrats because their route to winning is to separate Americans into warring identity groups, then cobble together enough of them to add up to over 50% of the vote.

https://redstate.com/mike_miller/2023/11/05/the-biden-beatdown-continues-as-damning-poll-shows-the-coalition-that-elected-him-is-fraying-n2165922

This poll is just the latest reason why people like Democrat strategist David Axelrod are urging Biden not to run for reelection, but to retire, go home and try to figure out how many grandchildren he has.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/david-axelrod-questions-wise-biden-stay-2024-race-stakes-dramatic-ignore

Go Vote

November 7, 2023

Mike Huckabee

Here’s a story about why it’s vitally important for Republicans to turn out and vote in Virginia.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/why-this-governor-could-be-biggest-winner-election-day-2023

One of the more interesting races is the Kentucky Governor’s race. Kentucky is a deep red state that for some reason has a Democrat Governor, Andy Beshear. He won in 2019 by only 0.4% against an unpopular incumbent. He poses as a moderate, but he has repeatedly vetoed popular conservative legislation, such as a ban on barbaric “trans” procedures on minors, and seen those vetoes overridden. Nevertheless, polls showed him with a healthy lead over Republican challenger Daniel Cameron. That is, until the last week or so, when the polls have suddenly shifted, showing the race virtually tied.

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2023/11/05/what-is-going-on-in-kentucky-n4923643

Democrats seem to be panicking at the thought that they might lose this race; so since Cameron is black, they’re launching some shockingly racist attacks against him.

One thing the Democrats have taught us recently is that every white person is a racist. Even if you think you aren’t a racist, that just proves what a racist you are. They’re triggered even by alleged “microaggressions.” HOWEVER…there’s one caveat. If you are a white liberal talking about a black conservative, then it’s perfectly okay to be as blatantly, openly racist as a KKK grand wizard at a George Wallace rally. Chris Queen at PJ Media offers some disgusting examples.

https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2023/11/03/kentucky-democrats-go-full-racist-against-daniel-cameron-n4923601

Cameron responded, "I never faced racism or discrimination while growing up or working in Kentucky until I decided to stand up to the national Democrat establishment. I don’t support their policies, so the Left attacks me for my skin color."

Anyone who knows the real history of the parties shouldn’t be surprised at the resort to race-baiting (guess which party actually invented Jim Crow laws), but in 2023, this nauseating tactic should be rejected by any decent American. I hope and pray you all turn out to vote in every state, county and city and in every race to remove this cancer from American politics. A vote for Daniel Cameron in Kentucky would be an excellent start.

The Trump Interview

September 15, 2023

Mike Huckabee

On Thursday, former President Trump sat down for a lengthy interview for Megyn Kelly’s podcast. You can see the entire interview here:

The subjects ranged from Trump’s famous response to a “nasty” question Kelly asked him during a 2016 debate to the classified documents case against him to his opinion of Biden’s mental capabilities (he wouldn’t say Biden is too old for the job because some people are very sharp in their 80s while some people lose acuity in their 40s, but he did say that Biden is incompetent. That seems like an uncontroversial choice of words.)

While Democrats are ripping Trump's answers, as expected, he’s also getting some criticism from the right for his response to Kelly’s questions about his handling of COVID and whether he regrets some of those decisions, like putting Dr. Fauci in charge and letting him have too much power. His denials suggested that he still doesn’t grasp the problem. It has some conservatives expressing concerns that he might make the same mistakes again if he gets back into office. Paula Bolyard at PJ Media sums up those concerns well.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/paula-bolyard/2023/09/14/megyn-kelly-grills-trump-on-covid-response-his-answers-dont-exactly-inspire-confidence-n1727158

I’m not as inclined as some to blame Trump for the wrongheaded, heavy-handed and freedom-crushing power grabs that the pandemic inspired, or for overreacting to the threat and making bad decisions early on. From the start, I understood that this was a new, potentially deadly disease, we didn’t know much about it, and I’m sure most medical experts were acting in good faith and trying to protect the public with very limited knowledge (remember when we were told to disinfect our groceries? I miss disinfectant-flavored oatmeal.)

But it soon became apparent that much of what we were being told was nonsense (churches shut down while liquor stores stayed open, people arrested for walking alone on the beach without a face mask, the government pressuring social media to silence any doctors who questioned their extremely questionable dictates.) Once it became obvious that people were exploiting pandemic fear to increase government power, then common sense criticism was fair game (even though it got a lot of our newsletter articles banned by Internet gatekeepers – and I stand by all of them.)

In short, it’s not a sin to say you did your best, but you got some things wrong. Mistakes can be positive, if you learn from them. But first, you have to admit they were mistakes. I think admitting he got some things wrong then, knows better now and will never let it happen again would help Trump much more than denial and braggadocio. And I think we’d all like to hear him say he’s very sorry he never said, “You’re fired” to Dr. Fauci.

My debate thoughts

August 24, 2023

Mike Huckabee

I have a suggestion for Fox News for the next GOP primary debate, if it’s anything like last night’s. See if you can get Maximum Strength Excedrin headache pills to sponsor it. I wish I’d had a couple last night. I don’t know if I would have swallowed them or used them as ear plugs. I haven’t heard so many people shouting at once since the last time a real conservative appeared on “The View.”

I hope no voters who want the GOP to return maturity and decorum to Washington tuned in. The moderators couldn’t control the debate, and some of the participants couldn’t even control themselves. They should’ve let Tyrus moderate it. He would’ve asked better questions, and he knows how to deal with booing Wrestlemania crowds.

I won’t go into detail on this debate because I know everyone else is talking about it, and most people see it as nothing more than an audition for Trump’s VP or cabinet or a book contract or a spot on Fox News or MSNBC, depending on whether they supported or slammed Trump. 

https://babylonbee.com/news/republicans-debate-to-see-whos-going-to-lose-to-biden-in-a-landslide-mail-in-vote-in-middle-of-night

But here are a few random thoughts, for what it’s worth:

Joe Biden and his minions are literally dismantling America, but he was barely mentioned by the moderators in the first hour. Instead of substantive questions about illegal immigration, inflation or corruption of the legal system, we got questions about Trump, January 6th (did the DNC write these questions?), and in a historically embarrassing moment, UFOs. I was also glad that DeSantis called them out on those stupid “Raise your hand if…” questions, scolding them that “we’re not school children.”

https://www.westernjournal.com/desantis-cuts-off-fox-news-moderator-middle-climate-change-stunt-not-school-children/

The fact that the other candidates didn’t attack DeSantis could be read as both good and bad news for him. Good, because it allowed him to make his points without being piled on, helping him turn in a solid if not inspiring performance that might have helped shore up his slipping poll numbers. A number of conservative pundits thought he came across the best, even if he didn’t bowl anyone over. Bad, because the lack of attacks suggests that the others no longer saw him as their biggest threat.

Judging by that standard, they must think Vivek Ramaswamy is their young J. Pierpont Finch and they had to “stop that man.” So the knives were out, with Chris Christie tearing into Vivek out of the gate as if he were a cheeseburger. I don’t think his slam on Vivek as sounding like Obama when he jokingly called himself a skinny guy with a funny name was the burn Christie thought it was. As Vivek reminded him, Obama won.

I doubt that the attacks on Ramaswamy as a wet-behind-the-ears amateur played as well with the audience as they thought. Trump was a political outsider in 2016, and between him and Biden, we’ve all seen that a half century of political experience is hardly the key to being a good President. Also, all of Christie’s vaunted experience didn’t keep him from leaving office in New Jersey with an approval rating lower than that of bed bugs. Nevertheless, I was disappointed that Ramaswamy stuck to his promise to cut off aid to Israel, although he did go into some detail about his support for Israel, reviving the Abraham Accords and stopping a nuclear Iran.

https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/nikki-haley-and-vivek-ramaswamy-spar-over-aid-to-israel-at-first-gop-debate/

I think the other candidates also misread the room when they attacked Ramaswamy for saying we should be guarding our own border, not the border of Ukraine. We all feel for Ukraine and want that war ended, but that doesn’t mean depleting our own military and Treasury to keep an endless war going that’s just going to inevitably end in Ukraine’s defeat and hundreds of thousands of fatalities. Thinking endless war is a bad policy doesn’t make you a naïve bumpkin, and most Americans share that opinion. It was also good to hear someone dare to say out loud that the “climate change emergency” is a hoax and the lack of fathers is a serious problem.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/conservatives-praise-ramaswamys-mention-fatherless-epidemic-in-us-best-answer-by-anyone

Likewise, when Ramaswamy was attacked for talking about trying to revive the love of America among the young generation, his critics sounded out of touch with today and helped reinforce the notion that it’s time for fresh blood in DC. There really is an anti-patriotic trend in that generation, stoked by bad leadership and anti-American schooling. Vivek understands that, since as he pointed out, he was born in 1985 (another moment that made me wince, but for entirely different reasons.)

Moments like that were depicted by some pundits as devastating for Ramaswamy, but several voter focus groups ranked him as the winner.

I was also glad to hear some discussion of abortion, since that’s an issue the Democrats are counting on to turn out their base (they’re already lying about not supporting abortion up to the moment of birth, which they absolutely do: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2023/08/23/fact-check-jen-psaki-claims-no-one-supports-abortion-until-birth/.) The questions of whether there should be a federal anti-abortion law, what it should be, and how to justify it after years of arguing that it’s a state issue need to be discussed.

https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2023/08/24/gop-debate-and-abortion-despite-mixed-responses-a-culture-of-life-should-be-the-goal-n2162982

Asa Hutchinson who is my friend and governed Arkansas competently surprised me when he parroted the bogus Democrat narrative that January 6th was an “insurrection.” No, it was a protest that turned violent. Even Joe Biden mocks the very idea that the 44% of Americans who own guns could overthrow the federal government yet expects us to believe that a handful of unarmed protesters, including a fairly large contingent of selfie-taking grandmas, came THAT close to doing it.  Even liberal Democrats like Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley reject that Jan 6 was an “insurrection.”  I didn’t expect Asa to sound like the bitter Liz Cheney.  For even Never-Trumpers, that was not a good moment for him.

Finally, I think many people will agree that the real winner of the debate was Trump, for choosing not to show up.

Here are some more comments on the debate from various pundits. The best line is from my recent “Huckabee” guest Michael Knowles: "Hutchinson exceeded expectations inasmuch as he didn't trans a child onstage.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pundits-name-their-winners-losers-from-gop-debate

Polls show indictments against President Trump have been followed by a boost in his poll numbers

August 10, 2023

Mike Huckabee

Polls show that once again, indictments against President Trump have been followed by a boost in his poll numbers.

https://www.westernjournal.com/trump-scores-major-win-following-third-indictment/

One poll in New Hampshire found that 62% of the state’s Republicans would support him even if he’s convicted, and 57% would support him even if he were sent to prison.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/anthony-gonzalez/2023/08/08/poll-shows-most-new-hampshire-voters-would-vote-for-trump-even-if-hes-convicted-n1717258

There’s also a lot of chatter recently about voters feeling “indictment fatigue.” Democrats hope this means that they are turning away from Trump because they don’t want to have to deal with all these legal issues. There may be some of that, but I believe more and more Americans are starting to wake up to the obvious partisan motivations of the prosecutors and the flimsiness of their charges and are fatigued with partisan prosecutors abusing their power to "get Trump." Studies have shown that social media posts about the indictments have been dropping with each new charge as people realize what a joke it is and are shrugging it off (not to say it doesn’t represent genuine peril for Trump, especially with the legal systems and jury pools so stacked against him.)

The Dems have been railing about what a monster and criminal Trump was from the moment he came down that escalator, and we’ve since learned what a crock most of their accusations were, with the “evidence” manufactured by his political opponents. Now, they seem to be indicting him for everything he does: Make a phone call? Indict him! Possess his own presidential papers? Indict him! Speak out about what he thinks was a rigged election? Indict him! Defend himself against being repeatedly indicted? Indict him! All while they completely ignore real criminals committing real crimes. No wonder people are fatigued with this charade.

Long before Trump came on the political scene, I was writing about how we have way too many laws, so many that every citizen breaks ten before breakfast without even knowing it. The Democrats are determined to prosecute Trump for every one of them. But the only thing that makes our society livable is that we don’t prosecute every piddling infraction of some arcane law, or worse yet, one of the millions upon millions of regulations with the force of law.

In the United States of America, there should never be such a thing as a “regulation with the force of law,” a de facto law made by a bureaucrat who was elected by nobody.

With their mindless fury against Trump and their ever-more-obvious partisan abuse of the legal system on full display, Democrats are showing Americans that we have too many laws and that the people in charge of prosecuting them have too much power and not enough impartiality or judgement. That’s something they shouldn’t be demonstrating if they want to stay in power because nobody who wants less of that kind of abuse of government power is going to vote for a Democrat.

Not guilty on all counts

August 9, 2023

Mike Huckabee

You might remember Mark Houck, the pro-life activist whom the Biden FBI arrested in a guns-drawn raid in front of his children, then tried to railroad into federal prison for 11 years for shoving an abortion activist who was harassing his young son. Fortunately, the jury found him not guilty on all counts. Well, Houck is back in the news. He’s running for Congress in Pennsylvania’s 1st Congressional District.

https://www.westernjournal.com/pro-life-father-running-congress-biden-doj-tried-lock-11-years/

Naturally, his views are pro-life, but his campaign is based on more than that. He says on his website: “I have seen first-hand what an out-of-control government can do to its citizens. I will fight to protect all people and their rights under God & our Constitution. My platform is based on common sense.”

Someone who’s experienced Biden’s weaponized “justice” system first hand and who also believes in common sense? Sounds like the left’s worst enemy! Let’s hope and pray he gets elected.

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