Top House Republican on Midterm Losses: Trump ‘Wasn’t on the Ballot’

The Epoch Times ^ | November 13, 2022 | Jack Phillips

[SoConPubbie]

Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) said that Republicans’ 2022 midterm losses were not because of former President Donald Trump because he “wasn’t on the ballot.”

“Donald Trump remains a very popular figure in the Republican Party in each corner of the country,” Banks, the head of the influential Republican Study Committee, told Fox News Sunday. Banks added that when the 45th president was on the ballot in 2020 and 2016, Republicans “won a lot more seats” than in 2018.

“And [Trump] wasn’t on the ballot in 2022,” Banks remarked. “He had also supported many candidates who won around the country too, but he wasn’t on the ballot.”

Republicans were projected to win big in both the House and Senate before the 2022 midterms. After days of vote-counting in Arizona and Nevada—events that were similar to the aftermath of the 2020 election—races were called for incumbent Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), giving Democrats the majority in the upper chamber. A runoff race is still being planned for Dec. 6 for Georgia’s Senate seat.

When asked about whether he’d support Trump in 2024, Banks demurred. An adviser to Trump, Jason Miller, told news outlets last week that Trump will announce Tuesday that he is running for reelection during an event at his Mar-a-Lago resort.

“I believe that Donald Trump was a very effective president for our country. I believe he could be a very effective president for our country again,” the Indiana Republican told Fox News on Sunday. “I’ll save my endorsement for another place and time for the 2024 race. I’m focused wholly on what happened on Tuesday and how our party moves forward on Capitol Hill.”

Control

In the House, Republican candidates got 6 million more votes than Democrat candidates, although many close races in swing districts broke in favor of Democrats. It’s not clear what party will take control of the House after the midterms.

Some Republicans and conservative-leaning media outlets have blamed Trump for the midterm results. However, in Congress, a number of Republican lawmakers have blamed Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for the relatively poor performance.

But individuals close to McConnell have blamed Trump in recent days.

Steven Law, the head of the Senate Leadership Fund, told CNN that Trump’s endorsement of some candidates for the Senate helped Democrats late in the election cycle.

“Keeping the focus on Joe Biden and Democrats who had voted for inflationary spending and who supported soft on crime policies, those are the priorities,” Law said. “And to the extent that there’s any distraction from that, it diminishes our ability to drive home that argument.”

Meanwhile, Trump has said he backs Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) to be the Republican leader. Scott is currently in charge of the Senate’s reelection arm.

“I think Rick Scott would be much better than McConnell,” Trump told TheBlaze over the weekend. “I know McConnell well. His wife, I call her CoCo Chao. I wasn’t sad to see her go. I’m not a fan of McConnell, and I am a fan of Rick Scott.”

For his part, Scott has publicly called for the postponement of the Republican Senate leadership vote, which is scheduled for next week.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Exactly, but the ignorant, freeloading far lefties didn’t know that. That’s why they all showed up to vote against him again.

[jerod]

He tried his best to make it ‘look’ like he was on the ballot... And in the end... That turned out to be a mistake. Trump derangement syndrome has taken its toll. The daily and almost hourly mention of his name by mainstream media anti-trump zealots has led to a general dislike of the name Trump. That’s not his fault, but it is ‘his’ reality... People are sick and tired of Donald Trump.

It would be best if he would just announce that he isn’t running for anything. There are places where Trump can help the party as a supporter of candidates, rather than as a standard bearer. If he continues with his campaign to be the nominee that will hurt Republicans up and down the ticket and America will degrade even further if the Democrats win the Presidency again... America needs a Republican as President... And Trump isn’t a Republican... He’s a Trumpian.

[1Old Pro]

People are sick and tired of Donald Trump.

24/7 media attacks work, they destroy people - ask Qualye or Palin. I we surrender we lose. Our next candidate will receive the same treatment, perhaps worse. We have to live with it.

[Yo-Yo]

Trump wasn't on the ballot, but Trump wrote the ballot.

Oz? Worst.Endorsement.Ever.

[kabar]

You are clueless when it comes to American politics. Do something about Trudeau whose party received only a third of the vote yet he governs like a dictator.

[kabar]

Who would have beat Fetterman? The race was stolen from the outset. Mail-in ballots, drop boxes, bloated voter rolls, etc. insured the victory for Fetterman as it did for Hobbs. No Rep could have overcome this fraud. The Dems have honed the ballot gathering process, legal and illegal.

Issues and candidates are secondary. Fetterman is a prime example of the new way elections are won. Do you believe Biden received 81 million votes and was legitimately elected?

[jerod]

Sadly... Our electoral system isn’t the best... We need run-off elections, and hopefully whan Pierre Poilievre takes over with a Conservative government that’s something he will address... Harper said he was going to do that, but didn’t.

[proust]

related

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4109184/posts

[Yo-Yo]

Who would have beat Fetterman?

David McCormick who wouldn't have been vulnerable to the accusation "He lives in New Jersey, not Pennsylvania" like Oz was.

[nascarnation]

So you’re thinking it was a bad idea to run a muslim guy from another state who couldn’t even garner a Blowprah endorsement, the person who made him famous in the first place?

[Yo-Yo]

Who beat McCormick in the primaries by 0.1%? That’s what I’m saying.

[nascarnation]

Pennsylvania is an old state and I think the residency was a big deal.

You can have “move in” candidates in places like FL and AZ where half the population is also “move ins”.

[kabar]

LOL. Don't you get it? The election was rigged. The Reps could have had Jesus Christ on the ballot and he still would have lost to the Dem's brain-damaged Fetterman who has trouble uttering complete, coherent sentences.

Big Picture, 2022 Midterm Elections Highlight the Distinct Difference Between Ballots and Votes

Whitmer and Fetterman were not campaigning for votes, that is old school. Instead, the machinery behind both candidates focused on the modern path. The Democrat machines in both states focused on ballot collection and ignored the irrelevant votes as cast.

Since the advent of ballot centric focus through mail-in and collection drop-off processes, votes have become increasingly less valuable amid the organizers who wish to control election outcomes. As a direct and specific result, ballot collection has become the key to Democrat party success.

The effort to attain votes for candidates is less important than the strategy of collecting ballots.

It should be emphasized; these are two distinctly different election systems.

The system of ballot distribution and collection is far more susceptible to control than the traditional system of votes cast at precincts.

A vote cannot be cast by a person who is no longer alive, or no longer lives in the area. However, a ballot can be sent, completed and returned regardless of the status of the initially attributed and/or registered individual.

While ballots and votes originate in two totally different processes, the end result of both “ballots” and “votes,” weighing on the presented election outcome, is identical.

While initially the ballot form of election control was tested in Deep Blue states, through the process of mail-in returns under the guise and justification of “expanding democracy,” a useful tool for those who are vested in the distinction, I think we are now starting to see what happens on a national level when the process is expanded.

The controversial 2020 election showed the result of making ‘ballots’ the strategy for electoral success. Under the justification of COVID-19 mitigation, mail-in ballots took center stage. Ballot harvesting by Democrat operations was one term for the outcome.

Democrat party officials and political activist groups knew how to exploit the opportunities within the new system of ballot distribution and collection, and when you combine that with a massive legal pressure campaign to accept any and all forms of ballots, well, you can see how they are dependent.

Now that ballot collection has been shown to be a much more effective way to maintain political power, Democrats in a general sense are less focused on winning votes and more focused on gathering ballots.

When ‘ballot organization’ becomes more important than ‘vote winning,’ you modify your electoral campaign approaches accordingly. It might sound simplistic, but inside the distinct difference between ballots and votes you will find why refusing debates is a successful strategy.

If you are trying to win votes you could never fathom campaign success by refusing to debate an opponent. However, if your focus is centered around ballot collection, the debate is essentially irrelevant.

It’s time for voters to start seeing the difference between elections decided by ballots and elections decided by votes. Perhaps the 2022 midterm election will awaken people to the two completely different electioneering systems.

You can vote at any scale you want. However, when ballots are more important than votes – the election will always favor the former.

Michigan and Pennsylvania voters are likely very unhappy today, while Michigan and Pennsylvania ballot providers are smiling.

If Democrats had to win individual ‘votes’ to gain election success, they would be at a disadvantage. As long as Democrats only need to gather ‘ballots’, they have a path to winning elections. The processes of electioneering are all modified accordingly.

Campaigning, advertising, promoting, debating, hand-shaking, crowd attendance and venues for rallies, along with physically meeting people and convincing them of your worth, are only important if you are trying to win votes. Fortunately for Democrats, modern electioneering via ballot collection does not require these arcane efforts. So, in the larger picture of what you now see in elections, Democrats have stopped wasting time doing them.

Republicans are running around trying to convince people and win votes. Meanwhile, who needs voters? Democrats have skipped all of that old fashioned stuff and modified all of their electioneering systems to quietly and efficiently collect ballots. Yesterday you saw the outcome.

Haven’t you noticed?

It really is that simple.

[Yo-Yo]

Then go put a gun to your head and put yourself out of your misery.

What you don't get is that the DemocRATs can only steal so much, so the closer the race, the easier they can steal it.

Trump won in 2016 because he got many more votes than the DemocRATs had planned to steal, so he caught them flat-footed. (Hillary had a 99% chance of winning, Irish betting site PaddyPower paid off bets early, assuming that Hillary would win handily, etc. etc.) They did not make that mistake a second time, which is why a senile old man who spent most of his time in the basement and couldn't get 20 people at a rally got 10 million more votes than Trump.

If we run marginal candidates like Oz in tight races like Pennsylvania that already leans DemocRAT, then the DemocRATs will steal enough ballots from nursing homes to beat us.

If we run strong candidates that can garner enough real votes to overwhelm the DemocRATs capacity to steal ballots, we win.

[Lizavetta]

In some states there is very little oversight on protecting ballot integrity. The longer they stretch out voting, the more ways they allow hinky voting practices with no oversight the more there is room for fraud.

Which is the reason Dems screech for those very things and pretend the process is egregiously unfair if they don't get them.

[Western Phil]

You must be new on the earth. Eisenhower and maybe Ford to some extent have been the only Republican presidents in my lifetime to not having negative press all the time. Truman and Carter when he slept through the Iranian captivity were the last Democrats to have any. If we ever see a Republican president again, he/she will subject to the same treatment as Trump, if not worse.

[kabar]

You are dreaming if you think PA can be won if the Dems target a race under the existing rules. PA has 5 weeks of early voting, enough time to harvest votes, create ghost voters, etc.

Trump won in 2016 because the COVID voting rules didn't exist. In 2018 Reps had more early votes than the Dems. In 2020 the Dems more than doubled the Reps in early voting and in 2022 it was almost triple. In 2020 Trump won the majorityh of legal votes, the Dems won the number of ballots.

If we run marginal candidates like Oz in tight races like Pennsylvania that already leans DemocRAT, then the DemocRATs will steal enough ballots from nursing homes to beat us. If we run strong candidates that can garner enough real votes to overwhelm the DemocRATs capacity to steal ballots, we win.

You are delusional. It has nothing to do with the quality of the candidates, it has to do with the process of acquiring ballots. The Dems have always wanted to control the process. Soros and his funding of and emphasis on electing Dem Secretaries of State is working. AZ, NV, PA, and MI will have Dem SOSs in 2024. They will also have Dem governors. They will be making the rules.

Until Reps understand why they are losing in these battleground states, it will only get worse. We will lose this country thru the ballot box. Rigged elections will become the norm.

[jerod]

Yes... But Reagan and even Bush 2 to some extent, were able to overcome that negativity with concrete accomplishments that left the liberal press sputtering and ineffective. Trump isn’t even President and they mention his name over and over and over again... And Trump really had no significant accomplishments. He didn’t ‘drain the swamp’... He left it intact and they attack him ad nauseum... He has become a distraction, and he should recognize that fact... He’s become dead weight and in the battles of politics, deadweight is expendable. It’s time to move on from Trump.

[Armscor38]

You gotta wonder why no one on our side makes an effort to stop it. I suspect there’s too much money at stake to be made by everyone on both sides so there’s no incentive to make changes.