In 2018, Donald Trump lost forty seats in the house. Pundits spent lots of ink pointing out how this was within the realm of ordinary midterm losses for the President’s party. A careful examination shows how vapid this is. Politics is regarded as a semi-professional mud wrestling endeavor, with the advantage swinging to the person who is closest to the edge where some traction may be gained. In short, it has almost nothing to do with the Peoples’ business. This year, we can anticipate that, as always, Republicans will gain that traction...and then squander it.

In 2018, Democrat gains were driven by a visceral hatred for the Orange Man. But the election of 2020 does not lend itself to meaningful analysis due to the pervasive fraud documented in 2000 Mules and the divergence between Congressional and Presidential tallies. When numbers are this distorted, there is just too much noise to allow us to discern the signal. Democrats decided their razor-thin “win” gave them license to destroy everything that is good and wholesome in a mad rush for absolute power.

This incredible stroke of good luck for conservatives has swung the Occupant and his Party into historic levels of disapproval from which they are unlikely to recover anytime soon. Americans are already rebelling against sanctimonious COVIDiots. Protestations that doubling or tripling gasoline prices—harming the lower classes more than the Beltway “elites”—are actually good for us fall on deaf ears when the cost of everything that depends on fuel (work, meat, baby formula) is through the roof.

The felony is compounded when illegal aliens—yes, that is the correct legal term—have full stockpiles of food, formula, and medicines...for free. Of course, we can’t ignore the crime wave unleashed on us by Democrat “defund the Police” politicians, “lock nobody up” DAs, and “let ‘em all in” “border control.”

All this malfeasance sets the table for a red tsunami, to quote many pundits. And it will probably happen, with a lot of Rs winning. They’ll get to DC, settle into nice offices, start fundraising for re-election, and forget just why they won. This time, it was because, “We may not be perfect, but the other side is effing crazy.” That’s not a recipe for a mandate. It’s a prescription for the pendulum to swing back to the day before Biden entered office.

A few Republicans will actually realize who they must serve. Jim Jordan, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Lauren Boebert come readily to mind. But the Freedom Caucus, rather than being a majority in the Party, remains a thorn in the side of the Republican leadership. The RINOs in leadership will tamp down any realistic effort at creating a principled set of criteria for how any legislative effort should be reviewed. Instead, all of Congress will be devoted to “What can we do?” while never spelling out “Why should we do it?”

Even the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, who is a phenomenal conservative leader who gets things done, seldom enunciates the principles that govern his course. And that failure leaves his successor with the power to rewrite history. If you don’t explain “Why,” your opponent gets to re-label you and your work in every possible evil way.

Image by Andrea Widburg using Mitch McConnell YouTube screen grab and Chalkboard by rawpixel.

Donald Trump intuitively did a lot of good things. But he never stood up and said that the people should have the right to steer their own boats. Mom knows a lot more about what Johnnie needs than some bureaucrat in DC. He pointed out the evil of what a lot of the Dems did, but he didn’t call it “evil” and then explain why. Had Trump made that sort of principled point, many would have had the opportunity to see more of what drove him.

Instead, with every mean Tweet, Trump diminished his message until the Dems felt free to blame literally everything on him. Many of us still support him, founded on a basic understanding that the direction he was moving was in line with good principles. But we get tarred with a huge array of “impolite” slurs, simply because we voted for the best Republican President since Lincoln.

The mere fact of winning in 2022 will be intoxicating. But strong drink can cause you to misunderstand what led to the victory party. Most Americans intuitively understand Truth, Justice, and the American Way. That’s why woke Star Wars bombed, but new Top Gun is soaring. But while highly successful movies tell the story of real virtue, politicians need to start spelling it out.

Parents all want their children to do better than they did. This requires two things: safe streets and opportunity. When Americans see leftists actively destroying both of those, they know that “D” is the new Scarlet Letter. But they will just as readily move back to the Ds when the Rs ax some favored program unless they first properly explain the move in terms of principles.

When the FISL and Pell Grant gravy trains get shut down, parents of college-age kids may howl. So, it’s necessary to explain that the Feds have no Constitutional authority to subsidize colleges and universities. Those establishments got fat turning out SJWs while graduates were saddled with enormous debt. Freedom and opportunity are not helped when the Feds raise the price of education with those programs.

Terminating the Department of Education will cut money to local schools, but the problem is the same. That money comes with a high price tag. The paperwork to qualify uses up the bulk of it and shifts educational control to DC. Education controlled from DC cuts parents out of the loop. And good education is a key part of opportunity.

Diversity and social justice demands from DC are destroying local police departments. This makes safe streets a more difficult proposition. Add in “defunding” movements and it’s clear that Dems hate America. Parents need to hear that safe streets are essential to opportunity and, so far, that’s not a prominent message.

In short, the Republican Party must actively begin to educate the voters as to the principles it stands for. But so far, it’s not even clear that the Party has any principles other than “Democrats are bad.”

It’s really hard to create a loyal following when your “base” doesn’t believe you stand for anything. We in the grassroots must demand that the Republican Party establish a set of core principles. Republicans can disagree on how to accomplish them, but our big tent cannot extend over evil.

If RINOs cannot agree, then they should be purged. There will be plenty of qualified, enthusiastic replacements who will win.

Ted Noel MD is a retired Anesthesiologist/Intensivist who podcasts and posts on social media as DoctorTed and @vidzette. His DoctorTed podcasts are available on many podcast channels.