Sunday during his broadcast of “Life, Liberty & Levin,” conservative talker Mark Levin reacted to the disappointing outcome for Republicans in last week’s midterm elections, stating he was never entirely sold on it being a so-called “red wave.”
However, Levin warned if Republicans allowed the same establishment forces ran party politics, the future would be “bleak.”
Transcript as follows:
LEVIN: So what do we make of last Tuesday? You know, sometimes a little time to digest these things is a lot better than on-the-spot analysis, and I noticed that many of the same people who were wrong about a red wave are now telling us what to think about a non-red wave. The experts, the consultants, the ruling class, the media, the politicians. We need to think for ourselves, enough of the static.
I said before the election, and I said repeatedly here and on radio, forget about the red wave, forget about a red tsunami forget about Armageddon, and vote. I said it on radio over and over and over again. Why? Because who cares what people predict. You’ve got to go out there and bring home the bacon. That’s what you have to do.
Now, I want to take a look at this with you and walk through it and it will be a little different than what you’re used to hearing. Because I’ve given this a lot of thought and see what you think, too.
The Senate in 2022, we had 34 seats up, 20 of them were Republican, 14 of them were Democrat. That meant the Republicans had to defend 20 seats and if they were going to get a majority, they had to tap into 14 of the Democrat incumbents or empty seats. That was a tall hill to climb.
And this is one of the reasons I wasn’t on this red wave bandwagon so fast. I needed to think about it. 2024, this is the key. The next election cycle, 33 seats are up. Now listen to this: Two-thirds of them are Democrat seats. So the Democrats have to defend 23 Senate seats, the Republicans have to defend only 10. So, the math in 2022 never really led to a red wave possibility, and the math in 2024 does lead to a red wave possibility.
Does that mean there’ll be one? Of course not. But I’m just explaining the math, the simple math.
We had about 60 percent of the seats up, they have almost 70 percent of the seats up in the next round. So, what does that mean? Democrats needed to have some serious gains in the Senate last week to stave off a disaster and 2024, they failed miserably.
Now, I’m not trying to be a Pollyanna here. I’m just laying it out. Because there’s a lot here that is of the opposite viewpoint, so stick with me.
So what about the red wave or a GOP pickup of maybe six Senate seats? I heard that, too. That was never going to happen in the Senate. It was a mathematical impossibility. Well, one seat, two seats at the outskirts may be three seats possible. We’d have to hold all 20 Republican Senate seats and flip a few of the 14 Democrat seats, so they have a lot of resources to defend their seats and a lot more of the map to make decisions about how do we go on offense. So what happened then?
Arizona, you had a Democrat incumbent; Nevada, you have a Democrat incumbent; New Hampshire, you have a Democrat incumbent; in Georgia, you have a Democrat incumbent.
I want to focus in on Arizona and New Hampshire. You had candidates running against these Democrat incumbents and the Senate Leadership Fund made the fateful decision. It decided that it would provide not one penny of support to Blake Masters in Arizona and it decided to pull about $6 million of support in the last week to General Bolduc in New Hampshire.
Who’s in charge of the Senate Leadership Fund? It’s Mitch McConnell, and this fund raised well over $100 million. He controls it. So, not one penny went into Arizona. He pulled $6 million out of New Hampshire in the final week when it was most needed.
What else happened with that fund? They poured millions into Colorado, the Colorado race to support a RINO who got crushed. That election was called soon after the polls closed and he was never going to do great, but there was an effort by the DC GOP establishment to demonstrate that kind of a candidate who really stands for nothing and everything is the kind of candidate we want. Well, he got blown out and millions were wasted on that race.
And what else did this fund do? It spent nearly $9 million that could have been used in Arizona and New Hampshire, as well as other States where they were needing money. It spent $9 million smearing the conservative Republican candidate in Alaska who was endorsed by the Republican Party in Alaska, Tshibaka because McConnell wanted Lisa Murkowski to win. She is a sure vote for him in the majority, almost $9 million wasted.
In other words, Alaska was going to send a Republican no matter what, and so they interfered in the decision making process of the people of Alaska, the Republican Party of Alaska, and blew $9 million that could have been used in Arizona, New Hampshire, Nevada, Georgia, in addition to the other places.
Now I notice a number of Republicans on television, coming to the defense of all this, and that tells me they have a Stockholm Syndrome problem. They’re just not — in reality, they don’t understand what’s taking place in this country.
So they made very poor decisions to the Senate Leadership Fund under McConnell. They did exactly the same thing in 2010 during the Tea Party Revolution, when the Tea Party elected 63 House members, but didn’t make much progress in the Senate and the same fund, the same senator, turned around and attacked the Tea Party — and attacked the Tea Party. It wasn’t the Tea Party, it were the so-called experts and consultants and GOP operatives and the politicians in Washington who did this, okay.
So immediately after the results were coming in, the Republican DC establishment went on the attack, they take responsibility for nothing. The candidates who you voted for in the Republican primaries, whatever State, who you voted for in the Republican primary as the primary voter, you chose flawed candidates.
In other words, it’s your fault. It’s your fault in New Hampshire; it’s your fault in Pennsylvania. It’s your fault. That’s the response of the Republican establishment. And some of these candidates who lost cost us the election, they say because Donald Trump supported them and if the voters and Trump had left it up to the experts in Washington, the GOP establishment, their consultants, many of whom you know who they are, to choose the candidates rather than the people, we would have won more seats.
Who says? Based on what exactly? Based on nothing. They said the same thing in 2010 during the Tea Party revolution, and they take responsibility for nothing. They’re the ones who had all the money. They’re the ones who decided where it went.
But there was never going to be this wave in the Senate. Period. The math made it impossible.
But if the Senate Leadership Fund had spent its money more prudently, we might have done better. We might have picked up a couple more seats than we did.
What about the House? That’s a little more complicated. It’s a different story.
There were several million more Republicans that voted than Democrats, but we don’t have a good grasp yet on how the Independents voted. How many and in what direction? That said, I did crunch the numbers.
There were 25 or so House races decided by less than five percent of the vote, less than five percent of the vote. Several even much closer, a couple of hundred. In other words, there almost was a so called red wave in the House, but they fell short. They fell short.
All the seats involved Democrat incumbents. So, you needed the Republicans to knock off Democrat incumbents, but it is very likely the Republicans will in fact take the House by a much smaller number. They’ll appoint the Speaker. They’ll control the Committees.
Look, in the lead up to the election, pollsters, consultants, Republican operatives in DC, commentators were talking about a red wave as if it had already occurred. Whatever they based it on was flawed and inaccurate.
I said over and over again, ignore them, because they’re always flawed and inaccurate. All right, so what do we conclude? The Democrats and the media are celebrating. Why are they celebrating? The red wave had never happened. It wasn’t going to happen. Not in the Senate for sure.
But they’re deluding themselves. The Democrats made no progress in the Senate and they desperately needed to make progress this election cycle. At best, they’ll get one seat.
When the math was a hundred percent with them. A hundred percent with them. And in 2024, they are in a horrendous situation when two-thirds of the Senate seats that are up are Democrat seats, and they are celebrating that they only lost the House by a relative few votes, but they lost the House and the GOP can now block these radical kook programs that Biden is pushing. They can conduct investigations. They can do what they need to do, and they damn well better.
But is this good enough? No, it’s not good enough.
If the Republicans allow the same DC establishment, many of whom you see on TV all the time telling you how smart they are, and they know everything, if they allow them to control the agenda and the money, the future is bleak.
Ronald Reagan won two massive landslides. He was not part of the establishment. He was a conservative. Donald Trump won a big election. He was not part of the establishment. He governed as a conservative.
The conservatives delivered the House in 2010 and the conservatives. The conservatives out there are the ones who held the Democrats this election cycle.
Don’t ever forget it.
And so the message out of this is listen to the Washington experts, the Washington establishment, the long in the tooth Washington politicians in the Republican Party will get smeared.
I want you to think for yourself. Don’t let these people think for you. You have Republican leadership in the Senate, especially that backed Gerald Ford against Ronald Reagan, that backed George H.W. Bush against Ronald Reagan, who detested the Tea Party, who hated Trump and who are now attacking the base yet again, the primary voters.
The Democrats don’t do this to their base, they don’t do it to their supporters. So two scenarios here from my perspective. It is possible the red wave could come, but in 2024, that Florida was the tip of the spear. It was a complete blowout under the great Governor, America’s Governor Ron DeSantis. And that might be something that is going to spread throughout the country if people govern like conservatives.
The Senate will be mathematically positioned for Republicans to have big gains. You’ll have two more years of the Biden disasters — energy, schools, border economy, inflation, cultural disasters and all the rest. It’s not going to get better in this country, it’s going to get worse.
Or on the dark side, and it is certainly conceivable that the culture rot is so ubiquitous that there is simply not enough American loving patriots to win elections. That’s a possibility, too. We’ll know in two years.
So that’s my take, for better or worse.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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