Abortion, transgender rights, Critical Race Theory, school library book bans, and restrictive gun laws are among the hot-button topics leading the news and whipping up debate among the public, but Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (pictured above) wants the midterm elections to focus on President Joe Biden.
According to an NBC News story, which published July 4, an unnamed Republican aide said McConnell believes voter frustration over gas prices and runaway inflation – in other words, the economy – will most help Republicans in November.
“Not about Trump. Not about guns. Not about abortion,” the GOP aide said. “But about the things that are really keeping people up at night.”
The story quotes McConnell himself, who is known for being a calculating and shrewd strategist. Citing one example of that strategy, the veteran politician defended Republicans for supporting a gun violence prevention bill because it will be “viewed favorably by voters in the suburbs,” whose votes are needed for Republicans to gain control on Capitol Hill.
Those suburban voters are known by another description, the “soccer mom” vote, who have told pollsters they are worried because the family budget is being stretched thin to fill up the minivan and the grocery cart. Many of those women, however, are the same outraged moms who declared war on their local public school and its Marxist-like indoctrination. It was that grassroots fight in purple-state Virginia that got noticed by gubernatorial Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin. In a race that polls showed was close, the GOP challenger tapped into that frustration to narrowly defeat Gov. Terry McAuliffe.
In a post-election story about McCauliffe’s loss, left-wing Rolling Stone said Youngkin had “tailored his campaign around hot-button cultural issues like critical race theory, vaccine mandates, and transphobia in an effort to race bait and drum up fear among moderate suburban voters.”
The reference to "race bait" is likely referring to the anti-white "equity" curriculum that was uncovered in Virginia's suburban school districts. When he was pressed to defend it, McAuliffe instead dismissed it as a "right-wing conspiracy theory."
Robert Knight, a columnist for The Washington Times, tells AFN the American public is “fed up” with left-wing activism and is begging for the “insanity” to stop.
“Stop indoctrinating children. Stop pushing the transgender agenda on us,” he says. “Stop illegal immigration that's pouring over our borders.”
What the American public wants, he says, is a “return to normalcy” that the GOP can deliver – if it wants to.
Back in the NBC News story, a polling expert predicted McConnell’s strategy to woo suburban voters will fail. Those voters are younger and more liberal on issues such as abortion and gun laws, a polling expert said in the story.
According to Knight, the Republican Party must remind voters it is the party that defends life in the womb, a biblical view of marriage, and a sovereign border that is protected by upholding the law. Those are all cultural issues, he points out.
“We're not the crazy ones,” he says, “who are saying everything goes.”
