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After the disappointing, even shocking, 2022 election results, Republicans must make an effort to rethink what happened.
The danger is, with all the distractions and trivialities of Washington, that effort could be reduced to the usual surface-level review. Too often, hard problems and facts that challenge the institutional culture of Republican professionals are avoided. The bias against dealing with them is great because they seem impossible to solve.
That scenario would be a disaster for Republicans moving forward.
What Republicans need is a profoundly deep, challenging examination of the party—and a thorough study of where American politics and government actually are.
Too often, Republicans try to understand the world through limited models of government and politics that simply don't reflect reality. This failure to think through and master the real world of contemporary power is tragic, and it weakens America's future.
Consider how big the gap between potential and reality currently is.
There is a huge cultural majority that prefers free-market capitalism to big-government socialism. Most Americans reject woke lectures on race and believe that a person's character is more important than his or her skin color. A cultural majority also deeply disapproves of brainwashing young children with radical ideas about sex and gender (72 percent oppose teaching schoolchildren they can change their gender).
These people should all be Republican voters, but they aren't.
Republicans must learn why this massive cultural majority is not translating into a political majority. It's not a fluke that the GOP can't attract these people. It is simply failing to. In the politics of campaigning—and the act of governing—Republicans have not mastered the systems, principles, and patterns they need to win.
The GOP must begin by gathering the facts. Virtually everyone's initial analysis of the election results mistook individual races for voter behavior and extrapolated based on the misconceptions. The fact is that Republicans won substantially more U.S. House votes than Democrats did. A 50.6 percent majority of House votes across the country went for Republicans while 47.8 percent went for Democrats. This was a notable turnaround from the margin in 2020, when Democrats won 50.8 percent to Republicans' 47.7 percent.
None of these facts fit the initial analysis. So, fact-finding means reviewing all the major polls and comparing them with what really happened with different groups in different states.
Republicans must also account for the real resource imbalance. Analysts too often simply match Republicans' fundraising dollars up against Democrats' fundraising dollars. This is a mistake we've repeated for decades. It profoundly understates the scale of the challenge in reaching voters. The truth is Democrats' resources are legion and can't neatly be listed on a spreadsheet.
If Saturday Night Live savages Herschel Walker three days before the runoff, what is that worth? If Mark Zuckerberg pours $419 million into turnout efforts in heavily Democratic precincts, how do you record or counter that? If Google routinely blocks Republican fundraising appeals, how much does it cost Republicans? When the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development organizes voter drives on the president's order, are they serving Republican and Democratic voters equally? If famously liberal universities that actively punish conservative speech run voter registration operations, who do you think that helps? None of these efforts show up on traditional Federal Election Commission reports. Republicans must figure out how to quantify and overcome them.
The impact of university and college election efforts in particular must be studied. The scale of the GOP defeat among the younger generation is a warning sign that the party will need profoundly new approaches if it is going to survive. If TikTok is legal, Republicans must learn to compete on it. The depth of younger Americans' commitment to the environment requires a conservative climate solution. Debating whether the climate is an issue at all is a losing proposition. A modular nuclear power-hydrogen production system would be a conservative answer to carbon loading that would produce energy, jobs, a stronger economy, and virtually no carbon emissions. We need a fight over the best way to solve environmental problems, rather than a pro-environment vs. anti-environment fight. We know which side younger and college-educated voters will pick.
Republicans don't seem to understand the requirements for effective competition in 2022. Voting starts in September for many states. Hoarding advertising money until mid-October doesn't work anymore. Early voting is a fact. Republicans must learn to maximize it, and to focus on non-voters more intensely. Shifting resources from late TV buys to early voting efforts may hurt consultants' wallets, but it may win more elections. Republican nominees who come out of tough primaries with no money and stay off the air for six or seven weeks—allowing their Democratic opponents and the news media to define them—become irrevocably damaged (see Mehmet Oz's campaign in Pennsylvania). Republicans focus on campaigns. Democrats focus on elections. The difference is profound. Republicans must change.
Republicans also have to understand how Democrats have adapted to the new environment. Lawfare is a system Democrats understand and employ 365 days a year. Democrats routinely use the legal system to attack and delegitimize their opponents. They understand that the constant, subtle application of legal challenges can change the election environment—even if they don't ultimately pass muster in court. Bombarding state legislatures and election officials with legal threats can scare them into agreeing to radical election models that favor your party. This has become a niche legal industry for Democrats. In fact, there is a clear effort to drive Republican lawyers out of politics and leave the GOP defenseless against activist attacks.
On the campaign trail, Democrats use symbols, fear, victimhood, and emotion. The entire Democratic campaign on abortion was based on fear and potential victimization. For over half a century, the racial politics of the Left have emphasized fear and emotion. The recent consolidation of the sexual politics vote has been based on fear of repression, elimination of rights, and job discrimination.
Performance simply does not matter. How else do we explain New York reelecting its Democratic governor despite the crime, inflation, and the decay of New York City? How else do you explain the staunch Democratic control of Chicago—no matter how bad the city government performs?
Republicans don't need to make cheap emotional appeals—but they need to be ready for them. Countering symbols and emotion with logic and rationality makes you look cold and heartless. Instead, answer with a higher ideal.
These are the kinds of fundamental problems Republicans need to research, think through, debate, and solve to have a serious, realistic, plan for 2024 and beyond.
For more commentary from Newt Gingrich, visit Gingrich360.com
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
