Column: How Can the GOP Look Good Despite the Media?

As we approach the one-year anniversary of Biden’s inauguration, Gallup brought some bad polling news for the Democrats.

Over 2021, Gallup found “a dramatic shift” in party identification in their surveys, from a nine-percentage-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter (49 to 40 percent) to a rare five-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter (47 to 42 percent).

Underline the “rare” Republican edge. Gallup reports that this only holds true in four quarters of the year since 1991. After gaining control of the House of Representatives in 1995 for the first-time since 1955, the Republicans held an advantage of five points in party identification/leaning. Only the U.S. victory at the Persian Gulf War under George H.W. gave the GOP a greater advantage in the first quarter 1991. Bush, and that obviously didn’t last.

These numbers could not have been possible despite the extensive media coverage.

This shift in public opinion is in stark contrast to the media’s robotic repetition that the Republicans are dominated and doomed by an attachment to Donald Trump. How has the GOP gained momentum under this constant drumbeat of how it’s somehow crumbling to pieces?

Take a look at Virginia in 2021, where the Democrats ran against political newcomer Glenn Youngkin with a never-ending onslaught of commercials and messaging that was all Trump-Trump-Trump-Trump-Trump. It didn’t work. Youngkin prevailed anyway. Youngkin demonstrated an ability to negotiate around The Washington Post and other reporters and win over Republicans regardless of their Trump takes, not to mention independent voters who act rebelliously like Trump is yesterday’s news.

All the liberal networks offered Trump huge amounts of airtime in 2015 in hopes that Trump would bring down the Republican Party. When that didn’t work, they suggested Trump’s election was fraudulent, due to Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. Now they look as cognitively rattled as Brian Stelter, who expresses happiness that Trump’s rally didn’t air live on Fox News…but then the rally is energetically discussed for days afterward on CNN.

They might be so fearful of Trump’s return in 2024 that they think liberal journalists will ignore Trump and promote the traditional Republicans.

But they’re allergic to promoting Republicans, unless their Trump messaging sounds exactly like liberal journalists (Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger). They are still betting the best strategy for a pro-Biden press is to beat the drum endlessly that Trump has an asphyxiating stranglehold on the GOP…and imply that the Republicans are so “restrictive” on voting rights that regaining their majorities must be considered the antonym of democracy.

This helps them avoid discussing the fractures among the Democrats, and the great upset on the Left that Biden can’t accomplish any of their extreme proposals to spend massive trillions of dollars and destroy voter-ID requirements. It’s so bad that Paul Begala said out loud on CNN “I think the problem for the Democrats right now is not that they have bad leaders. They have bad followers, okay?”

The media elites are not “bad followers.” They want to help Biden succeed. The problem for the media-Democrat complex is that all of these failures on COVID and border control and inflation and Afghanistan can’t be spun as good news, even if they try.