Republicans Face Historic Midterm Headwinds Despite 90 Percent Seat Loss Trend

Republicans Face Historic Midterm Headwinds Despite 90 Percent Seat Loss Trend Republicans face a brutal midterm environment where the president's party has lost House seats in 18 of 20 elections since 1946, but Ronald Reagan's 1980 vision offers a path to defy history. Republicans are confronting a brutal midterm environment. Since 1946, the president's party has lost seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in 18 of 20 midterm elections, a rate of 90 percent. This trend goes back even longer than the 2000s. Donald Trump ran into this pattern in his first term. In 2018, Republicans lost 41 seats in the House, though they did gain two seats in the U.S. Senate. Despite the historical pattern, a loss is not inevitable.Reagan's Vision for Republican UnityConsider Ronald Reagan's 1980 election eve address titled A Vision for America. The speech came at a time of great national peril and discontentment. To give clarity to his positive vision, Reagan drew on American heroes from astronauts to John Wayne. Reagan said, Last year I lost a friend who was more than a symbol of the Hollywood dream industry; to millions he was a symbol of our country itself.And when he died, the headlines seemed to convey all the doubt about America, all the nostalgia for a seemingly lost past. Reagan continued, Well, I knew John Wayne well, and no one would have been angrier at being called the last American hero. Just before his death, he said in his own blunt way, Just give the American people a good cause, and there is nothing they cannot lick.Republicans have done a poor job giving the American people a good cause. The right cause is what led to the two exceptions to the historical trend. The other modern exception was in 1998, when Democrats gained five seats under Bill Clinton during a time of high presidential approval thanks to a strong economy.Ironically, that 1998 exception came in part because Republicans, under Speaker Newt Gingrich, balanced the budget and strong-armed a temporarily weakened Clinton into agreeing to welfare reform. Both exceptions came at times of strong national unity. To be more precise, the exceptions came when voters rallied to the party in power for largely nationalistic reasons. This, if articulated cleanly, could and should benefit Republicans, as the Democrats have turned so far left.Democratic Shift and American HeroesThe Democratic Socialists of America's official platform now feels like it could be the next platform for the party of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. , Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. , and Senate candidate.How can Republicans not only show this stark contrast to voters, but also unleash a national fervor for truth, justice, and the American way, as the American comic book hero Superman once put it? As Reagan did, the best way to do this is to herald our heroes. America has innovators, entrepreneurs, capitalists, and heroes in blue and green. We have armed citizens who defend themselves and others.We have civil-rights champions like Harmeet Dhillon. We have explorers who would go back to the moon and then to Mars thanks to entrepreneurs like Elon Musk. These and other heroes can also be juxtaposed beside the so-called heroes of today's left. That list includes deep-state bureaucrats, anti-Israel activists, open-border politicians, proponents of allowing men into women's sports, gun grabbers, and more, to show who is actually for American freedom.Choosing Low Taxes and American FreedomDo voters want the low taxes and pro-freedom agenda of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, or do they want the high taxes and increasing special-interest squalor of Gov. Gavin Newsom's California? Do voters want our heroes in blue to maintain what is now the lowest violent-crime rate America has seen in more than half a century, or do they want George Soros-backed district attorneys?Do voters want Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Make America Healthy Again movement to let us know what is in our food and more, or do they want big food to go back to writing our guidelines? Each issue needs to be shown in vivid and very human terms. Reagan, again, understood this.Near the end of his Vision for America speech, Reagan spoke of American astronauts who had lost their lives in the quest to reach the moon. He said, These were not the deeds of men who set out to be heroes. In many ways, they were ordinary Americans whose spontaneous response to time and circumstance gave us a glimpse into the soul of this country and the enduring vigor of her people.Americans right now are not getting enough of this kind of pro-American vision of our future. But the vast majority of them want it so badly. The midterms are a referendum on who runs your life.