Put in the hot seat on affordability by that British dinosaur on Fox News, House Majority Whip Tom Emmer on Friday claimed he’s feeling good about the GOP’s chances in the midterms because someone sent a meme that said “$4 gas, $6 diesel – not acceptable, but it’s not gonna get me to vote for a communist,” causing the old British anchor to laugh heartily at Emmer’s spirit.
Not to dampen the cheerful determination and hopeful tenor, it’s just that, lol… Forget the part about the meme, which is so fucking on-brand for a supposedly serious Republican to be now acting like that kind of bullshit matters, but the actual content of said meme and how it fits in to what legions of election data eggheads are thinking these days: No, there probably won’t be all that many GOP 2022/Trump 2024 voters flipping to Democrats in 2026. Like 5 or 10 percent of them flipping would be the most you could realistically expect and even that might be pushing it despite the loud anecdotes.
But that’s not and never was the problem for the GOP. Like this site wrote in the immediate aftermath of the 2024 election, the fact that no fewer than five Trump-backed Republican statewide candidates – for governor in North Carolina, and Senate in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin – lost while convicted felon President Trump carried their states was an indicator of possible serious weakness downballot for MAGA going into this year. Now it’s been a year and half of absolute malpractice both in policy and politics by the party so forget the fucking no-info voters who checked the box for Trump and left the rest of the ballot empty. They’re long gone. Now it’s all the mid- or even higher-propensity GOP voters who, yes, probably won’t “vote for a communist.”
They also just won’t show up at all. And as much as this sounds like a joke, think about it: If you live in rural Kansas and diesel’s $6 a gallon, do you really want to drive your Ford F-3500 15 miles to go vote or are you going to want to just stay home and watch Fox News on election day?