Victor Davis Hanson: Republicans’ Midterm Strategy Is Right in Front of Them, Use It

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Welcome to the Daily Signal Podcast, where we provide intelligence for the intelligent. Now, without further ado, here's today's take.

**Victor Davis Hanson** (0:08)
The anticipation of the November midterms is mounting every day. The Democrats are ecstatic. They look at the statistics in historical context and say 39 out of the last 41 midterm elections, the in-party lost seats. The Republicans counter, well, maybe it'll be different. Who can predict what Donald Trump will do or say? I think they're missing something because we haven't heard from the Republicans any strategy and the time is getting close.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for The Daily Signal. The anticipation of the November midterms is mounting every day. And the polls show that typically of midterm elections, that the end party in the White House, i.e. the Republicans and Donald Trump, are going to lose seats. And because the House is so close anyway with a five or six seat Republican margin, it might be even easier. And so the Democrats are ecstatic. They look at the statistics in historical context and say 39 out of the last 41 midterm elections, the end party lost seats in the midterms. And this will be no exception because Donald Trump is polling around 40 percent and the Democratic generic poll is five to six percent of the Republicans. The Republicans counter, well, maybe it will be different. Who can predict what Donald Trump will do or say? Who can predict what will happen in Iran in the next 60 days? There might be a revolution. Gas prices could drop.
There are seats that will accrue to the Republicans because of the Supreme Court ruling on racial gerrymandering and the preponderance of red states. Maybe five or six more red states will gerrymander than blue states. And of course, the Republicans were given a gift by this radical Democratic Socialist of America takeover of the Democratic Party and the crazy things that these candidates up for election in the midterms have said in their past. And then finally, the Republicans say, well, we have more money, at least in the PACs and the Trump funds.
But I think they're missing something because we haven't heard from the Republicans any strategy and the time is getting close. What do I mean by that? It seems to me that it doesn't work just to trash the socialists. They should be trashed, but there has to be more than that. So I would start first with a contract with America and say, we are going to do this, accomplish this in the White House and in the Congress over the next two years.
I would say, we are going to complete the work of the border, and we're going to continue to deport people who are not here legally, especially criminals, and then we are going to hold the bureaucracy and the university accountable for racial prejudice and bias that's intrinsic to DEI.
We've already said to our countries that receive massive US remittances that are sent from people here, often illegally and subsidized by the federal government, that they will have a tax on them. We've started with a 1 percent that may climb.
We are now pumping the most natural gas and oil in the history of any nation in civilization since the onset of fossil fuels. We're going to continue and increase that. One thing we are going to do that no one has really done for the last 30 years, we are going to address the debt. We are going to put a hold on federal spending, and we're going to take a look at entitlements, because we are now not just 31 to 32 trillion in debt, but the debt is increasing geometrically, not arithmetically, and we can envision if something is not done, it will be up to $40 trillion. Already, the interest is over a billion dollars a day, and it's larger per annum than the defense budget. A second thing that we're going to do, it's not just that we're going to have a contract for America, we're going to tell you what we've done. And first of all, crime is at a 70 percent, it's dropped 70 percent. It is at a historic low. Washington DC is a political capital of the world. It was not safe. Its monuments were decrepit. The streets were dirty. We sent in federal troops working with local police, and we can say now that Washington, believe it or not, is one of the safest large cities in America, given crime statistics, and its monuments are in a process of being refurbished, cleansed, and they're sparkling. And we have even bigger projects at the White House, the Reflecting Pool, to make people proud of their national capital. We all talk about affordability, but we forget something. Even with the war in Iran, and even with a temporary spike in oil prices, this administration has an annual inflation rate during its first term of 1.9 percent. It's about two and a half, and it may climb to three, but we are still way below the average 5 to 5.1 percent each year on average of the prior administration. We talk about affordability in terms of housing. Typically in America, 62 to 67 percent of the population owns their own home. It's 65 percent right now. The problem is not that people cannot buy homes. The problem is they can't buy homes in blue states and urban environments. We're going to work on that, but let's be clear. There has not been a sudden drop in home ownership. The border is closed. It's not just closed. Illegal immigration ceased to exist. Ninety-nine percent of the crossings are legal. There is no illegal immigration. We're controversially, but lawfully, and you mainly sending people back of that influx. Ten, twelve million, they came in under Joe Biden without any audit, without vaccinations, without any knowledge who they were. At a time, we would never treat, allow American citizens to do that. We were, after all, expelling 8,500 soldiers, some of them combat veterans from our military by the Biden decrees, that they had to have a COVID vaccination, an mRNA experimental vaccinations, where we didn't even require that of the people who fled from countries across the border into the United States. We should also say that South America, Latin America, the Caribbean are not going communist. There's not a pink tide. During the Obama administration, about 75 percent of those countries were heading left. John Kerry, the Secretary of State under Barack Obama, said that there is no more Monroe Doctrine. There is a Monroe Doctrine now, and almost all of South America and Latin America and the Caribbean is pro-American and conservative except three or four countries. And the Chinese are not controlling the entries and exit of the Panama Canal. And there's not a communist client state doing the work of China and also Russia and Venezuela, exporting terror and drugs to North America.