Republicans are launching their presidential race with wind at their backs and it’s not because of President Joe Biden’s mental incapacity or former president Donald Trump’s courageous, fist-pumping response to an attempted assassination.
Voters are switching allegiance out of disgust with the Democratic Party’s pro-inflation, pro-criminal, open border policies.
More voters identify as Republicans or say they lean Republican than identify or lean Democrat. It’s a stunning development. After trailing for seven years, the Republican Party has the edge — 47% to 46% — according to Pew’s latest data, collected before Biden’s disastrous June 28 debate and the assassination attempt.
The Republican brand is leading over the Democrat brand.
The left-wing media are apoplectic. New York Times columnist Frank Bruni scorns GOP convention goers as “a gathering of villagers with torches” — his version of Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables.”
Bruni claims Republicans are pulling ahead only because Democrats are in disarray over Biden’s fumbling, stumbling and mumbling. Wrong.
The shift toward Republicans has been years in the making, long before the voting public got a firsthand look at Biden’s incapacity.
Consider the exodus of Gen Z — ages 18 to 29 — away from the Democratic Party. For years, young voters were reliably Democrat. Biden won them by more than 20 points in 2020. Now just 24% of Gen Z approve of the job Biden is doing, according to an NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll from May 30.
On illegal immigration, the 2024 Republican Party platform states: “We must deport the millions of illegal migrants who Joe Biden has deliberately encouraged to invade our country. We’ll start by prioritizing the most dangerous criminals.”
Times columnist Michelle Cottle slams that proposition as “serious fearmongering” and “catnip for Trump folks.” CNN invokes “Mein Kampf” and race replacement theory — though not one word in the Republican platform targets or criticizes any racial or ethnic group.
Democrats and their media allies ignore how a migrant shelter turns a neighbourhood into a disaster zone plagued by crime, panhandling, prostitution and swarms of recklessly operated motorized bikes used to rob and terrorize pedestrians.
Solutions? The Republican platform proposes reinstating Remain in Mexico, halting the release of illegals into the country, and withholding federal funding from “sanctuary” cities that refuse to hand over criminals to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The platform favours merit-based immigration, welcoming legal immigrants with the skills to be self-supporting. “End Chain Migration,” the platform declares. Only Congress can make that change, but it’s possible if Republicans maintain control of the House and win the Senate in November.
Liberal media label the Republican platform “darkly messianic.” In truth it’s defiantly optimistic, vowing that “when America is united, confident, and committed to our principles, it will never fail.”
The platform’s a mere 16 pages of bullet points edited by Trump himself.
Like the one-liner promising to end taxes on tips. That’s music to the ears of millions of Americans — Latinos, Blacks, whites and every other ethnicity — who work for tips. Democrats would rather hike the minimum wage, but those hikes force employers to make layoffs and even go out of business. Better to take the money out of Uncle Sam’s pocket than your employer’s.
Team Biden can see the platform’s a winner. That’s why Biden and his supporters are pulling a bait and switch, trying to tie Trump to the Heritage Foundation’s 900-page, conservative, uncompromisingly pro-life manifesto, Project 2025.
On Monday, when Trump announced Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) as his vice-presidential pick, Times columnist Cottle bashed Trump for picking a white man, claiming it showed a “lack of interest in reaching beyond his base” to “woo, say, suburban women or Latinos or young Black men.”
What garbage.
The Pew poll shows the Democratic Party’s taken-for-granted voters, including Gen Z and minorities, are realizing identity politics is a ruse. They want real improvements. Hallelujah.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York