The year 2024 will be a critical year in the life of our Republic, but the big question is: are Republicans ready for it?
Being a lifelong conservative Republican, party leader and activist myself, I’ve been disappointed in my party’s performance on every level in the past few years. In 2016, I saw people who had never voted before come out just to support Donald Trump.
They were that great silent majority we’ve all heard about and were fed up with the excesses of big government and the destructive policies of the uni-party. They were especially upset with the leftist nonsense brought to the country in the eight years of, in my view, the most destructive politician in American history, Barack Obama.
Many of these folks finally realized that the power to undo the rot brought on by Obama was theirs, and they swept Trump into office over the unlikeable and arrogant Hillary Clinton. They achieved a significant win and ushered in four years of unprecedented economic growth, prosperity and peace, and then promptly went back to sleep, thinking their job was over.
The result was predictable. All of those voters who didn’t realize that every election is important stayed home in 2018 and allowed the Democrats to take over the House of Representatives and subsequently wage their jihad against the man they fear the most: Donald Trump.
Democratic efforts to remove Trump from office through two politically-motivated impeachments ultimately failed in the Senate but the constant drumbeat of Trump-hatred from the Democrats, dutifully amplified by their media allies, and coupled with the COVID-19 hysteria, resulted in Trump’s razor-thin defeat by 50-year political hack Joe Biden in 2020 and also gave the Democrats effective control of the Senate as well as the House.
Once again, many of those who elected Trump just couldn’t gin up the energy to come to the polls that year, let alone get out and actually work for his campaign. The pattern repeated itself in the 2022 midterms, with what should have been a Republican “red wave” turning into a trickle.
Even two years of incompetent and corrupt President Biden couldn’t bring out enough apathetic Republicans or supposedly astute independents to do more than give the Republicans a slight majority in the US House.
Here in Pennsylvania, it was disastrous, although the Republican party fielding U.S. Senate and governor candidates who weren’t serious about winning didn’t help. We also lost the state House of Representatives, but since Republicans there never accomplished anything worthwhile even with a majority, it hasn’t made much difference.
With 15 months to go before the 2024 general election, Republicans need to wake up.
Locally, the establishment hacks who took over the party last year don’t seem to care enough to keep the local headquarters open, and the state party is showing all of the energy of a three-toed sloth in getting candidates ready for 2024. Nationally, we have the usual crowd of mediocrities nipping at the ankles of Donald Trump when they should be united in supporting him in his resistance to the excesses of the leftist mob.
The biggest problem with the languidness of the Republican Party is that party members depend on them for both guidance and motivation. The average Republican voter isn’t particularly well-informed and is pretty low energy, especially in rural areas such as ours.
Part of this can be attributed to a union-run education system that hasn’t educated anyone in the last 50 years plus a media that stopped actually reporting news sometime around the Vietnam War era.
It takes effort to become well-informed, but increasingly few want to put forth that effort. People no longer read and thus can’t write or communicate, making it increasingly difficult to get information to them.
The Republican Party, at all levels, needs to focus on voter education and motivation, and get away from catering only to the party insider crowd. The enthusiastic people you see turning out in places like Iowa and New Hampshire make up a tiny percentage of the electorate and are already enthusiastic about 2024. You don’t need to go after them.
Concentrate instead on those sitting at home watching “America’s Got Talent” or “Celebrity Family Feud.”
But you can’t do that when you won’t even keep your headquarters open.
Dwight Weidman is a resident of Greene Township and is a graduate of Shepherd University. He is retired from the United States Department of Defense, where his career included assignments In Europe, Asia, and Central America. He has been in leadership roles for the Republican Party in two states, most recently serving two terms as Chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party. He has been an Amateur Radio Operator since 1988, getting his first license in Germany, and is a past volunteer with both Navy and Army MARS, Military Auxiliary Radio Service, and is also an NRA-certified firearms instructor. In his spare time, he dabbles in genealogy and learning new languages.
