"A lot of people feel that America is somehow unstable, and not just economically." Rod Dreher expects a big Republican victory in Tuesday's American midterm elections, and the line of pro-peace conservatives in the party may also strengthen. Gergely Szilvay's interview.
What are your expectations for the midterm elections?
I'm a conservative, so I'm not getting my hopes up, but it really does look like a red wave (overwhelming Republican victory - SzG) is coming. I think that the Republicans will have a comfortable majority in the House of Representatives, and they will also gain a majority in the Senate by two to four seats.
I expect the American media to go absolutely bonkers,
and engages in apocalyptic speculations about the end of democracy. The left believes that if the voters choose the other side, then it is not a real democracy.
What are the main factors in the current election?
According to surveys, inflation is the most important factor, followed by crime, especially among Republican and nonpartisan voters. The issue of abortion is also in the top three issues, but it is limited to Democrats. However, there is something more imperceptible in the background. a recent Gallup survey
only 17 percent of Americans think the country is headed in the right direction.
This is disastrous for Joe Biden, whose approval numbers are quite low.
What is the mood of Americans now?
I have the impression that many people feel that the country is somehow unstable, and not only in an economic sense. Many people are angry with the institutional elites. One of the reasons for this is the way the Covid epidemic was handled, but it goes further. The elites - by which I mean not only the government, but the media elite, the university elite, the corporate elite, the legal elite, the medical elite, and so on - have surrendered to the woke ideology . Many Americans are fed up with the gender ideology and critical race theory they are taught in schools, and when parents object, they are declared the enemy. Critical race theory was accepted by elites, but not by ordinary people. Even racial minorities oppose it, in greater numbers than white liberals.
There is a general disgust with the leadership of the country,
and distrust is huge.
What should you pay attention to in the election?
It will be interesting to watch how Latinos vote. For a long time, the Democrats were very dependent on their votes, who voted for them without question and could certainly count on that - until now.
Latinos are more conservative than the Democratic elite,
and it is becoming more and more obvious that they do not look kindly on the radicalism of the democrats on the issue of, say, abortion and gender ideology, but they are generally not reconciled with other positions of the progressive elites either. There was a very interesting report in the center-left Atlantic magazine where a Latina Democrat woman explained why she is frustrated with her party, explaining that immigrants from Latin America come to the United States to work hard and make a better life for their families. They are not interested in the Green New Deal, they are not interested in transgender rights and others. In addition, the southern border is essentially open — which angers Hispanics along the border.
If Hispanics vote in significant numbers for the Republicans, it will signal a significant shift in American politics.
It will also be exciting to watch the results of the national and local elections in the very liberal cities. For example, New York is a heavily liberal state, but a Democratic governor is fighting for his political life against a Republican challenger. Why? Crime has a lot to do with it. Democrats are widely believed to be soft on crime, in large part because of the Floyd summer of 2020, when many progressive leaders called for defunding the police. In addition, György Soros campaigned throughout the country for liberal district attorneys —those prosecutors whose activities led to the release of violent crime. The result was predictable: it backfired on Democratic leaders even among liberal voters.
According to the Democratic Party elite, this election is about January 6, 2020, the siege of the Capitol, and the future of democracy and abortion rights. Well, their hopes will not be fulfilled.
What about internal divisions in the Republican Party?
This is the most complicated question of the current elections. The only reason there won't be an even bigger Republican victory on Tuesday is that
hard-line Trumpist voters often elected even extreme pro-Trump candidates
in the primaries. Some of these Trump-backed candidates, like JD Vance in Ohio, are within the party's mainstream. But others are truly problematic — like Georgia senatorial candidate Herschel Walker. He is a former football star with a very chaotic personal life and not exactly the most intelligent personality. He can still win, but if the Republicans had a stronger candidate, they would win easily. Similarly, in Pennsylvania, Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz is running against Democratic candidate John Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in May and has clear mental health issues. Still, Fetterman could win because voters in a center-left state are more likely to vote for Fetterman, a brain-challenged Democrat who struggles to speak, than for his not-so-strong alternative. No doubt, if Republicans win big on Tuesday, that problem will be minimized. But it will still be present, as we will see in the next two years, approaching the 2024 presidential elections.
What do you see before the presidential election due in two years?
Many Republican voters believe that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis , who will easily win now, is by far the best presidential candidate for the party. But Donald Trump is likely to announce that he will run in 2024 soon. And he has so many fans in hard-line MAGA circles who go to the polls in primaries that it's doubtful DeSantis could beat Trump. I think so
the only republican candidate the democrats can beat in 2024 is trump
considering how much liberals and independents hate him.
Who else besides Trump can be considered?
The possible candidacy of DeSantis would mean that he would continue Trump's best policies without the idiotic Trump drama, but with political virtues and executive knowledge that Trump did not have as president. However, there is no doubt that the future of the party points towards Trumpism - which is populist. Thank heavens no one is talking about restoring pre-MAGA conditions.
There are three Republican figures that I watch closely. Kari Lake is the first to run for governor in Arizona. He's a former TV announcer, a Trump-backed MAGA candidate. And he campaigns very, very well. Democrats poured money into his primary campaign, thinking that if Republican voters supported the most extreme candidates, it would be easier for Democratic candidates to win. And now it looks like Lake will win — and if he does, he'll be a nationally known politician who could even be a 2024 vice presidential candidate.
The other two are JD Vance in Ohio and Blake Masters in Arizona, both of whom Trump supports. They are relatively young, not shaped by Reagan nostalgia like older Republicans. Vance - who is a good friend of mine - is a native of the hillbilly working class. He knows what it's like to struggle to put food on the table, and he sees the Republicans' deference to the corporate world as a big mistake. He also opposes America being involved in so many overseas wars. He criticized Washington for being so quick to fund Ukraine instead of paying attention to the struggling workers in Ohio. The liberal media has criticized him a lot, but if he wins on Tuesday, then
JD Vance to be conservative voice of peace on Ukraine war
who is specifically an enemy of woke capitalism .
I have already invited him to Hungary to see how things are going here. Both Vance and Masters are newcomers under intense institutional pressure from Washington's Republican elite to take established Republican positions on the economy, national security and foreign policy. If they can resist this, they can bring about a necessary and fundamental change in the Republican Party.
Featured image: MH/Tamás Purger
