(Unsplash)
WND is now on Trump's Truth Social! Follow us @WNDNews
[Editor's note: This story originally was published by Real Clear Wire.]
By Phil Wegmann
Real Clear Wire
At the Howard Theatre in Washington, three weeks before Election Day, President Biden tried bolstering his party’s chances around the country. “Here is the promise I make to you and the American people,” he said. “The first bill I will send to Congress will be to codify Roe v. Wade.”
But of course, there were conditions. Even the president said so.
For an abortion bill to make it to Biden’s desk, Democrats would first have to hold the House, and then they would have to take additional seats in the Senate. They’d have to beat history to do so, bypassing the midterm “thumping” and off-year “shellacking” that defined the presidencies of his predecessors.
It isn’t very likely, according to public polling. And it’s desperate, according to Adam Laxalt.
“This is all they have,” the Nevada Republican said of Democratic efforts to make the midterms a national referendum on abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, “and they've attempted to run an entire campaign, a whole election cycle, on this issue.”
Republicans only need one more seat to take control of the upper chamber and prevent Biden from keeping his abortion promise. But Laxalt hasn’t built a narrow lead (46.4% to 45.2% in the RealClearPolitics Average) over Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and the political machine that Harry Reid built by focusing on social issues. One of the most pivotal races in the country can be summarized in the simplest political cliche: “It’s the economy, stupid.” That’s what Laxalt, a former Nevada attorney general, told RCP in a recent interview. In so many words, at least.
“A lot of the national press is just now sort of catching up to this, but it's harder on Nevada more than any other state in the country,” he told RCP. “We are at 16% inflation and almost six-dollar gas.” The average cost for a gallon got so expensive over the summer – $5.67 according to AAA – that the Laxalt campaign started planting yard signs alongside gas stations. Next to a picture of Biden and Masto, the caption read, “We did that!” The argument hasn’t changed. “Our economy,” Laxalt said, “is absolutely on life support.”
At the White House, Biden acknowledged Wednesday that “families are hurting” and gas prices “are not falling fast enough,” as he announced the latest release of 15 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The president first tapped that reserve in the spring, but 180 million barrels haven’t brought prices anywhere near close to the level they were when he took office or blunted attacks that he is playing politics with the nation’s emergency stockpile.
Laxalt called the move not just “craven” but shortsighted. And while the White House announced that it will begin replenishing the reserve once oil drops below $70 per barrel, the Nevada Republican insisted that the stockpile could run out before that dip occurs. “The election will have come and gone,” he said, “but the supply issue will not be fixed.”
Slam the president. Blame him for domestic challenges. Tie congressional Democrats to an unpopular president. All of this is standard political strategy for Republicans in 2022, as it is in any midterm election for the opposition party. But Laxalt wants voters to know that Cortez Masto and Biden are closer than most. “They go back a long way. They have been longtime family friends,” Laxalt said. “She was on his shortlist for vice president.”
Laxalt likes to say that Masto has been Biden’s 51st vote in the Senate these past two years – an argument that could be leveled at any of the Democratic senators up for reelection this year. It has the virtue of being mostly true. According to analysis by FiveThirtyEight, the Nevada Democrat has voted in line with the White House roughly 93% of the time. That loyalty has not led to a presidential campaign visit to Nevada, however.
“This is a story unto itself that she has unquestionably disinvited him to our swing state to campaign with her to help close out her election,” he claimed, adding that if Biden was helpful, “he’d be here.”
“The bottom line is that she doesn't want to campaign on his agenda. She doesn't want to campaign on her votes,” Laxalt argued before directing a standing invitation to the president: “He should be coming [to Nevada] and defending his record, not from the White House, but right here in the swing state where his policies have most affected us.”
The White House doesn’t seem eager to accept that invitation. Biden carried the state by less than three percentage points in 2020, and he has only visited Nevada once as president, in January for the funeral of former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. As much as Republicans claim they would love to see him on the campaign trail, Biden has picked his shots, choosing to avoid states where he may be more of a liability than an asset for vulnerable Democrats. Cortez Masto will receive some presidential reinforcements, though. Her campaign announced Wednesday that Barack Obama would join her on the stump in November.
The Cortez Masto campaign responded to Laxalt’s criticism by pointing RCP to the Republican’s time working for the conservative law firm Cooper & Kirk and his previous comments about abortion.
“While Sen. Cortez Masto has led efforts to hold Big Oil companies accountable for high gas prices, Adam Laxalt has cashed in, making millions at a D.C. law firm that represents these same companies squeezing Nevadans at the pump,” a spokesman for Cortez Masto said in a statement. “Laxalt is an automatic vote for a federal abortion ban, having pushed for an even stricter ban in Nevada than the one proposed by Lindsey Graham, which puts him far out-of-step with voters in this state.”
But the Laxalt position on abortion is to let voters in the states decide. That was the argument the Republican laid out in the Reno Gazette-Journal when he praised the Supreme Court reversal of Roe, promised to oppose a national abortion ban, and insisted that not only would Nevada remain pro-choice, but the only ones who should change state abortion regulation are the people, through referendum. “For my entire adult life,” he wrote in August, “I have held the view that the Supreme Court should return the issue of abortion to the people and let them decide the issue on a state-by-state basis.”
Laxalt referred RCP back to that op-ed repeatedly and insisted he has already said his peace on the issue. The only reason abortion keeps coming up, he added, was because “Sen. Masto has been running on this for five straight months.”
“If you check her Twitter account, she's tweeted about it probably 10,000 times, and I'm only exaggerating by a few thousands,” he said. Then, another obvious exaggeration: “She’s never tweeted about inflation, or gas prices, or the economy.” Of course, the Democrat has talked about those challenges. No politician can ignore them. But Laxalt argues that there is a mismatch in priorities and a deliberate strategy to change the topic. By focusing on abortion so heavily this close to the election, he says Democrats are “trying to distract from what is affecting the daily lives of Nevadans.”
Democrats insist they haven’t emphasized abortion at the expense of the economy in the final days before midterms. The dichotomy isn’t “either/or,” White House chief of staff Ron Klain insisted. It isn’t even a dichotomy at all, the president insisted. After months of declaring inflation his “top priority,” Biden didn’t prioritize either abortion or the economy, telling reporters that “they are all important.”
But economic issues regularly rank as the electorate’s top overall concern, a finding consistent among demographics that the White House must persuade if their party is to maintain control of Congress: women – and Democrats.
According to an October survey of registered voters conducted by the New York Times and Sienna College, 39% of women reported that the economy and inflation were the most important problems facing the country. Meanwhile, just 8% said abortion access. Among Democrats overall, the result was roughly the same, with economic issues ranking first (37%) and abortion (7%) a distant second.
What would a Laxalt victory mean, then, for the remainder of Biden’s term? According to the candidate, nothing short of reorienting the president’s priorities. “It is not just to ensure they can’t spend more money,” he said, though Laxalt believes that is the first and most critical step to getting inflation under control, “but hopefully to force some compromise on getting a secure border, and hopefully force them to do an about-face on a lot of their energy policies.”
Again, the Laxalt argument is simple. “We are a geographically large state,” he said. “It doesn’t matter where you live, you drive so this kills every walk of life when you’re filling your tank up at six bucks a gallon. It is a serious problem.” He doesn’t make much of Biden's effort to blame Putin or “greedy oil executives.” Instead, Laxalt sees in the White House an administration that, through permitting and pipeline regulations, “made clear their intention is to shut down that industry.”
An uncomplicated message may have found a broad audience. Although Cortez Masto made history as the first Latina to win a Senate seat, she has seen her support among Hispanic voters erode. A recent USA Today/Suffolk poll found that while the Democrat led the Republican 48% to 30% among that portion of the electorate in August, her advantage among Hispanic voters had dwindled to just seven points, 49% to 42%, by October.
“We've made a real concerted effort to make sure that the Latino community has a true choice,” Laxalt said. His campaign events are bilingual and he has been running ads in Spanish for months, necessities for any political operation in a western state like Nevada. Those efforts, combined with a shifting landscape, are driving the shift in his direction. “The Democratic party today, their set of policies, do not help the Hispanic community; they very much hurt their chances at the American dream.”
While the Republican has made up historic ground, he hasn’t weakened his stance on border security or immigration. Laxalt ran ads opposing amnesty for the so-called Dreamers, whom Cortez Masto has championed in Congress, promising to fight “unconstitutional attempts to grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants.” He's backed a border wall.
“The bottom line is, until we have a genuinely secure border, and a permanently secure border,” he told RCP, “we can't have a conversation about who gets legalized after-the-fact and who doesn't because that is the magnet.” Laxalt placed particular blame on the Homeland Security secretary for overseeing “the most porous border in the history of the republic.”
“How is this guy still in charge of the border when he can't figure out how to secure the border,” he said of Secretary Alexander Mayorkas, adding that “Biden should fire him.” If the immigration official isn’t dismissed, Laxalt said, as senator, he’d vote to impeach him.
A longtime ally of Biden’s predecessor, Laxalt helped lead the effort to overturn Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat in Nevada and welcomed him to the state earlier this month. While there, Trump called Laxalt “a true American” and described Cortez Masto “a rubber stamp” for Biden. Laxalt told RealClearPolitics that “Yes, of course, we'll accept the certified election results” of his race. And his goal if he gets to Congress is “to make sure that we have a legitimate check on the Biden agenda over the next two years.”
It is a simple message. It may work for Laxalt.
EDITOR’S NOTE: With what has been called the “Sovietization” of the Biden administration – including the shocking criminalization of dissent and massive weaponization of the FBI against political opponents – America is being increasingly compared to a third-world or communist dictatorship. Yet America still has one sacred institution that dictatorships from Zimbabwe to communist China don’t have: ELECTIONS. And in reality, there is no reason, despite the regime’s all-out efforts at election rigging, that the tens of millions of decent, right-thinking American voters cannot stop the Biden administration’s ever-expanding madness this November. For that reason, the September issue of WND’s critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine insightfully covers the most electrifying and important races, illuminates the biggest issues, reveals how the latest federal takeover of elections actually violates the law, and much more. Looking forward to 2024, the issue also highlights why, to quote the chairman of a major think tank, Donald Trump “is the most towering political figure in living memory” and the person “most fit to lead” today’s America. It’s all in “STOPPING THE MADNESS: A MIDTERM ELECTION GUIDE FOR VOTERS WHO LOVE AMERICA.”
SUPPORT TRUTHFUL JOURNALISM. MAKE A DONATION TO THE NONPROFIT WND NEWS CENTER. THANK YOU!
The post Senate candidate builds surging campaign with 'It's the economy, stupid' appeared first on WND.
