From the article -- Tuesday’s election wasn’t a blue wave or even a blue tsunami: It was a blue apocalypse. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), who leads the one notable bright spot on the map, referred to the wipeout as “close to an extinction-level event” for the GOP. It was the worst midterm defeat for one party in over a half-century.
Much of the postmortem conversation has focused on why this massacre happened. Was it the Iran war? Was it the tariffs? Was it corruption? Was it the “Epstein files” mess? The answer is both simpler and more sweeping: The MAGA movement, which has defined the GOP during the Trump era, has forgotten what populism means in practice and requires in governance.
When Donald Trump rode down the Trump Tower escalator in 2015, he launched a populist revolution. His message was simple: An elite ruling class has sold out the country, and the MAGA movement is here to finally listen to the people. Trump largely delivered during his first term. Trump cut taxes, tamed inflation, and oversaw a booming job market and a surging stock market. He became the first president since Richard Nixon to begin to reset our relationship with Communist China. In exile during the Joe Biden interregnum, Trump promised to return and close the border, get inflation under control, and bring back general sanity and stability.
To be sure, Trump’s second term has had its successes.
The southern border is airtight. Violent crime has fallen to the lowest rate in 125 years. Prescription drug prices are the lowest since the 1960s. The Justice Department’s fights with the Ivy League yielded real concessions. The raid to extract Nicolas Maduro from Caracas was bold and masterful. (RELATED: Trump Victim of Own Success on Immigration) Above all, make life easier, not harder, for ordinary Americans.
But somewhere along the way, the MAGA movement forgot what it was.
Several related articles:...“DeSantis Rips GOP Over Immigration: ‘There Were So Many Things That Could Have Been Done, They Didn't Even Attempt It’” (Ian Schwartz, RCP)...“Trump Squandered the GOP’s Immigration Advantage: Republicans lost the 2026 midterms in part because they misunderstood the immigration beliefs of Americans -- including Hispanics.” (Santiago Vidal Calvo, City Journal)...“Why Trump got the bloodbath he deserved: The president abandoned the voters who put him in power.” (Sean Collins, spiked!)...“More Than a Thumping, Possibly a Realignment” (Michael Barone, Jewish News Service)...“Gridlock Is Good” (Issues & Insights Editorial Board)...“Republicans Learned Nothing From 2006 About Midterms And Foreign Wars” (Brianna Lyman, Federalist)...“3 Reasons Florida Didn't Go Blue Like Texas” (Katrina Trunk, Washington Stand)
2) "Trump’s Next Act -- And America’s" (Glenn Harlan Reynolds)
From the article -- I wrote last week that rather than living in “late capitalism,” we were actually living in “late democracy.” Late capitalism is a communist fantasy created over a century ago. Late democracy is very real.
Democracy -- even in a democratic republic like ours, rather than pure democracy -- is contingent. When you try it in the less developed parts of the world, you typically get “one man, one vote, one time.” And by less developed I don’t mean less economically developed -- though that generally applies too — as less morally and civically developed. But now that kind of “less developed” describes us too...
We used to say “politics ain’t beanbag,” but there were limits, on both behavior and rhetoric. The opposition was a political movement to be defeated, not an evil to be extirpated. The stakes in elections may have been high, but they weren’t existential. Nobody feared death or prison just for losing an election. That sort of thing was for banana republics, like Brazil.
Now we have prominent Democrats talking about throwing their opponents in jail, seizing Elon Musk’s companies -- after throwing him in jail for, I dunno, the crime of being in opposition I guess -- and enacting various changes, like packing the Supreme Court, adding Puerto Rico and DC as states, and opening the borders to ensure that no election can remove them from power again. That’s “late democracy.” Very late.
3) “God’s Plan Will be Established.” (Even after the midterms) ” (Denny Hartford, Vital Signs Ministries)
From the article -- I write this month’s letter before the midterm elections and therefore am uncertain whether or not the radical left will be (by hook and by crook) taking America further down the roads of decadence, social and economic insanity, and thorough ruin. Nevertheless, whatever the results, the above scripture text is ever-relevant, ever-trustworthy, and ever-wonderful in the soul comfort it provides. Our nation’s political life is at a critical juncture -- of that there is no doubt -- but Christians should understand, much more keenly than other citizens, that our steep decline relates less to politics than it does to our varied and over-the-top immoralities, our indifference to biblical truth, the massive bloodshed of the innocent, and the self-satisfied timidity of preachers and priests.
Therefore, a fresh appreciation of the truths of this passage may make a huge difference in the life of our nation…but will most definitely make for a life of inestimable worth and eternal reward for the obedient believer...
Related articles: “Responding to Those Awful Election Results” (Jack Niewold, Vital Signs Blog)...“Division, Conservatism, And The Radical Left: A Tale Of Two Elections” (Amir Tsarfati, Harbinger's Daily)...“The Halls Of Congress Will Soon Be Filled With Fierce Hostility Towards Biblical Truth -- It’s Time For Christians To Stand Strong” (Erick Stakelbeck, Harbinger’s Daily)...“Communists, Socialists, And Islamists Are About To Sit In Congress -- But God Is Still On The Throne” (Erick Stakelbeck, Harbinger’s Daily)
4) “Attacking Israel worked for Dems but won't elect JD Vance” (Jonathan Tobin, Jewish News Service)
From the article -- And that's why Vice President JD Vance's post-mortem on the Republican Party's midterm disaster is problematic. Attacking Israel may work for Democrats. But if Vance thinks Republicans will profit from emulating that approach, not only will it not help the GOP recover its 2026 losses in future elections, it will definitely not help elect him president in 2028.
In an X post that landed the morning after the GOP rout, Vance was seeking to get out ahead of the intraparty circular firing squads that always follow any election disaster. He wanted to get on record an "I told you so" explanation for the defeat of Republican candidates that would remind the public that he was the most prominent critic of the conflict with Iran earlier this year.
In the post, he focused on the decision to go to war and the subsequent rise of gas prices while linking that to Israel. He ignored other factors that contributed to the electoral catastrophe. In this way, Vance sought to set himself up as the only national Republican figure who couldn't be blamed for the devastating losses suffered by his party.
That was important for him because the veep, and not Trump, had the most to lose in the midterms.
With Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemingly ruling himself out of the running to succeed Trump, Vance had already secured the status of frontrunner for the GOP 2028 presidential nomination. But having positioned himself as effectively seeking to serve Trump's third term, the repudiation of the administration hurts him a lot more than a president that never has to face the voters again.
5) “The ‘Third Worldist’ roots of the Islamo-left alliance: The New Left of the 1960s paved the way for the cult of Palestinianism and its war against the West.” (Tim Black, spiked!)
From the article -- Just three days after the third anniversary of Hamas’s pogrom in southern Israel, the Islamo-left was once again on the march in central London. Amid barely veiled anti-Semitic chants of ‘Zionist scum’ or ‘From the river to the sea…’, onlookers could also hear, ‘In our thousands, in our millions we are all Palestinians’. This little ditty serenaded the keffiyeh-clad protesters as they threw insults at counter-protesters and trampled on poppy wreaths laid at the foot of a Battle of Britain memorial.
A week later, the Islamo-left was to the fore once again during the protests-cum-riots that continue to engulf urban France. As cars burned and tear gas scorched the Parisian air, a Palestine flag was raised over the statue of Marianne, an abiding symbol of the French Republic.
These two scenes, a week apart, capture well the essential worldview of Islamo-leftists. They combine a near-total identification with the cause of Palestine with a near-total estrangement from their own societies and their culture and heritage. They wilfully efface and sometimes desecrate symbols of the nation in which they live in the name of a nation that doesn’t exist.
They will claim that they are protesting against Israel or the actions of its government – a monomaniacal obsession that is troubling in itself. But they are ultimately protesting against us, against our societies and even our broader civilisational heritage. Clinging ever-more tightly to that free-floating signifier of virtue, ‘Palestine’, the Islamo-left is seeking nothing less than the poppy-trampling, Marianne-effacing ‘decolonisation’ of Western society in general.
This reactionary alliance of middle-class ‘progressives’ and de facto Islamists has been a long time in the making. What we’re seeing, in short, is the culmination of the ‘radical’ left’s decades-long degeneration, its descent into reactionary identitarianism and anti-Westernism – a process that has ultimately led it into a grim coupling with Islamism. These are now two parties bonded by their shared animosity towards modernity, united in their war on the legacy of the Enlightenment, and currently channelling all this ideological energy into hatred of the world’s only Jewish state.
5 Other Important Articles:
* “Behold the Empathy of the Left” (David Strom, Hot Air)
* “How China Weaponizes Jew-Hate” (Robert Williams, Gatestone Institute)
* “Why Do So Many Countries Seem To Be Preparing for Disaster? Governments across the globe are urging citizens to stockpile food, water, and emergency supplies. What do they know that we don’t?” (Armando Simón, American Spectator)
* "The Public School Exodus Continues: Unhappy with the current state of public schools, parents are withdrawing their children." (Larry Sand, American Greatness)
* “Europe's Dangerous New Plan to Destroy Independent Media” (Robert Williams, Gatestone Institute) *
