Dick Morris: Is the GOP About to Blow the Election?
Is the Republican Party, in its own inimitable fashion, about to blow this election?
With the House in their pockets and the Senate within reach, the GOP may have figured out a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And their possible defeat would come from making the same mistake twice!
Remember how, in 2020, the Democrats piled up huge leads among those who voted early, sometimes weeks before Election Day, while Republican operatives wrote ads and conducted polls and generally sat back and waited for the calendar to turn to Election Day to get out their vote? By the time the Republicans showed up, the Democrats had already piled up insurmountable leads.
While the Democrats went door-to-door to sign up their voters, Republicans sat back and waited. It’s like in baseball when one team scratches out runs through walks, singles, stolen bases and sacrifice flies while the other team waits for the three-run homer that never comes.
You would think that the Republicans learned their lesson in 2020. But now, in 2022, the same damn thing is happening.
As of Oct. 23, 7,460,000 people had already voted, 1.67 million in person and 5.8 million by mail. And, in states that register voters by party, 2.1 million of those early voters have been Democrats (50 percent) while only 1.2 million have been Republicans (30 percent).
Polling by John McLaughlin, John Jordan and me shows that in Pennsylvania, 14 percent of John Fetterman voters have already voted, as opposed to less than 1 percent of Mehmet Oz supporters. In Arizona, twice as many Mark Kelly voters have already voted — 10 percent — as Blake Masters supporters.
The central message of my new book, “The Return: Trump’s Big 2024 Comeback,” is that the Republican Party has to change its political tactics to match the new rules Democrats unveiled in 2020.
It matters very much when a person votes. When Democrats ask a voter to cast his ballot two weeks before the election, they can follow up if he doesn’t come through, with two or three or even 10 visits to remind him.
But with Election Day voters, there is no margin for error. If even 5 percent of Republican voters don’t show up, because things piled up or the kids got sick, the party risks losing races that are now on razor’s edge in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Ohio and, with them, control of the Senate or even the House.
So why are the Republicans living so dangerously? Scarred by their 2020 experience, they worry that early votes for Republicans will be lost or misplaced. These worries about voter fraud are strong enough to get them to urge their devoted followers to stay home and only come out only on Election Day.
How shortsighted can you get? None of us can tell the future and guarantee that in two weeks the children will be healthy and they will be able to vote no matter what. Who can make that kind of prediction, especially with the life of the country hanging in the balance?
The answer is to provide sufficient ballot protection through volunteer poll watchers, not to let the voters stay home.
Two days after we were defeated in the 2020 election, campaign manager Jared Kushner called to boast to me, “Boy, did we sure do a great job on Election Day.”
He was right. Donald Trump pulled out 11 million more votes in 2020 than in 2016. But, by using early voting, Joe Biden pulled out 15 million more.
Sure, we need to stop Democratic cheating, but not voting is a hell of a way to do it.
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