Great News for New Jersey Republicans
The likely defeat of Donald Trump is great news for New Jersey Republicans.
To paraphrase Richard Nixon, Democrats won’t “have Trump to kick around anymore.”
As Peg Schaffer, the Somerset County Democratic chair, said on Wednesday, Trump is “the gift that keeps on giving” for Dems.
But that giving is about to end and in New Jersey, Republicans will benefit.
That’s because Trump has done great harm to the Republican brand in New Jersey.
You began to see that soon after he took the oath with increased political involvement by those on the left. That prompted large marches to support women’s rights and gun control, events that brought more left-leaning folks into the political system.
All this crystallized in 2018 when Democrats won congressional seats in suburbia they ordinarily would have had no business winning.
And they repeated those wins this year.
Schaffer’s comment was relevant to the fact Democrats just won all county-wide offices in Somerset, which up until recently, was solidly Republican. Democrats are also putting up strong challenges in Morris, another traditional Republican bastion.
But there’s more. They are also winning municipal seats in the suburbs and let’s not
forget that Joe Biden is getting about 60 percent of the vote. Democrats have won the presidential race in New Jersey for 30 years now, but the spread used to be much closer than 20 points.
Some attribute the shift in suburban voting patterns to changing demographics. I am not sure about that. The state always has been relatively diverse and folks have been moving from urban areas to the suburbs for 50 years.
The “credit” for the change belongs to Trump.
His far right views on environmental policy and immigration, and perhaps more importantly, his juvenile and unpresidential behavior, have turned off many people in New Jersey previously inclined to support Republicans.
That leaves only Trump’s core supporters, or if you will, the Trump cult. To be sure, they’re an enthusiastic group. Just look at their fondness for large flags, MAGA-attire and caravans. But as we are seeing with this election, they are a definite minority.
And they drag down support for all Republicans. If Trump is gone from the White House, no New Jersey Republican is going to be asked to explain a crazy Trump tweet or to defend one of his off-the-wall statements. Also consider the sheer idiocy of the president telling supporters not to vote by mail. How’s that turning out?
With no more Trump, Republicans can urge voters to focus solely on Phil Murphy and one-party rule in New Jersey. That’s not a bad strategy.
A post-Trump world is going to be much better for Republicans in New Jersey.
Even if party leaders don’t admit it.
So, how can they undo the damage?
Excellent points here. As a long term Republican, it was getting very annoying answering for Trump’s antics. It was all about personality, and none of these conversations focused on things of substance like policy or outcomes. With Trump gone, it would be nice to remind people what the Republicans really stand for: Individual Freedom, Free Markets and Fiscal Responsibility. This state desperately needs all three. And with Trump gone we can finally focus on the huge failures of the Murphy administration. Three numbers tell us everything we need to know about Dem failures: Highest number of Covid deaths per capita in the America; 16,500 deaths, twice as many as Sweden (9 million people, same as NJ) which had No lockdown. Second highest Unemployment figures in America. Second highest number of people leaving the state, the exodus second only to New York. These are terrible numbers that have been brushed under the rug because Trump was the shiny object in the room hoarding all negative press. With him gone, maybe we can finally start focusing on the things that impact the average resident of this state.
As a person that went to the rally in Washington this past weekend, i can assure you the “Cult” you speak about was a very happy, excited, and more energized than ever grouping of not just Republicans, but Walk-Away and other Democrats, and in general people that consider themselves “INDEPENDENTS”. Those that consider themselves Never Trumper Republicans are free to join others that have left a rejuvinated party that more so consider themselves part of the Trump Party that he has created. This is more so evident by the stinging defeats encountered by Democrats in the House and probably the probable maintaining of the Senate majority, all while huge previously unimaginable amounts of money were spent while crowing that the doom was on the horizon. Instead we saw a massive increase in those joining that Trump Party by members of the African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and other so called “minority” groupings. This also points to evidence that if all those things are true, how is it the case that the person who did all that with those same policies that won him a stunning upset in 2016, could end up with less votes than the man who ran a Neanderthal campaign from his cave. As Sidney Powell the former prosecutor and defense lawyer who overturned the Ted Stevens conviction by proving massive prosecutorial misconduct on the part of the F.B.I. put it, “President Trump had MILLIONS of votes stolen by the Hammer and Scorecard computer ballot theft programs”, and “I never say anything i cannot prove”. Things as a person privy to her work said, “Things are about to get very, very, interesting.