Horowitz: GOP wins big. Now what?

The political pendulum will continue swinging back and forth every 4-6 years, but the policies will inexorably march leftward if we continue doing nothing to convert election victories into enduring policy outcomes.

Anyone asking how Tuesday night's stunning election results will affect the race for control of Congress in a year from now is pondering the wrong question. The more salient question is how the GOP gubernatorial and state legislative victories will bear on other GOP governors and legislatures in states where they already command strong majorities right now.

We can't wait until January 2023 or January 2025 for relief from COVID fascism, genocidal COVID treatment policies, denial of health care freedom, open borders, irresponsible refugee resettlement, rampant crime, and a return to gender sanity and traditional American values in our society and schools. The lesson from this week is that if Republicans can win in Virginia and New Jersey because of some of the aforementioned issues, that means they have no excuse not to immediately act upon all of these issues without any diffidence, equivocation, or compromise in all of the states where they already enjoy long-term control.

Although the issue of education, particularly school board decisions on transgenderism in Loudoun County and critical race theory across the state, loomed large in Virginia, it wasn't any single issue that drove what was clearly a national wave. Republicans won races in places like Seattle and Long Island, and a truck driver who spent less than $200 on his campaign defeated the most powerful man in the New Jersey legislature, while a little-known candidate came within inches of unseating Governor Phil Murphy. Republicans flipped a Biden+14 legislative seat in Texas, a number of Soros prosecutor candidates were defeated throughout the country, and five anti-police incumbents were swept out of the Minneapolis city council. This was a clear rebellion by the voters against all of the chaos and tyranny created by the confluence of numerous odious policies foisted upon us by the elites.

But the question is what Republicans should do with the mandate clearly handed to them by the voters. The definition of insanity is repeating the same cycle of failed policies and strategies over and over again and expecting a different result. We were in this very position in November 2009 when Republicans won big against Obama's radicalism in what became a harbinger for the Tea Party wave a year later. Then, we were told the House was not enough because they needed the Senate. Then they needed the White House. Then, in 2016, they won the federal trifecta. Not only did they do nothing with the power, but COVID fascism, which essentially remade our Constitution and way of life, began on their watch. Today's level of tyranny, spending, dependency, inflation, crime, illegal immigration, and social rotgut makes 2009 look like the Reagan era.

As such, anyone who thinks Republicans winning a narrow RINO majority in Washington next year is going to make a difference was born yesterday or somehow doesn't feel the pain of the average American. Besides, we can't wait another day, much less until January 2023, to save our children from an imminent injection into their bodies, to save jobs and careers from being destroyed, and to save lives from a virus likely created by the very entities blocking lifesaving treatment against it. We need action NOW.

Despite losing the 2020 elections, Republicans already dominate in many state governments over and beyond their historical baseline, and this is even before what will likely be a wave election a year from now. Republicans will now control 28 governorships, 31 states with both chambers, 23 trifectas, and 19 trifectas with supermajorities in both houses. COVID fascism, in particular, began with states governments. It can and must end with those same state governments. We don't need control of the federal government to change these policies in the states, nor can we afford to wait (and nor will it help anyway).

Yet even in most deep red states, we have Republican governors and legislative leaders who either support the dangerous vaccines and other aspects of the "COVID religion" or are somehow too scared to finally take a stand against the bio-medical security establishment and the powerful special interests representing this leviathan. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has wavered over signing a compromise bill against vaccine mandates overwhelmingly passed out of the legislatures, and Tennessee is the only state that even passed such a bill out of all the trifectas! We can't get governors in states like Idaho and Alabama to combat the mandates, and even in Iowa, where Gov. Kim Reynolds has generally been more level-headed on this issue, she continues to push the already debunked premise that the shots are safe and "the best defense" against the virus.

Ironically, with some of the cultural issues that Glenn Youngkin successfully leaned heavily into while campaigning in a blue state, too many Republicans in deep red states are downright on the other side! For example, we couldn't even get governors like Asa Hutchinson in much more socially conservative Arkansas to ban chemical castration of minors. While Youngkin ran hard against the Soros de-incarceration agenda and parole boards releasing criminals, many southern governors continue to push that agenda and somehow use a perverted view of the Bible to justify it.

Thus, we must finally realize this election cycle that we have won nothing with an election. We have merely secured possession of the ball with zero points on our side of the scoreboard after the other side already ran up the score to near-insurmountable margins. Now is the time to make the plays – big plays.

On Tuesday night, Republicans demonstrated that with the right message, they can make inroads even into blue-leaning areas on the East Coast. But what was also clear is that the "country class" voters are even more frantically anti-globalist and elitist than ever before. Youngkin blew out even Trump's historically strong showing in rural southwest Virginia while picking up lost suburban voters in Loudoun County, the Richmond suburbs, and the Tidewater area.

You know what looks a lot like southwest Virginia? Places like Idaho, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Alabama, and Tennessee. The question all voters fed up with the unprecedented tyranny from the federal government should be asking is: If Youngkin can win in Virginia, why are deep red state governors and legislatures not immediately convening to counter every one of these policies emanating from the Biden administration? As I speak with legislators in supermajority GOP states, all I hear is a defeatist attitude of, "This is the best we can do with the leadership we have." But why? If our message now resonates even in New Jersey, then most certainly we can push a no-holds-barred agenda against this administration and nullify every one of the unlawful policies without any need to work with Democrats.

As always, the GOP candidate victory speeches were full of optimism and broad platitudes on apple pie, American dream bromides, and general tropes about freedom and liberty. But when it comes to the specific policy outcomes that actually matter, the Democrats continue to succeed, largely because Republicans agree with the foundational premise of most of those policies, while opposing a few of the most extreme manifestations of it. It's time for voters to demand immediate policy changes in any state where Republicans control government, including, but not limited to, the following:

• A complete cessation of all "criminal justice reform," the de-incarceration agenda that most GOP governors have bought into. It's time to get tough on crime again by increasing sentences for violent offenders and limiting bail.
• A big theme of the Virginia campaigns was safe and secure communities. Republicans must promise to block refugee resettlement in their respective states, as thousands of unvetted Afghans are being dumped into our communities with no regard for the safety and culture of those areas.
• An immediate special session on COVID, in which all the funding and policies of COVID are shifted away from the failed vaccines and social control and toward early treatment, along with a complete ban on all mandates – no exceptions.
• An immediate prohibition on castration of minors, men in female sports, and men in female bathrooms, as well as a clear protection against any institution from having to perform unethical and medically damaging transgender "surgeries."
• A categorical ban on all critical race theory in all states and replacing it with a curriculum built upon the 1776 Curriculum.
• Every GOP state should, within the same week, pass an interposition bill, which empowers the legislature to ban the enforcement of any federal policies that violates the Constitution, the same way New York Democrats made it a felony to enforce immigration law or work with ICE during the Trump administration.

During the 1993 Super Bowl, Dallas Cowboys defensive tackle Leon Lett famously celebrated before he got the ball in the end zone, only to have the ball stripped from him by Buffalo Bills wide receiver Don Beebe. In that case, the Cowboys already had a massive lead, so the Leon Lett blunder was merely symbolic. But in our case, we are the ones losing big-time and cannot afford to showboat before we get the ball in the end zone.