GOP House Would Keep Dems on Defensive Into 2024

Whereas dreams of a red wave were awakened as nosebleeds in many GOP congressional midterm contests — think John Fetterman’s incomprehensible Senate win in Pennsylvania for example — even a likely slim U.S. House win is a very big deal and opportunity immediately leading into the 2024 presidential campaign season.

Turnover of House control will cede powers enabling Republicans to squelch profligate, wasteful, inflationary Biden administration spending bills, and flip control of key government oversight committees with subpoena powers to investigate, indict and initiate impeachment proceedings against bad federal officials.

A great start will be to immediately block and repurpose Democrat funding for 87,000 new IRS agents.

An additional GOP Senate win — currently a tossup possibility — will transfer control over impeachment trials, confirmations/denials of certain high-level judicial and ambassadorships, and veto power over international treaties.

Prudently acted upon, transfers of all such powers to Republicans can have two primary impacts on 2024 presidential and congressional outcomes.

The first imperative is to demonstrate that Republicans are prepared to stick together in replacing broadly recognized disastrously failed progressive policies and administrators with sensible alternatives that work.

The second priority is to select strong leaders within party ranks who are deserving to win in the next go-around.

On the Senate side, good news here is that heading into 2022, whereas Democrats had to defend a lot of seats, most were on friendly ground. Of 14 they had to protect, only one (Georgia, now a runoff coin toss) was in a state carried by President Donald Trump in 2020.

At the time of this writing, Republican Adam Laxalt holds a slim lead in Nevada which hasn’t gone red since 2004, whereas on the other hand, newcomer Blake Masters trails former astronaut and incumbent Mark Kelly in traditionally blue Arizona by 5 points.

Looking ahead to 2024, Democrats will be defending 23 Senate seats in tougher target-rich territory. Included are three states President Trump won in 2016, and three others that swung to Trump against Biden in 2020.

Biden administration and Democratic Congress policies are target-rich Republican opportunities as well, with little expectation this condition will change, other than worsen.

Following the election, in response to a question from the Associated Press' Zeke Miller what he would do differently over the next two years given that 75% of Americans say the country is headed in the wrong direction, the president replied “nothing,”

Biden repeated his 2020 “no drilling” campaign trail pledge during a rally in support of New York’s Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul, stating, "There is no more drilling. I haven’t formed any new drilling."

Anti-fossil John Fetterman’s incredulous Pennsylvania win in a leading East Coast supplier of natural gas, coal and petroleum products notwithstanding, Biden administration anti-fossil energy policies are not winning the hearts of fellow Democrats in other major hydrocarbon industry production states.

Joe Manchin of West Virginia responded to Biden’s recent statement that all of our nation’s coal plants should be shut down and replaced by wind and solar, saying that “comments like these are the reason the American people are losing trust in President Biden and instead believes he does not understand the need to have an all-in energy policy that would keep our nation totally energy independent and secure.”

Manchin added: "It seems his positions change depending on the audience and the politics of the day. Politicizing our nation’s energy policies would only bring higher prices and more pain for the American people."

A predicted GOP House will disband and possibly turn tables on the Democrat Select Committee Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot witch hunt seeking to link Donald Trump culpability to the mob action.

Prospective Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California previously described the panel as “the most political and least legitimate committee in American history.”

Expect any future investigations into this lamentable event to question why, despite intel reports warning of possible violence — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had refused then-President Trump’s advance offer of up to 2,000 national guard troops to supplement local Capitol protection.

The GOP is already laying the groundwork for dozens of investigations into potentially impeachable misdeeds of high-level Biden administration officials.

Prospective House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has pledged to conduct a probe into origins of the COVID-19 virus, and several other GOP representatives are calling for a subpoena to call upon Dr. Anthony Fauci, the outgoing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and top Trump and Biden medical adviser to testify before Congress despite his imminent retirement at the end of the year.

Republican-controlled oversight committees are highly prepared and motivated to address political weaponization of the Department of Justice and FBI involving flagrant partisan assaults on conservative individuals and values.

Examples include Attorney General Merrick Garland’s signoff on the FBI’s armed invasion of former President Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago residence and Melania’s wardrobe closet in search of unauthorized records, along with Garland’s memo instructions for the agency to investigate angry parents protesting school boards for indoctrinating young children with racist, anti-patriotic, and age-inappropriate sexual materials as potential terrorists.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., his party's ranking member on the House Oversight Committee along with Rep. Jim Jordan R-Ohio, who is poised to lead the House Judiciary Committee, have pledged to dig deeper into DOJ’s handling of investigations into murky Biden family foreign business deals both when Joe was vice president and actively campaigning for the 2020 presidency.

In addition to Joe Biden and Merrick Garland, another impeachment target is Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas who has entirely failed in his responsibility to secure America’s southern border.

As a consequence, the number of migrant encounters exceeded a staggering 2.4 million during FY 2022, with narcotics trafficking of fentanyl and other opioids now becoming the leading cause of death for all people in the U.S. between 18 to 45 years old, surpassing suicides, COVID-19 and car accidents.

Even if Republicans take control of only the House, expect an open floodgate of investigations to put Democrats on endless defenses of disastrously failed leadership policies and performance leading up to and through 2024 contests which can belatedly release that pent up all-important red wave after all.