How Long Must We Sing This Song?
If the Right can find $40 million to cover Donald Trump’s legal fees, surely they can find that much to defend the sanctity of life.
For those of you who have attended one of my speeches, you know I talk about the singer’s lament in the song “40” re “how long must we sing this song,” which is a derivation of Psalm 40. I refer to the lament as I walk through all of the core issues (weak job growth, population decline, exploding Medicaid, high spending, high taxes, weak school choice, and lack of action on protecting our kids) and Ohio’s systemically poor ranking on those issues. After last night’s results on State Issue 1 (SI1), the lament echoed in my head again.
How long must we sing this song? Or, said differently, how in God’s green Earth did a +8 Donald Trump state lose a Republican-driven statewide vote by 14%?
Let me offer a few thoughts.
First, the whole "are they, aren't they” going to pass something this week or next week or the week thereafter that occurred during the legislative session proved to be a fairly stark foreshadowing of the fractured Republican support among voters. Clearly, the inability to get the supermajority Republican legislature in full agreement to get the legislation passed indicated that our side wouldn’t be unified in the special election, which it wasn’t. Lots of Republicans came out against it, as not one Democrat of note supported it. Poor strategy usually results in poor outcomes.
Next, two of the core lessons the Right should have learned from the Senate Bill 5 (SB5) misfire were (1) don’t overreach and (2) make sure you have a massive campaign war chest in the bank BEFORE moving forward on the issue. Remember SB5 covered fire and police in the public sector collective bargaining reforms, which allowed Big Labor to claim SB5 would leave fire and police totally unprotected in ads showing firefighters running out of flaming buildings and police facing deadly shootings. A lie, but an effective lie (and before the Left decided police were evil and needed to be defunded). Wisconsin excluded police and fire from its law, which remains on the books today. With SI1, I don’t know why the drafters required signatures in all 88 counties when amendments to the U.S. Constitution only require 2/3rds of the states. Seems to me they should have mirrored the U.S. Constitution by only requiring signatures in 2/3rds of the counties, which would have been easier to defend.
On the money side, once again Republicans pushed a controversial measure through without any money in the bank to defend it. We don’t know what the final spending tally is, but SB5 ended up getting $42 million from Big Labor against roughly $20 million from supporters. With so much money, Big Labor saturated the airwaves with their message before supporters even got going. A similar dynamic occurred with SI1. The Left spent at least twice as much as the Right and began their air campaign well before the Right got going. There simply was no catching up.
Next, where the heck was Governor Mike DeWine? I’ve written before about “men without voices” in Ohio. Maybe I missed his various campaign appearances and front-and-center leadership, but he was AWOL on SI1. Secretary of State Frank LaRose worked hard to push the issue, but muddled his message and fed into the Left’s messaging with a stray comment about SI1 being all about the abortion issue. I heard LaRose speak up in Erie County last Friday. He did a good job, but it seemed a little too late given the delay by supporters in pushing the core message. Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted did a few speeches, but seemed more interested in selling his snake oil re how great Ohio is doing—he likes to push Ohio's “record low unemployment rate” without noting that, compared to the other 49 states, it is the 35th lowest unemployment rate, which isn't quite so impressive. It is like running a personal best in a race, but still coming in last.
Finally, it is clear the Right still has not figured out how to talk about the abortion issue, so lose suburban Republican and Independent female voters. The simple fact is SI1 really was all about making the November vote on the Left’s radical abortion measure harder; otherwise, why was such an important constitutional change necessary NOW and not anytime over the last decade? By tying it to the abortion issue, Republicans made it easy for the Left to attack it. With strategists like this who couldn’t see what the Left would do post-Dobbs in charge of the Right in Ohio, it isn’t surprising why Ohio fares so poorly in ranking after ranking. Ohio really does need new leadership who know how to play chess, not checkers, which is why I’m exploring a run for governor.
Strategically, knowing the Left would do it anyway, it frankly may have been smarter to fight the abortion fight over SI1. It still may have been defeated, but we could have begun getting our message out for November now, drained some of their resources, and not wasted our precious resources talking about protecting Ohio's Constitution, which is a bit disingenuous after you had years to do something about it and didn't.
Now that the SI1 dust has settled, the bigger fight over the Left’s radical pro-abortion measure begins. I truly hope the folks at Ohio Right to Life already have banked $20 million to defeat the November measure. I also hope they have figured out a simple message that keeps Republican suburban women on our side and appeals to minority women. Seems to me our message should be something like this:
This radical abortion measure would not only put Ohio on the fringe in America, but far out-of-step among Western democracies, including most of Europe in which abortion is limited to the first fifteen weeks. The gruesome abortion industry will flood into Ohio if it passes to prey on desperate young women, putting abortion clinics on every corner just like the drug cartels did with pot shops in Colorado after the Left legalized marijuana there. Instead of producing America’s best and brightest young minds, Ohio will produce Kermit Gosnells who kill babies deep into pregnancy, as 67% of abortions are done on minority women. As eugenicist, abortion-enthusiast, and Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger said, “We do not want word to get out that we want to exterminate the Negro population.” Democrat President Bill Clinton rightly stated, abortion should be rare. If this measure passes, it will be anything but rare in Ohio. Is that the kind of Ohio we want for our families and children?
The Left will make this a national fight in which all of its left-wing zealots will pour money into Ohio to win and bombard Ohioans with messages from Hollywood elites. The Right better nationalize this fight among its donor class or it will be grossly outspent again and lose. If they can find $40 million to cover Donald Trump’s legal fees, surely they can find that much to defend the sanctity of life.
Have ever had a conversation with anyone who opposed Issue 1? I'm not talking about some performative debate or some reductive ad, but a real, earnest conversation with those who opposed Issue 1. Based on this write-up, it's not clear that is the case. My reasoning for stating this is that you poorly represent the high degree of well earned mistrust I and others like me have towards the Ohio State Legislature, the Governor, and many of the more extreme elements of the Ohio GOP intelligentsia. Case in point you have sentence alluding to SB5: "A lie, but an effective lie (and before the Left decided police were evil and needed to be defunded)".
Do you see your lie in the second half of the sentence? Do you think this is a helpful or accurate characterization of 47% of Ohioians who tend to not vote for the GOP? When I grew up in this state, I often disagreed politically with my neighbors but I was more charitable on assuming each others motives and as where more charitable to my motives. Now all I see from the GOP leadership is an effort to squelch any voices that oppose it. This issue and it's vast overreach being the most recent example. All it has lead to is the corruption that has led two speakers of the house and a governor to be ousted and/or convicted of bribery and ethics violations. It's lead to a corrupt ECOT enterprise stealing billions from our kids. It has led our education system plummeting from 5th to 20th under GOP leadership, and a tax burden which ranks in the top 15 nationally.