OHIO GOP CANDIDATES MUST BE LOOKING FOR  STUPID VOTERS

 

                                       …J.D. Vance is one of those Ohio candidates

 

It is amazing just how dense some GOP candidates are this year

 

If you haven’t heard, the Republican primary for Senate in Ohio, was previously a contest of which Trump supporters would abase themselves in a sufficiently humiliating fashion to win the former president Trump’s endorsement.

That competition was won by J.D. Vance, whose reinvention as a Trumpist culture warrior, with his embrace of the “great foreigner replacement theory” that Democrats are “importing non-White foreigners to destroy the country.”  That Vance idea was apparently enough to win Trump over.

(Just remember, J.D. Vance once compared Trump to being “America’s Hitler.”)

This must have been crushingly disappointing to another GOP candidate, Josh Mandel, who no doubt thought he was doing all the right things when he posted a video of himself burning a surgical mask.  He play-acted as a tough guy and presented himself as “pro-God, pro-gun, pro-Trump.”

Without Trump’s endorsement, Mandel had to find a different tack.  How about inflation, an issue clearly on “voters’ minds”?  And why not have his GOP ally, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) make the pitch for Mandel?

Cruz and Mandel, it turns out, are kindred spirits.  People whose burning ambition carries them up the political ladder despite their intense level of anti-charisma.  Cruz and Mandel evoke a powerful repugnance from voters.  Watch them, and you’ll promptly find yourself saying, “I despise that guy and I barely know anything about him.”

So here’s the ad the two of them created:

True to form, the very first thing out of Cruz’s mouth is an absurd lie: “Want to stop Biden’s inflation? Send someone who’s done it before.” Wait a minute!   Mandel has stopped inflation before?  Well, of course not. But Cruz says that Mandel increased transparency when he was state treasurer, which is perfectly fine, but it doesn’t have anything to do with today’s inflation.

Cruz then closes with a repeat of the stupid claim: “End Biden’s inflation? Send Josh Mandel to Washington.”

Of all the over-the-top claims in campaign ads so far this year, this might be the most preposterous.  Are we supposed to believe a single freshman senator is going to “end inflation in America?”

So, one backbench senator, is going to repair global supply chains, accelerate production of computer chips, reduce demand for consumer goods, increase the supply of construction materials and bring down international shipping costs? Yeah, right.

And if one senator is capable of all that, how come Cruz himself hasn’t done it, with all the so called “powers of Cruz’s office?”  Is he just waiting for Mandel to get elected so he can take care of it?

The problem, of course, is that there’s very little a president, let alone a senator, can do to bring down inflation. President Biden has been trying what he can, but most of it is too limited to have much impact (releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve might help in the long run, but won’t change things now). If you’re looking for the brilliant plan to send prices plunging that Republicans will pass through Congress if they retake the majority, you’re going to be very disappointed.

This is exactly why candidates are so vague when they address today’s inflation:  If you get into the particulars, and it quickly becomes clear that your next senator won’t make a difference one way or another.

You can see it from another candidate in the Ohio primary, Jane Timken, who says in her new ad, “In the Senate, I’ll stop Biden’s socialist agenda and runaway inflation.” She does make reference to a policy, (a balanced federal budget), but that has approximately zero to do with inflation.  That is given, that we had extremely low inflation for decades, and substantial deficits for almost all that time.

Another candidate, Matt Dolan, just tells a big lie about Biden: “that he banned oil exploration on his first day as president” and Dolan says that’s the cause of all our inflation. Dolan vows to solve inflation by fighting Biden’s "energy agenda.”  Just more B.S..

By comparison, it almost seems refreshing that Vance doesn’t appear to actually want to do much of anything as a senator.  In one recent ad, he complains that “Biden’s open border,” another GOP fantasy, is bringing drugs and “more Democrat voters” into America.  And if you elect Vance, he will … well, he doesn’t say anything, but rest assured, he’ll just go on Fox News to complain about it, just as he is doing now.

So these are Ohioans’ only GOP choices.  Ugly culture-war posturing, or ludicrous inflation posturing.

In a broad sense, this is not really new: Candidates often characterize themselves as heroically potent, able to transform the country from their perch as the 435th-most-senior member of the House, or whatever it is they’re running for. Their favorite, is the claim that “I’ll change the way they do business in Washington.” Sure you will.

If there’s a nugget of truth amid all this, it’s that electing more Republicans to the Senate will, in some ways, “stop Biden.”  At least it will stop him from passing any legislation, or filling any judicial vacancies. But it will have absolutely no effect on inflation.

And if you think it might, you’re just the kind of fool that candidates, such as Mandel and Vance are looking for today.

Copyright G. Ater 2022