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LAS VEGAS, NEVADA - NOVEMBER 18: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks to guests at the Republican Jewish Coalition Annual Leadership Meeting on November 19, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Scott Olson/Getty Images

ANALYSIS

This article is the first in a series about the results of the midterm elections and what’s next for the Republican Party and the conservative movement. 

(LifeSiteNews) – A lot of blame is going around after the Republicans’ “red wave” failed to materialize in November.

One of the most common arguments is that opposition to abortion and the LGBT agenda, particularly same-sex “marriage,” made it impossible for Republicans to win, and that the GOP must “moderate” itself to compete in future elections.

This, unsurprisingly, is standard in the mainstream media and from the radical LGBT and abortion lobbies, dedicated as they are to undermining life and the family.

It’s also cited by pathetic Republicans, often trying to mask their failures or push a subversive agenda within the party, like Minnesota gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen, who blamed pro-lifers after his eight-point loss.

The midterms were mostly about “an intrusion into a person’s autonomy,” he claimed. “In the future, I think the lesson is clear — at least it should be to Republicans,” Jensen said. “If you infringe on someone’s freedom … you’ll probably lose.”

Mitch McConnell may have had something similar in mind when he argued that Republicans underperformed because they “frightened” moderates with “negativity” and “excessive attacks.” Those sentiments may have influenced his breathtaking betrayal of the conservative base this week with his tacit support of the “Respect for Marriage Act.”

Homosexual activist and Trump adviser Ric Grenell recently played on the same theme when he chastised conservative Rep. Chip Roy for opposing homosexual “marriage.” “Gay marriage is legal, Chip,” Grenell said. “In fact, your state won’t let gay conservatives attend the Texas GOP convention.”

“We win by addition not subtraction,” he insisted.

But abandoning God’s law isn’t the savvy strategy that the woke mob and their Republican enablers would make it seem – and the midterm elections actually proved it.

While there may not have been a national “red wave,” the midterms saw stunning victories for some of the strongest pro-life and pro-family conservatives in the country, including in battleground states.

Of the 13 Republican governors up for re-election this year who signed abortion restrictions, none of them lost re-election and all of them won by double digits except for Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, who crushed Stacey Abrams by 7.5 points.

Governors from Iowa to Wyoming who signed abortion “trigger” or heartbeat bans won by an average of about 25 points.

In North Carolina, Republican congressman Rep. Ted Budd prevailed in the state’s hard-fought Senate race running on a strong social conservative record: He voted with Family Research Council 100 percent of the time, voted against the “Respect for Marriage Act,” and co-sponsored multiple federal abortion bans.

That gave the left plenty of ammunition, but Budd still beat the Democrats’ nominee, Cheri Beasley, and by nearly twice the margin of victory for RINO North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis in 2020. Tillis voted this week to betray marriage.

In neighboring South Carolina, Republican Gov. Henry McMaster won in a 17-point blowout, the largest victory in a South Carolina governor’s election since 1990, though polling showed a much closer race.

A pro-life, pro-family firebrand, McMaster declared his opposition to same-sex “marriage” days before the election and said he would enforce South Carolina’s laws upholding traditional marriage if the Supreme Court returns the issue to the states.

And in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton, a staunch opponent of child “sex changes” and abortion, pledged the unthinkable: that he would defend a state law banning sodomy that was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2003.

Paxton won by nine points – nearly three times his victory margin in 2018 – defying media speculation about a tight race.

In fact, despite Grenell’s chiding, Texas voters rewarded Republicans with a clean sweep of statewide offices even after the Texas GOP adopted a platform condemning homosexuality as an “abnormal lifestyle choice.”

Budd, McMaster, and Paxton weren’t outliers.

Unabashed social conservatives won a string of notable victories last month, and while Democrats did better than expected in some states, their far-left social agenda failed them around the country, including in purple states like Ohio, states like Indiana and West Virginia that recently banned abortion, and even liberal strongholds like New York.

This actually isn’t surprising. Polling consistently shows that voters are fed up with the LGBT movement, that homosexual “marriage” doesn’t have the overwhelming support that backers claim, that Republican voters still oppose it, and that voters often agree with strict abortion laws. According to exit polls from the midterms, 50 percent of voters think that society’s values on sexuality and gender are “changing for worse,” and Republicans won them by around 80 percent. Just 26 percent believe that America’s sexual norms are improving.

Florida’s red wave: All about ‘the values’ 

Perhaps conservatives’ most impressive victories were in Florida, long a perennial swing state and one that President Barack Obama carried twice.

But last month Gov. Ron DeSantis won re-election by 19.4 points – the largest margin of victory in a Florida governor’s race in 40 years – defeating Democratic congressman and former Gov. Charlie Crist by more than 1.5 million votes.

DeSantis won his first term in 2018 by just 32,463 votes. In November, however, he dominated even longtime Democratic bastions, including Miami-Dade County, which voted for Biden by seven points but broke for DeSantis this year by 11 points.

“Thanks to the overwhelming support of the people of Florida, we not only won election, we have rewritten the political map,” DeSantis declared on election night.

The popular Republican governor didn’t realign Florida by compromising with the woke left. Instead, he put opposition to LGBT ideology at the center of his campaign, although it made him a top target of the international media.

In March, DeSantis signed a bill banning homosexual and transgender propaganda in public elementary schools. When Disney declared its hostility to the law, he led a successful push to strip the company of its special tax status in the state.

DeSantis also prohibited gender-confused males from competing in women’s and girls’ sports and cracked down on homosexual clubs hosting drag queen shows with children. Last month, the Florida Board of Medicine voted to prohibit doctors from providing “gender-affirming” surgeries and drugs to minors, a move that DeSantis strongly encouraged. In 2021, he vetoed hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax funding for pro-LGBT groups.

With his pro-family record, DeSantis won re-election by wider margins than every incumbent Democratic governor this year, including potential presidential hopefuls like Gov. Gavin Newsom of California and Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.

Republicans in Florida benefitted from record surge in registered voters that DeSantis presided over and which is widely attributed to his handling of COVID-19 and education. Fighting back against pro-LGBT wokeness may also have endeared him to Hispanics, who largely reject the radical LGBT agenda and powered his landslide victory: “Majority-Hispanic counties in Florida voted to re-elect Gov. Ron DeSantis over Democratic opponent Charlie Crist by a margin of 11 percentage points. These same counties favored Biden over Trump in 2020 by a margin of 8 percentage points.”

Beyond the governor’s race, Florida Republicans crushed Democrats up and down the ballot at historic levels.

Sen. Marco Rubio won re-election by 17 points against a better-funded challenger who hammered him for opposing the “Respect for Marriage Act” and rape and incest exceptions for abortion. The nation’s top LGBT lobby group, the Human Rights Campaign, gave Rubio a “zero” rating and smeared him as “a threat to every LGBTQ+ person in Florida,” to no avail.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody cruised to re-election with 61 percent of the vote while actively challenging the state’s constitutional protections for abortion.

Republicans won every statewide office in the Sunshine State for the first time since Reconstruction and even picked up super-majorities in the state legislature – the first time either major party has done so in modern history.

According to an analysis by fivethirtyeight.com, the GOP also over-performed in 23 of 25 House races with a Democrat on the ballot, netting four new seats and helping Republicans clinch a majority in the House of Representatives.

“We are not hiding who we are,” conservative state Rep. Randy Fine said about Florida’s red shift. People are “coming for the values,” he said.

Republicans’ massive victories bode well for further efforts to curb LGBT ideology and abortion in Florida. DeSantis has pledged to “expand pro-life protections” beyond a 15-week ban and a parental consent law that he already signed. His office has reportedly focused on a heartbeat bill, according to USA TODAY Network-Florida.

Red waves in Iowa and Ohio

There was also a red wave in Iowa, another swing state that backed Obama twice.

Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds blew out her Democratic opponent by almost 19 points, six times her previous margin of victory. Reynolds ran on a decidedly pro-life, conservative record: She defunded Planned Parenthood and signed multiple pro-life laws, including Iowa’s six-week abortion ban, which she has vowed to defend after the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

The first-term governor additionally barred taxpayer funding for “sex changes” and spearheaded the state’s ban on gender-confused males in women’s sports. Like DeSantis, she gutted COVID jab and mask mandates and critical race theory in schools.

Reynolds campaigned explicitly against the “woke agenda” and leaned into the abortion issue, exposing her challenger as an extremist who supported aborting a baby “right up until the moment it’s born.”

Republicans won a series of other historic wins in Iowa that observers described as “the end of an era.”

Iowa’s last Democrat in Congress, Rep. Cindy Axne, fell to Republican state lawmaker Zach Nunn, who voted for the six-week ban. Iowa has sent at least one Democrat to the House since the 1990s.

Republicans also finally ousted 10-term Democratic Attorney General Tom Miller, the longest-serving state attorney general in U.S. history. Miller, 78, refused to represent Reynolds in abortion-related cases. His opponent, Republican attorney Brenna Bird, promised to defend Iowa’s pro-life laws and blasted Miller for freeing a “transgender” child sex predator.

Iowa’s nine-term Democratic Treasurer Michael Fitzgerald, the country’s longest-serving state treasurer, lost to a GOP rival as well.

And for the first time since 1973, Republicans won a super-majority in the Iowa Senate, giving them power to approve Reynolds’ appointments to state boards and agencies “without Democratic interference,” according to the Associated Press.

Conservatives did even better in formerly swing-state Ohio.

Gov. Mike DeWine, a more moderate Republican who nevertheless signed a six-week abortion ban and every other pro-life law that has made it to his desk, won re-election by 25 points, well above his 3.7-point victory four years ago.

Ohio Attorney General David Yost, who faced blistering media attacks for questioning the story of a 10-year-old’s out-of-state abortion, defeated his Democratic rival in a 20-point landslide. Yost had immediately moved to reinstate Ohio’s six-week ban after the reversal of Roe v. Wade and sued to block Biden’s LGBT and jab mandates.

As in Florida, Ohio Republicans won super-majorities in the state legislature. “We achieved a level not reached in more than 70 years,” Republican state Senate President Matt Huffman said.

According to cleveland.com, “Republican leaders in both chambers will now have the power to fast-track bills, circumvent the public’s ability to block legislation by referendum, and override gubernatorial vetoes.”

Ohio lawmakers have said that they may move to pass a ban on abortion throughout pregnancy in the coming months.

In another crucial victory for pro-lifers, Republicans maintained a conservative 4-3 majority on the Supreme Court of Ohio, sweeping all judicial races by double digits. The court is currently considering a challenge to the six-week abortion ban.

What’s more, Republican Senator-elect J.D. Vance won Ohio’s high-profile U.S. Senate race, defeating radical Democratic congressman Tim Ryan by a larger-than-expected 6.5 points in spite of Ryan’s huge spending advantage. Vance backed a federal abortion ban, though he said that he supports rape exceptions, and pledged to protect children from “gender transitions” and LGBT ideology. He distanced himself from the “Respect for Marriage Act” on the campaign trail.

Abortion fails Democrats around the country

In Indiana, the first state that passed an abortion ban after the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Democrats were sure that abortion would get them across the finish line.

“Many people that I have met through door-knocking that identify as a libertarian or a lifelong Republican have said, ‘I’m done, I’m done,’” claimed one Democrat running for the state House.

She got blown out by 16 points though, and Republican actually expanded their super-majority in the state senate.

“I wasted 14 months of my life,” said Indiana Democratic Senate candidate Tom McDermott, who ran on abortion and lost by 19 points. “I’m probably done in politics.”

In West Virginia, the other state that passed a sweeping pro-life law in the run-up to the midterms, Republicans secured their biggest legislative majorities in “modern history,” according to the Associated Press:

Republicans tightened their grip on the West Virginia Senate and House of Delegates, adding historic gains to their supermajorities in the general election. […] Eight years since taking control of both chambers for the first time in eight decades, the GOP now has its most lopsided advantage in the Legislature in modern history.

Those gains may help pro-lifers tighten abortion restrictions further and eliminate exceptions in the current ban.

In Louisiana, Democrats boasted that abortion was “playing a major role in energizing women voters” and predicted “considerable shifts” away from the GOP due to multiple near-total abortion bans that took effect in the state this summer.

Republicans massively over-performed in Louisiana, with every Republican congressman winning by no less than 48 points.

In Montana, Republicans won a super-majority in the state legislature this year for the first time in the history of Montana’s modern constitution, allowing them to refer constitutional amendments directly to voters or call a convention to rewrite the state constitution, which the Montana Supreme Court has interpreted to protect abortion. North Carolina and Nebraska Republicans also appear to have expanded their legislative majorities enough to pass new abortion restrictions. 

Running on a progressive social platform failed Democrats not only in swing and red states, but even in far-left bastions like New York and Oregon.

In the New York governor’s race, woke tyrant Gov. Kathy Hochul made abortion “the defining issue of her campaign,” spending millions of dollars in ads slamming Republican nominee Lee Zeldin for his pro-life voting record.

Hochul ultimately eked out the narrowest victory for a governor in New York since 1994, winning by 5.7 points – 18 points less than Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2018.

As New York Democrats fixated on abortion, Republicans made major inroads with minorities and in the New York metropolitan area. The GOP nearly ended Democrats’ super-majority in the New York Senate, over-performed in most U.S. House races in the state, and ousted four Democratic congressmen, including Democrats’ national campaign chairman.

Something similar happened in capsizing Oregon, where Democrat Gov.-elect Tina Kotek focused her desperate campaign on abortion and won by three points in a state that Biden carried by 16.

Republicans, meanwhile, stripped Democrats of their super-majorities in the Oregon legislature, and as in New York, significantly over-performed in congressional races, flipping a blue district with a candidate who supported a heartbeat bill.

Pro-lifers and social conservatives did have disastrous nights in a handful of winnable states, most notably Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona, and saw mixed results in Kansas, Nevada, and Wisconsin. But those losses were more complicated than the left makes them out to be and, as a following article in this series will explain, were in no small part thanks to Democratic tricks and intraparty sabotage.

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