Quickly after Republicans dominated Tuesday’s elections, the House Republican Study Committee began circulating a memo about how the GOP can use the Momentum from the Virginia and New Jersey elections heading into the 2022 midterms.
CBS News reported, “Republican Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s race against former Governor Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, a state President Biden won by 10 points in 2020.”
“In New Jersey, there were still a number of Democratic counties that had not reported their results, but incumbent Governor Phil Murphy had yet not locked down what was expected to be a relatively easy win over Republican Jack Ciattarelli,” CBS News added.
“Needless to say, tonight’s results are consistent w/ a political environment in which Republicans would comfortably take back both the House and Senate in 2022,” Dave Wasserman, the Cook Political Report’s House editor, explained on Twitter.
The House Republican Study Committee’s memo detailed four lessons from Youngkin’s win in Virginia that can be used in elections going forward.
“First, the concerns of parents need to be a tier 1 policy issue for Republicans: Youngkin’s success reveals that Republicans can and must become the party of parents,” the memo stated. “There is real energy from parents that we need to understand. The good news is RSC has been working for months to build out an agenda in education that will fight for and empower parents. This will include needed oversight of the Biden administration.”
“Second, we need to end the mandates,” the memo added. “In a Washington Post Op-ed Youngkin wrote, ‘Most important, we will never lock down our economy again.’ And it’s not just business restrictions. Youngkin opposes vaccine mandates and mask mandates in public schools. We’ve been doing this at the federal level already: Claudia Tenney and I introduced a bill to prevent OSHA from instating its unconstitutional vaccine mandate.”
“Third, we must continue to back the blue,” the memo continued. “Youngkin pledged to increase funding for police departments and protect ‘Qualified Immunity for our Law Enforcement Heroes,’ which House Democrats tried to end through their police reform bill. Crime, and particularly homicides, have spiked in Virginia and in every other state. In July, a USA Today poll found that crime, ahead of everything else, was the number one issue Americans were most concerned about.”
“Fourth, we must continue to focus on the failures of the Biden economy,” the memo added. “Youngkin focused on providing relief to runaway inflation caused by the Biden economy and on not locking down the economy again. Our early focus on runaway inflation and the growing supply chain crisis is hitting home with voters. We need to keep hammering away and work on bringing solutions to the table to address their concerns. In 2020, Biden won Virginia by 10 points and the year before Democrats took over both chambers of Virginia’s statehouse.”
