Rep. Emmer: The ‘radical socialist left’ is ‘dangerous’ to the middle class
Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., on why Republicans picked up House seats during the 2020 election.
Radicals who hoped last week’s election would advance America down the path of socialism have had a rude awakening: most Americans aren’t ready to add Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin to Mount Rushmore and destroy the free-market system that made America the great country it is.
Unfortunately, Joe Biden is now president-elect and will become our nation’s leader Jan. 20, unless a series of long-shot lawsuits by President Trump and his supporters result in a surprise upset. But Biden won the Democratic presidential nomination and the general election by portraying himself as a moderate, not a socialist revolutionary.
And a good chunk of Biden’s votes came from people whose dislike of Trump was a lot stronger than their love for the Democratic presidential nominee or his policies.
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But one thing that has become abundantly clear in the wake of the election last week: the growing socialist wing of the Democratic Party took a major hit. The socialists moved so far left that they left millions of voters behind.
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Led by self-described socialists Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., (who failed twice to get the Democratic presidential nomination) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the far-far left had high hopes of succeeding in launching the transformation of American society into what they claimed would be a socialist utopia.
Thankfully, that did not happen. The American people did not fall for socialist propaganda and embrace unrealistic, unaffordable and unworkable socialist policies.
That’s a very good thing. Because while socialism promises heaven on Earth, in practice it results in hell on Earth — just ask the suffering people of Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela and other socialist and communist nations. Even Russia and China owe their limited prosperity to capitalist reforms they have introduced. And Eastern European socialist and communist nations ditched the failed systems long ago.
The most important election victories for conservatives last week came in several hotly contested U.S. Senate races. Democrats were hoping to flip at least four seats to gain control of the Senate, but that big gain didn’t happen.
Republicans have already won 50 Senate seats, including a very surprising victory for Susan Collins in Maine. Democrats have won 48 seats.
Two Senate seats are up for grabs in runoff elections in Georgia Jan. 5. Republicans are favored in both races at this point but the outcome is far from certain. If just one of the Republicans wins, the GOP will hold a 51-49 Senate majority. If both Republicans win, the GOP will hold 52 seats to 48 held by Democrats.
Two Democratic victories in the Georgia runoff elections would create a Senate split 50-50 between the two parties. Assuming Kamala Harris is vice president, she would cast the tie-breaking vote to narrowly give Democrats a slim Senate majority.
If Republicans end up keeping control of the Senate — something that looks increasingly more likely to occur — it means they will have delivered a major blow to socialists’ radical agenda.
Without a Democratic Party majority in the Senate, it will be virtually impossible for Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and others on the far left to pass legislation to Make America Socialist.
The socialist agenda includes: imposing a single-payer health care system; expanding the size of the Supreme Court and other federal courts to install liberal majorities; transforming heavily Democratic Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico into states to give Democrats four more Senate seats; passing the environmentally toxic, economically catastrophic Green New Deal; and enacting other radical policies on the socialists’ wish list for 2021 and 2022.
Additionally, although Democrats have kept control of the House of Representatives — currently the place where socialists exert the most influence in the federal government — Republicans have cut sharply into their lead.
Opposition from the relatively small group of moderate House Democrats and a unified Republican caucus should keep many of the most socialistic proposals from being passed in the House over the next two years. But even if some such proposals make it through the House, they will go nowhere in a GOP Senate.
Republicans also won eight of 11 gubernatorial races nationwide. And in the three races won by Democrats — in Delaware, North Carolina and Washington state — all three winners were incumbents. Democrats failed to flip a single Republican gubernatorial seat. That will make it extremely difficult for socialists at the state and local levels to expand their agenda outside of the nation’s capital.
Even in some deep-blue states, socialistic proposals failed. The most notable is Illinois’s “Fair Tax” amendment. Had it been approved by voters, the “Fair Tax” would have changed Illinois’s state constitution so that the Legislature could impose a state progressive income tax. (Currently, the constitution only allows for a flat tax on income in the state.)
Despite having a highly progressive liberal electorate, Illinois rejected the “Fair Tax” by a vote of 55 percent to 45 percent.
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Finally, socialists expected a “blue wave” to sweep Democrats to power in the federal and state governments. But all they managed to get was, at best, a slightly off-color blue trickle — one that provides absolutely no “mandate” demanding radical action from Congress or a Biden administration.
Progressives and socialists in the Democratic Party should learn a very important lesson from 2020: the American people don’t want socialism.
Unfortunately, however, socialists have made it abundantly clear that they are going to do everything they possibly can to ram their ideology down Americans’ throats, regardless of what the American people want and how many times socialism has failed throughout world history.
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In a recent interview with AOC and other “Squad” members, comrade Bernie Sanders said that fellow socialists and progressives in Congress must “organize our people to make sure that Biden becomes the most progressive president since FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt].”
It’s going to be up to those Americans who support individual liberty and free markets, as well as conservatives in Congress, to make sure Sanders’ dangerous promise doesn’t come to fruition. The election last week was a good start.
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