The beer is always good at Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester. When they have political events that are conducive to country music and Republican Party politics, it tastes even better. And as I sipped on a beer with my wife at the bar watching J.D. Vance and Don Jr take pictures with a supportive crowd, several people asked me the same question, what effect will Trump’s endorsement of Vance for the hotly contested Ohio Senate seat have on the race as a whole. At present, the election is really between Josh Mandel, who I have been supportive of during the whole race, primarily because of his willingness to fight anybody anywhere, and his open talk about 2020 election fraud, and J.D. Vance, the former Never Trumper. He was now being personally put on a platform by the Trump family. All the other candidates, Jane Timken, Gibbons, and Dolin, are fighting for the traditional Rob Portman RINO types, the same people who currently support DeWine for governor. The present fear is that the Trump voters will be split between J.D. and Mandel, letting the squishier Republicans slide into the lead on May 3rd, 2022. Also, Jim Renacci and Mike DeWine are running pretty much tied, according to long-time Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, as recently as a few days ago. So, what does all this mean, which is what people were asking me? So, I sipped my beer and answered……………….
If we take traditional primary voters, there would be many reasons to worry about all those mentioned concerns. But this isn’t a standard primary. Biden has taken the country to terrible, new places, and Don Jr. was just a few feet away, helping J.D. Vance overcome his past as a Never Trumper. President Trump had just held a major rally with tens of thousands of people in Delaware, Ohio. Marjorie Tayler Green was coming to West Chester in a few days to help Vance out and many other top-tier Republicans. This was no ordinary race, and voter engagement looked like it would be very high. That would help Renacci, even without a formal Trump endorsement. Because of the high voter engagement, Vance and Mandel voters would naturally also vote for Renacci. It doesn’t help Renacci that Blystone and others have stayed in the race to help DeWine by splitting the vote essentially. But with high voter turnout, things were looking good for Renacci to knock off DeWine. But in a hungry Ohio primary season where everyone wants a Trump endorsement, the J.D. Vance endorsement and personal work that Don Jr was willing to do himself would likely tip the scales in favor of J.D. Vance.
Prior to the beer, J.D. and Don Jr. spoke to an eager crowd about why the senate candidate was a born-again Trump supporter, no longer a Never Trumper. And they made some excellent points that were worth mentioning. J.D. is undoubtedly not planning to be a war hawk like John McCain and Lindsey Graham have been. He doesn’t want to be in the war in Ukraine and has a very Trump-like position regarding global affairs. America First, and let everyone else fight their own battles. Drop the globalism and bring home all the jobs. That’s a good thing. The other thing that Don Jr. brought up, which was shown in the really great video of Don Jr.’s 25-minute speech, was that he asked the audience how many senators they actually liked that would fight for MAGA. He wondered if anybody could name five. Well, nobody could name more than three, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Josh Hawley. Beyond that, all we had out of the remaining 100 were squishy politicians who cared more about being liked by the media and could care less about the people they were supposed to represent. Many of them, like Mitch McConnell, had sold out America to foreign powers long ago, and they hid their guilt behind a kind of political game that most of them were playing, except for those three names mentioned. Some members of the audience mentioned Marjorie Tayler Green and Jim Jordan. But Don Jr. explained to those people that those were members of the House. They weren’t senators.
So, to answer the question to everyone who didn’t get to ask me that same set of questions, I think the Trump endorsement will put J.D. Vance over the top. I think voter engagement will stave off the more establishment types. And that same voter engagement should help Renacci over DeWine. Of course, anything can happen, but as I sipped on the wonderful beer and enjoyed the good company there at the bar, that’s how things looked to me. Regardless of what happened on election day, the speech by Donald Trump Jr. was an amazing one, something that not even the craziest comedy sketches from 2015 would have dared to entertain. The kind of critical opinion expressed in the open at that event was very new and honest. It was the kind of stuff that people only talked about in private. They never talked about those things out loud. So we were in unique territory here, where the son of a billionaire who might otherwise just live life in a previous decade being a playboy and living on the golf course was flying around the country trying to get MAGA politicians elected to help his father have options in the Oval Office by the year 2024. This wasn’t politics as usual. These guys weren’t doing these things for money or power. J.D. Vance himself could be making a seven-figure income in a number of fields, but he wanted to be a senator. He wanted to help save Middletown, his hometown, from the victimization of globalism that had killed it over the last half-century. These were people who were defying logic as it was traditionally known. They loved their country, and the attackers of America never planned for that. We saw something extraordinary happening.
And more than any other political prediction, I see something more special happening. Voters are engaged in a way they have never been previously. They are taking more time out of their lives to be involved in these kinds of political events. As I watched the people in line trying to get a picture with J.D. and Don Jr., I couldn’t help but think how proud people were to be near them. Not so much for the celebrity of the event, but because they recognized what Don Jr. was trying to do to save America. He was giving up a lot to be at Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester, Ohio, to give his father a chance to have a beneficial senator in place by the time 2024 came around. Someone who would stand up to China and support the future Trump trade policies, especially regarding China, who owes us all a lot of money for what they did with Covid in 2020. And the public appreciated that kind of fight, and they wanted to be near people who were fighting on the front line. We’ll see how that pans out on election day, May 3rd. But from my viewpoint, remarkable things are lining up that we have never witnessed before. And that is an exciting prospect.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 