By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
National Review columnist John Fund, one of the keynote speakers at this year’s Gun Rights Policy Conference in Dallas, says the outlook for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections is good, and because the issue of gun rights has become so polarized, the nation’s gun owners may have only one direction to turn.
“If you’re a gun owner, if you’re a gun enthusiast, if you’re a Second Amendment supporter,” said Fund, the national affairs columnist at NR, “there isn’t any choice in your district. You know where the Democrats stand and you probably know where the Republicans stand.”
The annual conference was sponsored by the Second Amendment Foundation and Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. It featured dozens of speakers including several attorneys and legal scholars who gave reports on current and possible future litigation, the Second Amendment court history and how the gun rights movement arrived at its current position.
He offered some interesting perspective on the next five weeks leading up to the election. Beginning Oct. 1, he explained, polling will shift from just finding out what registered voters think to zeroing in on likely voters. Up to this month, there had been 140 different polls measuring the “generic congressional vote.” Of those, 107 measured registered voters, and out of that group, 46 of the polls gave Democrats the edge, 47 gave Republicans the edge and 14 were tied.
However, 33 polls focused on only likely voters, and Republicans were favored in 31 of those efforts.
From now on, Fund cautioned his audience the reporting on polls may be skewed by the media out of laziness and what reporters and news agencies decide they want to report. He compared it to “The Art of War,” in which Sun Tzu noted the best way to win a war is to not fight at all, but to destroy the enemy’s morale with psychological warfare.
Gun owners and conservatives could be the targets of such reporting.
The conference, which had a comparatively small physical turnout after being online for two years due to COVID shutdowns, was seen by tens of thousands as it was live-streamed. It is now available on YouTube in a two-part series. Both may be viewed by clicking on the following links:
Fund lamented about how political parties don’t debate the issues, instead engaging in attacks.
“People who run cable television don’t want debates, they want to propagandize,” Fund observed.
It is all leading up to an election which is no longer a traditional one-day event, but has already started in some places and the outcome might not be known for days after Nov. 8, when ballots are counted. He blames this on the increasing use of mail-in ballots, which he obviously disdains.
“I don’t have to tell you about the shenanigans of mail in ballots,” Fund stated, “especially in 2020 when they used COVID as a cover to bring in their entire agenda and basically destroy election integrity.”
In that regard, Fund may have lots of company. A new Rasmussen survey released Tuesday shows 84 percent of likely voters “voters believe the issue of election integrity will be important in this year’s congressional elections, including 61% who expect it to be Very Important.”
According to Rasmussen, “Nearly half (49%) of voters believe it is at least somewhat likely there will be widespread cheating that will affect the outcome of this year’s congressional elections, including 25% who say it’s Very Likely. Forty-one percent (41%) don’t believe cheating is likely to affect the November midterms, including 23% who say it’s Not At All Likely. Another 11% are not sure. These findings are nearly unchanged from our July survey.”
Fund had some interesting predictions for the 2024 presidential race. First, he said Joe Biden will not be the Democrat candidate in 2024. Fund asserted Democrats are “desperate” to find someone new, and it will not be Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Fund believes has reached her level of incompetence.
“You could walk through her deepest thoughts and not get your ankles wet,” Fund remarked.
He also does not expect Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee in two years, either. Fund predicted a lively primary season with new candidates emerging from both parties.
